[en] Authoriterrorism and surveillance, the Brazilian way

[info en fsfla.org]

Brazil, July 7, 2008---Pressure from banks against on-line fraud,
already covered by existing law, is being used as excuse to push
through major threats to society.  Puppets in the Brazilian Senate are
about to approve a bill supported by banking and copyright profiteers
in detriment of freedom and privacy of the people they were elected to
serve and represent.  Bill 89/2003 criminalizes day-to-day Internet
activities, and it is likely to be voted in the Senate this week.
http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/2008-07-05-surpresa,-sou-contra (in Portuguese)
http://www.safernet.org.br/twiki/bin/view/Colaborar/BrazilianCybercrimeBillXCybercrimeConvention (about an earlier draft of the bill)
http://www.petitiononline.com/veto2008/ (in Portuguese)

The bill introduces on-line surveillance, demanding networking service
providers to record customers' every on-line activity, and to share
with authorities logs and received reports of possibly-illicit
activities.  The wording is so broad that providers may be heftily
fined if they fail to retain, for at least 3 years, a copy of every
packet that crosses its network.  Even more serious than the costs and
risks, imposed on service providers, is the danger to users' privacy,
by the assurance of possibility of retroactive wiretapping of every
VoIP phone call, every e-mail or instant message sent or received,
every visited web-page and every on-line transaction.

It further establishes jail time for such broad activities as
unauthorized access to computer systems, networks, and data stored in
them.  In spite of being justified and promoted by banks on the
grounds of stopping criminals from obtaining, selling or destroying
information through fraud or exploitation of vulnerabilities, it is
worded so ambiguously that it can be easily abused by suppliers of
electronic equipment (computers such as servers, desktops, laptops,
video games, cell phones, digital cameras, media players and
recorders, etc) and of digitally-encoded information (text, audio,
video, software, etc).

Abuses may range from legal threats to actual jail time for people who
unlock video games or cell phones to install software not approved by
the supplier; who work around deliberate defects in media players or
recorders to gain access to their own songs or movies stored in them;
who use copyrighted works in ways that do not infringe on copyrights,
but that authoriterrorists would like to outlaw.
http://defectivebydesign.org/
http://drm.info/

Authoriterrorism is the practice of (i) mislabeling as property a
limited monopoly granted by society as a means to get, after an
originally short period of deprivation, more creative works available
for all to enjoy and build upon; (ii) promoting the extension of the
monopoly and other authoritarian laws that grant authoriterrorists
technical and legal means to steal from society the fulfillment of the
goal of copyrights; (iii) using these technical and legal measures and
scare tactics to stop people from using works in ways that fall
outside the scope or the period of the monopoly; (iv) brainwashing
people so they believe they don't and shouldn't have the right to use
works in these ways, that it would somehow harm authors (as if
authoriterrorists didn't), and that it is the moral equivalent of
invading ships, stealing the cargo and enslaving or murdering the
tripulation.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml
http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/texto/DMCAnada
http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/PIFAQ (in Portuguese)

But we should think for a moment about who is invading our homes,
building spies and policemen into our electronic equipment; tying our
hands, and putting on blinds and gags on us through this same
equipment, stealing through force our fair use rights and the public
domain; enslaving us by ensuring we can only do what they want us to
do, and killing our wish to fight for our rights by fooling us into
feeling guilty.  Who are the real pirates, and who is really being
harmed?

Bills that would give even more power to the powerful authoritarian
intermediaries, that exploit authors and terrorize society, appear to
not be in short supply these days.  Rushing them to approval, avoiding
public debate, appears to be a common trait for such bills that harm
society.
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/fight-the-canadian-dmca
http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-72379/european-parliament-rushes-towards-soviet-internet
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1117

Representatives in democratic governments ought to remember what
democracy stands for, that the law in a democratic state is supposed
to benefit society, and resist the pressure and the lobbying to grant
any authoriterrorist even more power over the people they represent.

Fraud, blackmail, violation of privacy and of trade secrets are
already crimes, regardless of whether they're perpetrated on-line, and
they haven't prevented Brazilian banks from making huge and growing
profits.

Permanent on-line surveillance is too much of a privacy threat to be
regarded as a potential solution for these crimes, rather than a
problem on its own, and there is no doubt that the availability of all
this information will be abused by authoriterrorists as well.

We beg good-faith legislators and other government officials to try to
stop the rush for approval of this terrible bill, to make room for
public debate and to separate the needed juridic advances from the
redundancies and the erosion of citizens' rights.  We further beg for
help in bringing this urgent issue to the public's attention, lifting
the apparent gag order upon the national press, and bringing to public
shame any legislator who sells out and votes into law this
anti-democratic weapon of mass criminalization.


== About Free Software Foundation Latin America

FSFLA joined in 2005 the FSF network, previously formed by Free
Software Foundations in the United States, in Europe and in India.
These sister organizations work in their corresponding geographies
towards promoting the same Free Software ideals and defending the same
freedoms for software users and developers, working locally but
cooperating globally.  For more information about FSFLA and to
contribute to our work, visit our web site at http://www.fsfla.org or
write to info en fsfla.org.


== Press contacts

Alexandre Oliva
Board member, FSFLA
lxoliva en fsfla.org
+55 19 9714-3658 / 3243-5233
+55 61 4063-9714


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http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/anuncio/2008-07-brasil-autoriterrorismo