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Forum Post: Brazil Looks to Break from US-Centric Internet

Posted 10 years ago on Sept. 18, 2013, 11:35 a.m. EST by LeoYo (5909)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Brazil looks to Break from US-centric Internet

http://news.yahoo.com/brazil-looks-break-us-centric-internet-040702309.html

BRADLEY BROOKS and FRANK BAJAK19 hours ago

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington's widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.

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.

Internet security and policy experts say the Brazilian government's reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.

"The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months," said Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute at the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank. "This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe."

While Brazil isn't proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians' Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.

The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet's open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America's biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say. In December, countries advocating greater "cyber-sovereignty" pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.

U.S. digital security expert Bruce Schneier says that while Brazil's response is a rational reaction to NSA spying, it is likely to embolden "some of the worst countries out there to seek more control over their citizens' Internet. That's Russia, China, Iran and Syria."

Rousseff says she intends to push for international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software during the U.N. General Assembly meeting later this month. Among Snowden revelations: the NSA has created backdoors in software and Web-based services. Brazil is now pushing more aggressively than any other nation to end U.S. commercial hegemony on the Internet. More than 80 percent of online search, for example, is controlled by U.S.-based companies. Most of Brazil's global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff's government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping. More communications integrity protection is expected when Telebras, the state-run telecom company, works with partners to oversee the launch in 2016 of Brazil's first communications satellite, for military and public Internet traffic. Brazil's military currently relies on a satellite run by Embratel, which Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim controls.

Rousseff is urging Brazil's Congress to compel Facebook, Google and all companies to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA. If that happens, and other nations follow suit, Silicon Valley's bottom line could be hit by lost business and higher operating costs: Brazilians rank No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube. An August study by a respected U.S. technology policy nonprofit estimated the fallout from the NSA spying scandal could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry, which stores data remotely to give users easy access from any device, as much as $35 billion by 2016 in lost business.

Brazil also plans to build more Internet exchange points, places where vast amounts of data are relayed, in order to route Brazilians' traffic away from potential interception.

And its postal service plans by next year to create an encrypted email service that could serve as an alternative to Gmail and Yahoo!, which according to Snowden-leaked documents are among U.S. tech giants that have collaborated closely with the NSA.

"Brazil intends to increase its independent Internet connections with other countries," Rousseff's office said in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press on its plans.

It cited a "common understanding" between Brazil and the European Union on data privacy, and said "negotiations are underway in South America for the deployment of land connections between all nations." It said Brazil plans to boost investment in home-grown technology and buy only software and hardware that meet government data privacy specifications.

While the plans' technical details are pending, experts say they will be costly for Brazil and ultimately can be circumvented. Just as people in China and Iran defeat government censors with tools such as "proxy servers," so could Brazilians bypass their government's controls.

International spies, not just from the United States, also will adjust, experts said. Laying cable to Europe won't make Brazil safer, they say. The NSA has reportedly tapped into undersea telecoms cables for decades.

Meinrath and others argue that what's needed instead are strong international laws that hold nations accountable for guaranteeing online privacy.

"There's nothing viable that Brazil can really do to protect its citizenry without changing what the U.S. is doing," he said.

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins computer security expert, said Brazil won't protect itself from intrusion by isolating itself digitally. It will also be discouraging technological innovation, he said, by encouraging the entire nation to use a state-sponsored encrypted email service.

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


Associated Press writer Bradley Brooks reported this story in Rio de Janeiro and Frank Bajak reported from Lima, Peru.


Bradley Brooks on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradleybrooks Frank Bajak on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fbajak

6 Comments

6 Comments


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[-] 3 points by Nevada1 (5843) 10 years ago

International Back Lash-------Excellent.

[-] 3 points by LeoYo (5909) 10 years ago

Imagine if international backlash against global US tyranny could manifest in rejections of the US dollar in preference for something like the Swiss franc. Then it would be a totally different ball game.

[-] 3 points by Nevada1 (5843) 10 years ago

Well Said. This goes beyond the internet issue.

[-] 2 points by MattLHolck (16833) from San Diego, CA 10 years ago

smaller internet globs won't likely be any more controllable

in fact, a fracture will bring the people to see that centralization of the internet is unnecessary

[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 10 years ago

Brazil’s Cancellation of State Visit Marks Another Low Point in US-Latin American Relations

Thursday, 19 September 2013 09:04 By Mark Weisbrot, The Guardian | News Analysis

http://truth-out.org/news/item/18930-brazils-cancellation-of-state-visit-marks-another-low-point-in-us-latin-american-relations

Tuesday's cancellation of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's state visit to the White House, scheduled for next month, came as little surprise. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and reported by Glenn Greenwald and TV Globo, had caused an uproar in Brazil. According to the documents and reports, the US government had spied on Dilma's personal communications, and had targeted the computer systems of Brazil's Petrobras, the big oil company that is majority-owned by the state.

TV Globo's report indicated that there was information in the targeted Petrobas computer network that could be very valuable to foreign oil companies. Former President Lula da Silva said that Obama should "personally apologize to the world"; and Dilma also demanded a full public apology – which was not forthcoming. The rift with Brazil comes at a time of worsening US relations with Latin America, and especially South America. It is indicative of a much deeper problem.

The Obama administration's refusal to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections in April of this year, despite the lack of doubt about the results and in stark opposition to the rest of the region, displayed an aggressiveness that Washington hadn't shown since it aided the 2002 coup. It brought a sharp rebuke from South America, including Lula and Dilma.

Less than two months later, US Secretary of State John Kerry launched a new "detente", meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Elías Jaua in the first such high-level meeting in memory, and implicitly recognizing the election results. But new hopes were quickly dashed when several European governments, clearly acting on behalf of the United States, forced down President Evo Morales' plane in July.

"They've definitely gone crazy," President Cristina Kirchner tweeted, and UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) issued a strong denunciation. The gross violation of international law and diplomatic norms was another flamboyant display of Washington's lack of respect for the region.

It seems that every month there is another indication of how little theObama administration cares about improving relations. On 24 July, the IMF, at the direction of the US Treasury Department, abandoned its plan to support the Argentine government in its legal battle with "vulture funds". The IMF had previously committed to filing a brief with the US supreme court supporting the Argentine government.

This was not out of love for Argentina, but because the lower court's decision – which would try to prevent Argentina from paying 92% of its creditors in order to satisfy the vulture funds – was seen as a threat to future debt restructuring and therefore to the world financial system. But anti-Argentina lobbyists were allowed to prevail, even against the Treasury Department's legitimate concern for international financial stability.

There are structural reasons for the Obama administration's repeated failures to accept the new reality of independent governments in the region. Although President Obama may want better relations, he is willing to spend about $2 in political capital to accomplish this. And that is not enough. When he tried to appoint an ambassador to Venezuela in 2010, for example, Republicans (including the office of then Senator Richard Lugar) successfully scuttled it.

For President Obama, there are generally no electoral consequences from having bad relations with Latin America. Unlike Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, or other areas of armed conflict or potential war, there is no imminent danger that something could blow up in his face, and cause political harm to his administration or party. The main electoral pressure comes from those who want to oppose more aggressively the left governments: that is, rightwing Florida Cuban-Americans and their allies in Congress, who currently prevail in the House. Most of the foreign policy establishment doesn't care about the region at all, and the ones who do mainly share the view that the leftward shift is a temporary thing that can and should be reversed.

In the meantime, Washington is expanding its military presence where it has control (for example, Honduras), and is ready to support the overthrow of left governments when the opportunity arises (Honduras in 2009, and Paraguay last year).

Back in 1972, President Richard Nixon made a historic visit to China, which opened a new era of US-China relations. He expressed a number of reasons for the shift in policy. As he told his national security adviser Henry Kissinger:

We're doing the China thing to screw the Russians and help us in Vietnam and to keep the Japanese in line.

But he had also recognized something important, some 22 years after the Chinese revolution: that country's independence was not going to be reversed.

Unfortunately, Washington has not yet reached the same conclusion about Latin America, and especially South America, whose "second independence" is perhaps one of the most important geopolitical changes in the world over the past 15 years. There is virtually no recognition among the foreign policy establishment in DC – both inside and outside of government – that something important has changed, and that the US government must accept these changes and alter its policy accordingly.

Until that happens, don't expect US-Latin American relations to get much warmer.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

[-] 1 points by gmxusa (274) 10 years ago

There is no encryption that cannot be broken. The NSA will have to find an open port in the Brazilian Inter-network and install a snooping device. It shouldn't be too difficult. If President Dilma wants privacy, she will need to send snail mail or use the cone of silence.

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