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Brazilian Watchdogs Say New Bill to Pursue Cyberbullies Is Really a Way to Silence Critics

Concern over abuse of power has been heightened by Brazil's current political chaos, which has exposed a cornucopia of unethical, and often allegedly criminal, conduct by political leaders across the spectrum.
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Brazil's digital rights watchdogs are sounding the alarm about a proposed bill that promises to attack phenomena such as cyberbullying but, they warn, is actually a "spy bill" aimed at dissuading critics of the powerful.

They say that the bill, which appears set for approval this year, would allow the government to obtain private citizens' data without a warrant and criminalize internet users who publish comments or content about other citizens, including political figures, which is deemed defamatory.

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"This law's objective is to criminalize politicians' online critics," wrote Ronaldo Lemos, one of Brazil's most prominent digital rights advocates, in an op-ed in the Folha de S.Paulo daily newspaper.

The so-called spy bill was introduced to the congress in February 2015 and has since been ruled as constitutional by the Commission of Constitution and Justice. It is now on its way for appraisal in the senate.

Concern over abuse of power has been heightened by Brazil's current political chaos, which has exposed a cornucopia of unethical, and often allegedly criminal, conduct by political leaders across the spectrum.

Last month the senate ordered President Dilma Rousseff into a 180-day suspension from office pending an impeachment trial for manipulating federal accounts to hide deficits after her reelection in 2014. Her supporters argue that it was a "soft coup", promoted primarily by politicians who are accused of much worse crimes — ranging from corruption to attempted murder and modern slavery — that were seeking more power in order to block prosecutions.

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Rousseff's former vice president and now the interim president, Michel Temer, is one of those implicated in the massive Lava Jato, or Car Wash, investigation that has unearthed a bribery scheme in return for inflated contracts from the state-run oil company Petrobras.

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Nearly a third of his all-white, all-male cabinet are also named in the probe. Secretly recorded phone calls involving some of those ministers that were published by newspaper Folha de S.Paulo appeared to back suspicions that the impeachment process was aimed at halting the investigation.

Temer is from the Party of The Democratic Movement of Brazil, PMDB, which wrote the new so-called spy bill. But many questions also hang over Rousseff's own Workers' Party, or PT, which was in charge when the Petrobras kickbacks scheme was at its height.

In March, Rousseff also signed into law a much-criticized anti-terrorism bill that activists charge could be used to target protesters and intimidate citizens from putting up demonstrations during the Olympics, or to organize through the internet.

Human rights groups and institutions — including a group of UN special rapporteurs in Geneva — have expressed concern that Brazil is accumulating legislation which could lead to a strangling of democratic liberties.

As currently written, the controversial new bill gives the federal police the possibility of accessing internet users' registration data without the need for a judicial warrant. That includes data owned both by service providers and websites, which may include social security numbers, phone numbers, and addresses.

Related: The Fight Between Apple and the FBI Could Shape the Future of Digital Privacy

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The bill's author, PMDB congressman Hildo Rocha, has brushed off allegations that the legislation would restrict civil liberties, and insists it is focused on cracking down on phenomena such as cyberbullying and revenge porn.

Rocha argues that granting the federal police the power to get at the digital data of suspects will help people get justice because the current need to get the permission of a judge gives offenders crucial time to delete incriminating information.

"We are not dismissing the Judiciary's role, but rather complementing it, making it more efficient," he told VICE News. "If you take too long, they may destroy the evidence, and not all companies have the technology to store data."

Dennys Antonialli, president of InternetLab, a research center on law and technology based in Sao Paulo, fears this is a convenient smokescreen for what is really going on.

"There is a narrative being exploited by legislators that the internet is a place where terrible things happen, where pedophiles abuse children, and that the police should have unrestricted powers to fight it," he said. "In that narrative, judicial orders are perceived as obstacles."

Ironically, it is Marco Civil — a progressive Internet Bill of Rights turned into law in 2014 and acclaimed by digital rights experts in Brazil — that has set up the precedents for Rocha's bill to obtain private data from internet users.

'Legislators are exploiting a narrative that the internet is a place where terrible things happen, where pedophiles abuse children, and the the police should have unrestricted powers to fight it'

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"There is a loophole in the Marco Civil," Antonialli admits. "It does not determine what kind of data should or should not be in registration forms. Legislators are trying to exploit that loophole and determine that registration forms include sensitive, personal information, which this legislation would allow investigative authorities to obtain them without a warrant."

On her last day in office before suspension, Rousseff tried to change the loophole by regulating Marco Civil with an executive order — but the decision is not final, and is likely to be overturned in the new interim government.

The dispute over the need for judicial warrants is not the only thing worrying privacy watchdogs.

The bill originally introduced into congress said that private digital content, as well as registration data, could also be accessed by authorities without a warrant. The constitutional court ruled it should be taken out, after more than 150,000 people signed a petition against it.

Three months after that victory, however, two new bills were appended to Rocha's proposed legislation that frighten activists.

One of them, written by congresswoman Soraya Santos, who is also from the PMDB, is based on Europe's "right to be forgotten" laws. But her bill goes beyond the European standard of being "de-indexed" from search engines, and argues that defamatory content should be suppressed from the web altogether.

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'Innocent people have nothing to fear, but people engaged in criminal activity do'

The other, written by Expedito Netto, from the conservative Solidarity Party, would increase fivefold the current sentences for so-called "crimes against honor," if they are committed online.

It would also equate crimes of online defamation that result in death to the far-more serious category of "heinous crimes" — for which bail cannot be granted.

Antionialli worries that the law could be detrimental to freedom of speech in a country that is deeply polarized by the worst political crisis since the transition from military dictatorship to electoral democracy in 1988.

"The strange thing is that when congressmen and women talk about this project they usually cite cases of criticism that were aimed at themselves," observes Antonialli. "An ordinary citizen might no longer be comfortable criticizing a politician, even under a pseudonym, if they know they could face criminal charges for it and be found by the police without a warrant."

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Globally known for being heavy social media users, Brazilians organize through the internet to shame or expose politicians accused of corruption.

One of the latest episodes was called vomitaço, or puke parade, when tens of thousands of anti-impeachment users flooded interim president Michel Temer's page with puking emojis. Senator Aécio Neves, who lost the 2014 election to Dilma Rousseff and is now leader of Brazilian Social Democratic Party, or PSDB, was also targeted with the nauseous emojis. He is accused of taking bribes in a corruption scandal.

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Congressman Hildo Rocha flatly denies the proposed legislation could be used by politicians to frame and intimidate their critics.

"We have to trust our public servants. We cannot simply assume they will act arbitrarily," he said. "This is prejudice. Innocent people have nothing to fear, but people engaging in criminal activity do."

Renan Quinalha, a Brazilian human rights lawyer and opponent of the bill, insists that rather than asking citizens to trust the authorities, politicians should be strengthening institutional mechanisms that limit their range of influence over citizen's private lives.

"Dressed as an abstract notion of 'protection of honor,' this is a clear attempt to restrict fundamental liberties on the web," he said. "The freedom of internet users is perceived [by legislators] as a threat to their honor."

Related: Facebook's Tracking of Internet Users in Belgium Could Cost It $268,000 a Day

Follow Gabriel Marchi on Twitter: @gab_marchi