Safety or spying?
To many internet users, freedom of speech is sacrosanct. The internet offers a safe space in which to express one’s opinion without fear of reprisals. Well, this was once the case. In recent years, and particularly over the past decade, the monitoring of people’s internet usage has been on the rise. This can be seen as a positive or a negative. The key issue is that this is open to abuse – and it has been used as such.
What might once one day be used to foil terrorist plots, might be used to keep tabs on public protest and general dissent the next. What could be used to stop drug trafficking, could be used to target the opposition. The debate over whether individual liberties should be surrendered for a perceived ‘greater good’ has been waging on for years. But the battle has always been one-sided. Brazil may be the latest country to take the axe to internet freedom.
Brazil’s liberal internet laws
Brazil has a robust set of laws and rules regarding the internet. Enshrined in law, a set of protocols known as the ‘Marco Civil’, ‘The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet’, set the rules of engagement for the online world. Transcribed as legislation in May 2014, the Marco Civil states its aims are to ‘establish the principles, guarantees, rights, and obligations for the use of the internet in Brazil’. The key provision of this law is the ‘guarantee of freedom of speech, communication, and expression of thought, in accordance to the Federal Constitution’. Perhaps surprisingly for legislation pertaining to the internet, these laws allow significant freedoms. But this may be about to change.
#PLEspião
There can often be a fine line between libel and criticism. But all too often, this line is drawn by the subject in question, and time again, this is drawn far to thinly. A new raft of bills concerning internet behaviour are set to be tabled at Brazil’s lower house of Congress. Though they are a long way from the presidential pen scribing them to law, they are nonetheless alarming. Known as PL 215/15, the new laws add social media activity to existing libel laws, a measure which could put many dissenters and opposition groups directly in conflict with the government, and the ordinary man with the rich and powerful.
The line will barely be drawn between relevant critical political commentary and out-and-out libel. Activists denounce the bill as #PLEspião, ‘the spy bill’, and call it ‘the digital AI-5′. AI-5 was a law introduced in 1968 as part of a raft of legislation to curtail civil liberties during Brazil’s period of military rule. It was only repealed ten years later. Many people fear that these new bills could bring these same principles into the digital age. A protest movement has succeeded in delaying the motion – but the online civil liberties of all Brazilians may soon one day be under threat.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/brazils-internet-freedom-in-under-threat-2015-10