Brazil Announces Plans To Move Away From US-Centric Internet 285
trbdavies writes "The Associated Press reports: 'President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company's network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google. The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month's scheduled trip to Washington, where she was to be honored with a state dinner.' Among Brazil's plans are a domestic encrypted email service, laying its own fiber optic cable to Europe, requiring services like Facebook and Google to store data generated by Brazilians on servers located in Brazil, and pushing for 'international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software during the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month.'"
ballsy move (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ballsy move (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Brazilian, I have to say this is just the typical "full of hot air" attitude of the current government.
I don't expect anything more than some noise and a couple news flashes to come out of this. And a lot of wasted public money, probably being spent on companies owned by political cronies.
This is the same president that published an executive order (has force of law) that changed our language to include a female inflection for the word "president" (which was a non gender specific word, to begin with)
Re:Happening everywhere on all levels (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm astonished at the posts in this thread that have been modded up, but just don't get this point. This is about the only one I've seen so far that is truly insightful. The NSA's dragnetting is why we can't have good things. It will progressively push all other countries to legislate that information on their citizens must be hosted inside their borders. And Brazil's approach is the right one. They won't go after their citizens, or the big bad NSA. They'll just go after the businesses themselves. For companies like Google, this will be an inconvenience, but for any small company wanting to do international business on the internet, their options just evaporated. Here's hoping that they'll get some international law in place to declare the NSAs actions illegal - and some decent penalties applied at a 'per capita' rate.
Re:Well, obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't think of it as a fiefdom, think of it as a jobs program for Brazil's tech sector. If the big players want a piece of the Brazilian market, and I think they probably do, then they have to have a physical presence there. Ditto the fiber connections to Europe. That has the added effect of making the Internet itself more robust. More transatlantic bandwidth is better, period.
Re:Well, obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet is supposed to be bigger than any one country.
The Internet isn't supposed to be tied to country at all.
Oddly, I agree with Eric Schmidt on this - the big risk is if every country starts making their own internet fiefdom and it becomes harder to operate and connect internationally. Of course Eric Schmidt said this, as one of the companies responsible for helping with the spying he's worried about the ripple effects from.
What Brazil is doing is creating more direct links to other countries instead of having to route through the US. This increases Brazilian privacy, and helps make the the 'net more resilient (and possible faster) for everyone.
It's not about fiefdoms, but about each country being properly connected through their own resources instead of relying on others. It's just in this case there are other benefits to all the extra fibre as well.
Re:Efficacy? (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA showed a "BRIC" fiber (Brazil, Russia, India, China) which would take a Southern route from Brazil to South Africa, India, China and Russia.
It will be good to have more connectivity and alternative routes. It also avoids Miami and the NSA where all of Brazil's data goes now.
Re:Well, obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes it much easier to spy on your own citizens when you do that.
Well, yes and no. The main thing to worry about is typified by this comment:
Among Brazil's plans are a domestic encrypted email service
It's possible that what this means is that Brazil's domestic email service will do the encryption. This would be no security at all, since it would mean that the email service has everyone's keys and can decrypt everyone's email. And possibly sell it to interested customers, such as the US government.
If they're serious about local security, what they'll do is study various end-to-end email encryption packages, and recommend the best ones to their citizens. End-to-end encryption is the only way to get actual security in email. And they'll want a public education campaign to teach people about the "gotchas". For example, you don't ever store your keys in "the cloud".
There have been proposals in the US that email encryption be done by the low-level IP software. This was rejected back in the 1960s by the ARPAnet folks (the military predecessor to the Internet), on the grounds that low-level encryption is inherently secure, since it's typically installed in a way that the user can't control or even see into. It could easily be sending your keys and/or decrypted email to arbitrary third parties, and most users would have no way of knowing about it.
Anyway, it could be interesting to know what the Brazilian planners are planning. Are they really aiming for a domestic email service that "handles" the encryption (i.e., no security at all)? Or are they planning to actually do it right?
Here in the US, we know the answer to that question as applied to our own government (and telecom companies ;-). Is the Brazilian government any better?
Re:Well, obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Per NPR this morning, she cancelled it because she was pissed. As in not rescheduling it. That's about as big a slap in the face as a diplomat can get.
Re:Well, obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm. A physical presence? No, they just need a VPN service in country so it LOOKS like they are there. Isn't that what all the users do so that it looks like they are in Canada and can watch all the curling events that aren't allowed outside of Canada? Or maybe that was TV shows that aren't allowed outside of the US. But anyway, Google and Facebook can just rent a nice, fast, VPN service in country and they will have a presence there as far as these politicians will ever know.
This is Brazil we're talking about -- the politicians might not know, but their tech advisors will -- it's trivial to trace where the bulk traffic to sites like Google and Facebook is being routed. They'll actually need to set up a datacenter there. Management has no need to be in the country, but the data sure does. If that data goes to a VPN and then is routed out of the country to the US, that'll show up in the routing logs (traffic in = encrypted traffic out, and vice versa).
That kind of thing would likely work in many countries, but Brazil has been intentionally beefing up their tech sector over the last decade, and now they generally know what they're doing (and what their citizens are doing).
Interestingly, Facebook Brazil is based out of Ireland, not the US; where the actual data is stored, I have no idea -- but I bet Brazil does.
Re:ballsy move (Score:2, Interesting)
As a Brazilian I agree. This is just political speech (a.k.a "BS"). Telebras, the "the state-run telecom company" is a skeleton company, brought back to life from the remnants of the archaic public telecom system to serve political interests. It brings Internet access to about 260 cities, out of 5570 on the country, most of all in sparse populated areas (http://www.telebras.com.br/cidades_com_oferta_PNBL_pela_Telebras_e_parceiros_ordem_alfabetica.pdf). Also the compel for Facebook, Google, etc "to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil" gives away the fact that our government don't understand (or choose to ignore) facts. If those companies they are required to surrender any information to US agencies, it does not matter where the servers are.
Re:National Stupid Agency (Score:5, Interesting)
every government that has the means is spying on its citizens and other other countries. while the US is probably in the top 5 when it comes to means, it is also more likely to get outed, because whistle blowers are given a platform and do not fear being "disappeared" for their actions.
surprise, you don't see whistle blowers from china, russia, and the like.
This has nothing to do with the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
Brazilian here. It has to do with censoring what people post on facebook.
Recently, there have been waves of protests in Brazil, where all the traditional media companies - newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV - barely took notice even though at some instances there were almost one million people screaming outside. The reason they are so biased is because they are being bought by the government, in a monthly basis, where Rede Globo, the Brazilian equivalent of BBC, takes half the money and the rest is distributed to the other smaller media outlets. That's taxpayer money we are talking about - rampant corruption is one of the main points of these protests.
The only way that these protests gained wide support was through facebook events. Since Dilma has no control over facebook, she could not censor it. Hence, the excuse to store all brazilian data in brazilian servers: so that she and her government can put a stop to the riots.
Re:Brazil always answers to USA (Score:4, Interesting)
Brazil has a policy of absolute reciprocity when it comes to immigration. Brazil requires the same of US Residents applying for a Brazilian visa as the US requires of Brazilian Residents applying for a US Visa.
Any requirement imposed upon Brazilian citizens by any other country is reciprocated toward that country's citizens. It makes perfect sense to do it that way.
Re:ballsy move (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. A similar thing happened in Finland a few years ago. The previously state-run mobile phone and internet provider was sold to a Swedish company and as a result, the hub for all the data flowing into and out of this provider moved to Sweden. The problem was, the Finnish government used this provider, and suddenly all government data was "overseas". This was/is illegal. So, they had to quickly build new datacenters in Finland to host all the government data. I would also speculate that Sweden's close ties with the US had some impact to the urgency as well.
Note, this was well before the whole Assange affair which also seems to smell of US interference/cooperation with the Swedish government in order to get him on Swedish soil so he can be extradited to the US for prosecution.