Take Your Peek

Take Your Peek

Among those exposed by the indiscreet CD-ROM is president Fernando
Henrique Cardoso. No one was spared. Celebrities, the rich and the poor, everybody with a
telephone line cannot hide anymore.
By ELMA LIA NASCIMENTO

For a mere 11 bucks, kidnappers, robbers, all kinds of misfits as well as you and I can
acquire in the streets a CD-Rom containing close to 5 million names of people who have a
telephone in São Paulo. As a bonus you will in addition to the telephone number get
(including all the unlisted ones) the residential address of these people together with
their CPF (Cadastro de Pessoa Física—Physical Person Identification), a number that
like the Social Security number in the US identifies the taxpayer before the IRS.

How hard is it to get one of these precious disks? Street vendors offer them all over
town. Marcelo Rehder, a reporter for Rio’s daily O Globo, bought his own CD-ROM to
write an article denouncing the practice. The information on the disk comes from the
database of Telefônica, the private company responsible for the telephone lines in the
city of São Paulo.

Among those exposed by the indiscreet CD is president Fernando Henrique Cardoso who
owns an apartment in the neighborhood of Higienópolis. The CD reveals that his apartment
is at Rua Maranhão, 1019 _ Apt 14 _ 14th Floor, besides listing his telephone
number as well as his CPF. The Regional Superintendent of the Federal Revenue Service,
Flávio Del Comuni, as well as the Federal Police chief in São Paulo, Yokio Oshiro, also
have the same information revealed. Celebrities, the rich and the poor, everybody with a
telephone line was exposed.

Telefônica recognizes that it was the victim of sabotage, but it still does not know
whether any of its employees took part in the scheme. The company first learned that their
data had been stolen one year ago when newspapers started publishing classifieds selling
that information.

The finding was immediately denounced to the police. Some people have already been
indicted, but none of the leaders of the ploy was found. The investigations led to the
finding of another CD-ROM containing the Federal Revenue Service data for 3.9 million
companies and 7.6 million individuals. Information that the growing class of kidnappers in
Brazil would kill to have. This information is being sold for $2,000 to $3,500.

Piracy in Brazil is a big-time business. Lacoste shirts, Rolex watches, Nike tennis
shoes, Levi’s jeans, Scotch whiskey, music tapes, CDs, CD-ROMs, nothing is sacred for
counterfeiters. From the beginning of the year until the end of June, the Brazilian police
had already seized 8.7 million counterfeit CDs in the country. Brazil ranks in eighth
place as a music market and in second for piracy, losing only to Russia. In 1999, the
music industry brought in $1 billion selling 90 million copies of CDs and this number
would be much higher if it weren’t for pirated tapes and CDs, which today represent half
of the music market in the country. In 1997, piracy was responsible for only 5% of the CDs
being sold.

According to the APDIF (Associação Protetora dos Direitos Intelectuais
Fonográficos—Association to Protect Phonographic Intellectual Rights), 30 million
pirated CDs were sold in Brazil last year, representing a loss of $73 million in fees not
collected. It was also the APDIF that revealed that the majority of CDs are made in Asia
and enter the country from Bolivia and Paraguay through the frontier in the states of
Paraná and Mato Grosso. The recording companies say that piracy is causing them a loss of
$300 million a year.

Send
your
comments to
Brazzil

You May Also Like

US Hospitals’ Discarded Sheets Being Sold in Stores and Used in Hotels in Brazil

Brazil’s federal public prosecutor has asked Pernambuco state’s Federal Police (PF) to open an ...

Brazil's Petrobras

Brazil to Increase Oil Production by 5% This Year

Oil production in Brazil should grow by 5.3% this year to reach a daily ...

Brazil Joins US Company to Service Brazilian Chopper Clients

At the LABACE aviation tradeshow in São Paulo, a city in southeastern Brazil, Brazilian ...

O Rio! ("A Sweet Lightheartedness")

Brazilians’ black and white and brown bodies interlock in volleyball games, in wrestling, in ...

Brazil and Argentina Go to War on the Soccer Field

Following three weeks of intense quarterfinal matchups, the 2004 Copa Sudamericana enters its semifinal ...

Jeitinho, Brazil’s Creative Way to Break the Law and Feel Virtuous About It

American historian Robert M. Levine, director of Latin American Studies at the University of ...

Brazil Goes High Tech to Fight Fruit Fly

Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology will invest US$ 1.34 million in a project ...

Corruption in Brazil: Jailed Brasília Governor Gets Extra Charge, Misrepresentation

Brazil’s federal appellate court (Superior Tribunal of Justice, TSJ) which sent the governor of ...

Cost Brazil Doesn’t Allow the Country to Cut Import Tariffs

The Brazilian industry intends to follow closely the negotiations at the 6th Ministerial Meeting ...

Mori Sushi, Japanese cuisine in Brazil

Brazilian Sushi Is for Export Now

It is not from today that Japanese cuisine is successful in Brazil. In São ...

WordPress database error: [Table './brazzil3_live/wp_wfHits' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed]
SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM `wp_wfHits`