
Brazil looks to break from US-centric Internet - auctiontheory
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Brazil-looks-to-break-from-US-centric-Internet-4819946.php
======
tedivm
I'm glad I hit refresh and saw that the sensationalist title was edited, but
even without that I think this article is a bit over the top. What they're
doing is simple-

* Building more direct connections between themselves and other countries, to reduce the amount of traffic going through the US.

* Encouraging companies to host data directly in Brazil, so their privacy laws can be enforced for their citizens.

* Developing an encrypted email service to reduce US spying.

It's not surprising, and it's certainly not going to balkanize the internet.
What it could do is cost US companies a ton of money in lost revenue as
services move out of the country.

~~~
r00fus
Going by your summary, this is plain common sense. And I think the Internet
will be stronger for it.

Viva la Brasil

~~~
cfontes
Thanks. I don't want to sound as an asshole but...

"Viva la Brasil" \- is spanish and should be "Viva el Brasil"

And we speak Portuguese the correct would be "Viva o Brasil"

And looks like it's impossible to do this without sounding like an asshole,
sorry for that.

~~~
wulczer
BTW, I think at least in Peninsular Spanish you'd say "Viva Brasil" (omitting
the article).

------
cfontes
My country never fails to embarrass me.

Brazil is the world leader in saying that it's going to do something awesome
and completely forgetting about doing something in order to make that happen.

Nothing is going to happen.

Example:

In order to have a seat in one of the trips to the international space
station, Brazil should develop and build some of the windows of it.

We didn't and not because we don't know how, it was because of politics. In
order to make it appear that we didn't fail to the population, the president
bought a X million dollars flight ticket to a random guy that today earns
money by giving speeches about how dreams come true with hard work and that
you can become an astronaut just like him.

The biggest part of the population thinks we earned it by doing something
useful for the mission.

I can go on and on about this events if you need more.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/world/americas/08rio.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/world/americas/08rio.html?_r=0)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Space_Agency#Internat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Space_Agency#International_Space_Station)

p.s: look the schedules for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics and you have
a second example.

~~~
rbanffy
> Nothing is going to happen.

I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. They'll spend a ton of money buying
(because we can't build -or even design - it ourselves) before we withdraw and
declare success.

> and not because we don't know how, it was because of politics.

Politics contaminate our universities and research centers so deeply that it
masks any selection for actual competence. I seriously doubt we could develop
a window. Putting someone on the tourist track was the only way a Brazilian
could fly. The tab was about US$ 20 million.

For all that it's possible to know, the AEB repeatedly attempted the
incredibly stupid idea of launching satellites into LEO using solid-rocket
fuel engines. Naturally, all attempts failed, but that didn't stop them from
trying until they got 21 people killed on a launch pad explosion. Some
conspiracy theorists say it was sabotage, but I don't think such a design
warrants the effort - physics alone can take care of it.

~~~
speeder
As someone that is friend of people of Serpro.and know some of Air Force
research I feel offended.

Brazil do have researchers and brains and money, and politics get in the
way.... We have even particle accelerators of our own design! Also, the rocket
project was not scrapped, it is only waiting for new engineers to be trained,
since.the last accident killed all of them.

Did you knew, that the card to pay a phone is a Brazilian invention? Or the
language Lua that drives games like World of Warcraft, Baldur Gate, Far Cry
2... Or that no country matched Petrobras drilling techniques yet, or that our
army use locally invented radars, anti-air equipment and so on. Or that the
air force has. a locally invented portable air traffic controller station (
for those curious: it runs Debian ), or that CNPQ is investing heavily in
research about how to cure heart problems with stem cells, or that the state
universities in Sao Paulo are so good with image recognition that French
universities send their students here to learn.

Brazil has one of the best academia in the planet, heritage of the emperor
Pedro II that had the vision and.created the current system, and created stuff
like the agronomical research institute.

Also we have lots of brilliant people, here ( Carlos lattes for example, that
died some time ago ) or elsewhere (I forgot the name of the guy that
researches uniting brain with machines, now he works for Duke.University),
also we obviously have money

Don't insult researchers, we clearly have political problems that end killing
cool stuff like the OSORIO battle tank, but don't claim our academia is
incompetent, if it was, other countries would not hire people trained.ed here.

~~~
ehmuidifici
Yeah, I agree that Brazil has a ton of brilliant minds and a very inventive
people. But unfortunately, here in Brazil, ignorance is a bliss and a very
profitable business.

Also, Brazil is the only country that treat treats his researchers like a fast
food workers. Poor salaries (when gov. pay something) which obligates them in
working on two or three part-time jobs, no gratitude (the phone card, the BINA
system, which government didn't helped the inventor on recognizing the patent)
and so on. That's why a researcher/cientist stays no more than 2 or 3 years in
Brazil after graduation or research publishing.

~~~
speeder
That part, is unfortunately true.

My father met the telecom guys (phone card and BINA), and the government not
only did not helped, but did things that made their situation worse, in the
end no inventor got any money for his invention.

It is just that the guy saying that the other poster was wrong, and that we
don't know how to do stuff, is not only wrong, but insults people that (maybe
in a stupid manner) insists in doing stuff here.

There is a reason why one of the biggest Free Software conferences is here in
Brazil, and why Maddog (from Linux Foundation) comes here so much (I
personally bumped into him in conferences I got invited as speaker about 6 or
7 times, even one totally failed conference where I had like 20 people
watching, Maddog was there!), the government invests heavily into IT research.
(there is Serpro, Cobra, military, and several other cool stuff! The military
in particular has several very insteresting non-weapon projects, the
brazillian military seemly loves to make stuff that is good for civilian use)

~~~
just_testing
Can you cite examples of non-weapon projects of Brazilian military?
(seriously, I'm curious here)

~~~
speeder
ITA (a university that belongs to Air Force) famously let students to opt out
of military, and many went around doing cool stuff.

I once saw a presentation of their students once, there are even people that
went on to make games and stuff like that.

Also the military here likes to help Linux in general, even submitting
patches, the air force in particular loves Debian and Ubuntu (last I checked,
they moved 100% of their servers to Debian and 100% of workstations to Ubuntu)

Then we have some air traffic control software being developed, firewalls,
anti-virus, whatnot... This is what I learned on tech conferences (thus
obviously it is related to tech)

Also I've heard of the military helping people make vehicle engines.

And then we have Taurus (a weapon manufacturer) that had some business with my
family, and seemly the military asked them to do some civilian stuff too (like
use their armour technology to make clothes for perilous jobs, for example
Motorcycle helmets, also they use their gun steel technology for other things,
like construction, building factory machines, car parts...)

I think this has to do with that fact that the military here has some...
funding issues. And thus need to cooperate a lot with civilian sector to get
anything done.

Oh, and famously, the army built some stuff for the federal government that
ended being on schedule, and used less money than budgeted (that they
returned), although this was supposed to be normal, it was so exceptional that
people think it is totally amazing and awesome (here federal government
projects IF they don't fail outright, tend to blow both the budget and
deadlines, and have shitty quality, result of hiring contractors and not
checking ever if they are doing a good job or not, plus corruption).

~~~
just_testing
I am a brazilian and I didn't know ANYTHING about those things. Thanks!

------
throwaway_yy2Di
_" Brazil's wiretapping mania is a holdover from the country's 20-year
dictatorship[...] The president of the Supreme Court, who believes he also was
spied on, called police methods totalitarian. In September, Brazil's president
suspended the head of the spy agency over allegations that it eavesdropped on
officials._"

[2008]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122331824781908463.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122331824781908463.html)

 _" Eavesdropping incidents are not new. A decade ago a presidential
conversation was caught when the office of the national development bank was
bugged while the Telebrás phone company was being privatised, presumably so
that a bidder could gain an advantage over rivals. Other incidents have
occurred since, suggesting that Abin agents and phone-company employees can
all too easily be bribed."_

[http://www.economist.com/node/12060388](http://www.economist.com/node/12060388)

------
r0h1n
While it's great that countries around the world are belatedly waking up to
the fact that the US wields a disproportionate amount of influence on the
Internet, which it also uses to shore up its strategic military or commercial
objectives, as users we ought to distrust any other country just as much as
the US.

IMHO Catch-all Internet surveillance is a drug that no country's intelligence
or law-enforcement apparatus can stay away from.

I'm based in India and am under no illusion that my government - given the
chance or the technical capability - will attempt to secretly monitor its own
citizens in a manner far worse than possibly the US.

So while I distrust the US, I also distrust India when it comes to any kind of
"control" over the Internet. And so I hope, will Brazilians.

As users we ought to take our own independent and personal choices on how best
to safeguard our online lives.

~~~
alan_cx
Does India "render" people"?

The difference is the USA acts across the planet, insisting its laws apply to
all the world, applying its mockery of a justice system to the majority who
never voted for it.

What goes on in India is for Indians. As a Brit I have no fear of Indian
justice. US "justice" and attitudes scare the crap out of me.

~~~
galvanist
Yes, let's look to the British to tell us how a country should keep to its
borders, handle international relations, balance domestic surveillance/privacy
concerns, run fair and impartial international trials, and teach us about
India.

~~~
mayanksinghal
If you are from US, then you might as well because present UK at least seems
less imperialistic. However, this could be simply because it wields less power
than it did in past centuries.

~~~
w_t_payne
Well, I guess power corrupts etc... etc...

Although, as far as the UK is concerned, I have noticed that once Brits leave
the island, the preponderance of their liberalism and tolerance seems to
evaporate, leaving only an unpleasant core of xenophobia and bigotry. Or
perhaps that is just some sort of self-selection / sampling bias, driven by
the sort of people who tend to head off into the wide open yonder?

~~~
Nursie
British ex-pats are famous for it for some reason.

I don't think it's all of them (I'd say us but I returned to the motherland a
while back), just the ones you notice.

------
forinti
>"It's sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing," he said, adding that the
U.S. "free-for-all model works better."

I find it rather annoying that everything that the current Brazilian
government does gets labeled as "socialist" or "soviet" or something along
those lines. Isn't having the NSA spying on everyone what you would expect of
the KGB? So why can't Brazil take measures to protect its interests?

~~~
scardine
There is no privacy in Brazil, you have to put your fingerprints in a database
for having an ID card or driver license issued. Biometric access is being
enforced for voting and a lot of other trivial citizenship exercises.

There is no doubt that the PT party ("workers party" in Portuguese) has a
leftist doctrine that is a mix of "Chavismo" and ancient "soviet" crap that is
out of fashion even in Russia. The only reason Brazil is not as trashed as
Venezuela is that Brazilian press and other civilian institutions are a little
stronger.

Lula (the former president) and Dilma (his puppet and actual president)
endorse some of the worst dictatorships governments in the world. Lula even
endorsed nut jobs like Ahmadinejad from Iran.

The EUA gives these clowns as a "friendly government" label for lack of a
better term. Brazil is not a democracy, it is a dumbocracy.

~~~
forinti
I can never tell if these rants are meant to be taken seriously.

~~~
hisham_hm
They're not to be taken seriously: you have just been introduced to the rabid
Brazilian right-wing.

~~~
scardine
I know I should not respond to ad hominem, but here we go.

When I was young I used to blame "the right" for every real or imaginary
problem in the world. I dreamed of revolution. When you are 20, if you are not
socialist you don't have a heart, but if you are still socialist at 30 you
don't have a brain.

I have a book for you (seriously): "Guide to the Perfect Latin American
Idiot". This book cured me from "Open Veins of Latin America" and all the
leftist crap around here.

Rabid? Sure I'm pissed off with myself for being so naive (even voted for Lula
in his first term, just to see the most corrupt government since the end of
the military dictatorship) - but not nearly as rabid as the left wing criminal
organizations like the MST:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCegy3HMVEw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCegy3HMVEw)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQKO7B85C0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyQKO7B85C0)

(watch from 0:22s) when they destroyed 7,000 orange trees and got along with
it. They damaged heavy machinery, burned down computers, looted employees
houses and stole fuel. And got along with it.

These terrorists are funded using my tax payer money by my own schizophrenic
government. Everybody that dares to scream "the king is nude" is labeled as a
rabid right wing zealot.

------
znowi
> break from US-centric Internet

This is in part what the delegates tried to accomplish during the "infamous"
ITU summit last year. But Google et al launched a major FUD campaign to _Save
the Internet_ , when in reality it was to save American interests and keep
control over the net.

~~~
msh
Well, the proposal was no better that what the americans are doing. I am not
from the US but if I have the choice between being the internet being run by
the US or china/russia plus a bunch of other dictatorships I will go with the
US (but I still abhor the NSA surveillance).

Of cause, I would prefer a better option where there was a system that was not
dominated by any countries but I dont see the ITU proposal as being good for
the internet.

------
pizza234
This poses a very interesting psychological problem.

Assuming the NSA is the bully of the situation, I wonder if the fact that the
rest of the world will (hopefully) claim more and more independece, will lead
NSA to back up and have a more reasonable position, or will cause it (and the
government that backs it) to have a more and more bullier attitude position.

After what happened, it's clear that the guys running it have a god-like image
of theirselves, and I doubt that within this perspective, one would cast at
least some doubt over his actions.

------
edoloughlin
_a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step
toward politically fracturing a global network built with minimal interference
by governments_

One could argue that it would be a 'dangerous' _second_ step.

------
siphr
I have been thinking about this for a good few years now and I think the idea
has some value however it comes at a cost. What makes internet so good is its
population. It is the population of the entire world without borders and
immigration control. You can talk to anyone and approach anyone or at least
you have the ability to.

Knowledge rules and it is directly propotional to the number of people
available on the internet. Once nations start going down the track of setting
up virtual borders (believe this is what this would lead to), all flow of
information will be condemned as it is in the real world. A national network
would be used in making solid cases for embargos and sanctions against people
and their knowledge, which they were at full liberty to share and disclose as
they saw fit. Surely this is not currently at the scale of Great Firewall of
China, however, it can easily become that. Consider this move as the first
brick.

Surely internet surveilance exists and anybody who thought it wasn't ever
since its creation was either stupid or indifferent to the idea. The
difference between then and now is that we have proof of this. A nation
isolating itself into a pocket of its own internal communication network will
not solve this problem. I personally think that it is a step back not a step
forward. I believe TOR had the right idea but it is no silver bullet. People
of Brazil might think that this is a good thing but rest assured all that
would change is they'd be transitioning from global internet surveillance to
local internet surveillance.

------
devx
This is what US overreach in spying has led to, and probably more will follow
Brazil in doing this soon, and I can't blame them. Hopefully the US government
will realize that greed and lust for power aren't always good things, and can
sometimes lead to very bad things, and the opposite of what they were
expecting to get (breaking the camel's back and all that).

------
PauloManrique
"Brazilians are among the most voracious consumers of social media, ranking
No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube."

While I'm afraid of president's real will, I can't stop thinking about, if we
are 3 on FB, 2 on Twitter and Youtube then why not host some of the data here?
We got a huge ping delay to those company servers anyway.

------
guspe
>"It's sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing," he said, adding that the
U.S. "free-for-all model works better."

This is interesting. If Internet did really follow a free-for-all model, NSA
would've never happened. In the same way free market benefits U.S. but takes
its toll on Rwanda, the "free-for-all" internet of today benefits the Silicon
Valley at the expense of the privacy of non-american people. If the United
States had already taken measures to inhibit NSA's surveillance instead of
justifying its actions and chasing Snowden, Brazil wouldn't have to move in
that direction. It's basically U.S. unwillingness to build a truly free
Internet that pushes other countries towards "independence". We should also be
aware that the source of the news is a San Francisco-based newspaper, which
adds yet another layer of enconomic interests to the story.

------
rodolphoarruda
The root cause of all this is the leaked document about a possible backdoor
installed within Petrobras IT infrastructure. Since this company has a lot of
employees at high/strategic positions nominated directly by the government, we
assume that there is a continued information exchange between them and the
government, and that this information is so sensitive it could expose high
scale politicians to the media in an uncontrolled way (a situation which the
current political party in power tries to avoid at all cost). In short, the
government knows there is a lot of dirt under the Petrobras rug, and all those
actions we read in the article refers to putting heavy furniture on top of it.

~~~
PauloManrique
That's true, I really hope Dilma to piss Obama off so he could show us why
Petrobras is about to break.

------
HugoDias
I live in Brazil and nothing going to happen, trust me. Next.

------
nwh
I'd make a comment about how I was trying to keep my data in my own country,
but I'm not, Australia is happily going along with PRISM. It's not even
reported in the news here.

------
tonylemesmer
So what's to stop the NDA / GCHQ hiring moles to put trojans inside these
networks / organisations and getting the info anyway? I thought this was
already happening.

------
kostyk
Go Brazil!

------
antocv
The balkanization of the internet is inevitable, now that we have two push
forces towards that, a strong desire to stay away from other countries
intelligence agencies and copyright.

~~~
mattlutze
This is my concern as well. It's somewhat inevitable that the Internet will
end up politically divided.

The boundary-less state the fledgling has had was, in American historical
corollary, the great western expansion. Eventually though structure,
regulation and political boundaries are inserted by institutions designed to
do those things.

Brasil building more connections to the rest of the world is a good thing for
global infrastructure. Diversity and multiplicity is awesome.

It'll be disappointing once they start tuning their national boundary
firewalls and routers to avoid or block services and end up cutting N America
out of S America (presuming Chile, Argentina etc. will start moving toward a
Brasil-supplied internet).

~~~
antocv
The history with an open and free for all internet that we have enjoyed does
inspire me, it is somewhat amazing in retrospect that it was so, despite not
having an international organization to defend these principles.

The fact that it happened, perhaps due to those ideas of freedom to share
knowledge and connect with each other over wast distances and boundaries,
makes me believe it will happen again, in another form.

We will find each other, just like we did on bbs, irc and in various in-game
chats and forums, perhaps next time in a field of ciphers, stenography and
darknets, small lights of communities will spring up.

Next stop, hyperboria.

