Brazilians May Need ID and Social Security to Surf the Internet

If a bill being voted this Wednesday, November 8, in the Brazilian Senate’s Constitution and Justice Commission passes and ends up becoming law anyone using a Brazilian Internet provider will need to supply their personal data, including ID and Social Security numbers to do the most simple tasks on the Net, like sending email, chatting and even downloading a file. 

The controversial bill presented by senator Eduardo Azeredo, from the PSDB party, calls for a serious tightening on the freedoms people have been used to when navigating on the Internet.

Anyone willing to be connected to the Net, in Brazil, will have, according to the new measure, to provide his/her own full name as well as address, phone number, ID  and CPF numbers. The CPF is a document similar to a Social Security card that Brazilian are required to present for most business transactions.

If approved in the senate committee the bill called Informatics Crimes Law would still have to be voted by the full senate and then by the House of Representatives before being signed by the president and becoming law.

Failure to comply with the law could send Internet providers for a two to four-year stay in jail. Providers would be responsible to guarantee that the information given by users is authentic.

As expected, Net providers and groups worried with privacy matters are adamantly opposed to such a bill, while bankers have been lobbying for it. This is understandable: banks have been the main victims of cyber crimes, which include phishing emails and pharming sites scams.

Providers argue that such a law wouldn’t inhibit crime in the Internet while penalizing all other users. They note that criminals can already be identified through their IPs (Internet protocol) when they get online.

For Jair Scalco, director of Febraban’s (Brazilian Federation of Banks) Cards and Electronic Businesses, any other law will be useless until everyone accessing the Internet is duly identified.

The Abranet (Brazilian Association of Internet Providers) and Brazil’s Internet Steering Committee have sent a letter to senator Azeredo, the bill’s author, commenting on their misgivings.

In the document they contend that the passage of such a measure would make democratization of the Internet much harder and would also encourage providers to migrate overseas where they wouldn’t be bound by this legislation.

Tags:

You May Also Like

Brazilian Veterans of Paris-Dakar Give the Social Lowdown on Rallies

Klever Kolberg, 45, one of the pilots in the Petrobras Lubrax rally team, has ...

Ethanol Production in Brazil Jumps 20% Thanks to Country’s Eco-Friendly Fleet

Brazil's production of ethanol grew approximately 20% in the current crop, and sugarcane production ...

Already Facing Dengue Brazil Now Has to Deal with Yellow Fever

Authorities in the South of Brazil fear that the yellow fever outbreak reported along ...

Brazil/Mercosur and EU Discuss Trade Liberalization

The 9th Meeting of the Mercosur-European Union Commission began this Wednesday, April 13, in ...

First Brazilian Astronaut Star of Moscow Press Conference

In a press conference Wednesday, February 8, in Moscow, the three astronauts who will ...

Brazil Adopts Tougher Environmental Rules

New rules for the economic utilization of environmental preservation areas in Brazil should be ...

Brazil Reports to UN on Its 430,000 Indians

The president of Brazil’s Funai (Fundação Nacional do Àndio – National Indian Foundation), Mércio ...

It’s a Bull’s Market for Brazilian Beef

The number of markets that buy Brazilian beef rose this year from 106 to ...

Beauty Industry in Brazil Gets Makeover from Hubs Creation

The joining of cosmetics industry in Brazil in production hubs has been giving the ...

With a Name Like Aladim, This Brazilian Firm Had to Become a Hit in the Middle East

The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Algeria and Egypt, in a little over one year ...