More NSA Spying Fallout: Brazilian President Snubs Obama Invitation, May Trigger Internet Balkanization
from the this-is-getting-serious dept
A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt noted that the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was angry that the NSA had been reading her private emails and text messages, and that as a result she was contemplating cancelling an imminent high-profile state visit to the US. That was before the recent revelations that the NSA had also engaged in industrial espionage at the biggest Brazilian company, Petrobras, which seems to have been the final straw: Rousseff has now formally "postponed" her trip to the US, according to the Brazilian news site O Globo (original in Portuguese.)
Despite the framing that this is merely a "postponement" until the US has provided satisfactory explanations of the NSA's behavior, it's a real slap in the face for President Obama -- in the past, no national leader would dream of snubbing the US in this way -- and a measure of how seriously the NSA's activities are affecting US standing in the world. But this is not just about symbolic actions like cancelling high-level meetings: there are also likely to be longer-term repercussions for both US companies and the whole Internet.
For example, Rousseff is making a speech next week at the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York. According to O Globo, she will raise the issue of American spying there, and call for a ban on espionage conducted by means of the Internet. Meanwhile, an Associated Press story published by the Washington Post has some details of other actions that Rousseff intends to take in an effort to protect Brazilians from online snooping in the future:
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.
Of course, the problem is that then it will be the UK's GCHQ and other European agencies that start spying on Brazilian traffic, rather than the NSA. Here's another idea that the President of Brazil wants to see realised:
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.
Whether or not that helps to secure the personal data of Brazilians, such a move will almost certainly increase the costs for US Internet companies operating in Brazil -- more bad news for them, all thanks to the NSA. But there may be even worse in store for the Internet as a whole, as the AP article points out:
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.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.
This is just what many people feared: that the leaks about the NSA's massive surveillance activities around the world -- including economic espionage -- will provide the pretext repressive regimes need in order to take complete technical control of the Internet in their countries, rather than continuing to acquiesce in its global governance, as at present. And so all the efforts by Western countries at the recent World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) to stop precisely that kind of balkanization will have been in vain.
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Filed Under: barack obama, brazil, dilma rousseff, internet, nsa, nsa surveillance, politics, snub
Reader Comments
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Im sure Obama is devistated by this
NO ONE EVER cancels meetings or visits to the US !!!!
(oh, wait it happens ALL THE TIME !!!!)
This will lead to the fall of the US !!!!!! OMFG !!!!!
Breaking news America has upset Brazil !!!!!! The end of the world as we know it..
I hear also this will lead to the shutting down of the INTERNET !!!!!!
Does this mean an end to Techdirt ???? I guess every cloud has a silver lining !!
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US does not want to see her
You want her as your hero ???
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Also, I really like the idea of banning spying from the Internet. Keep the Internet "free", which is what we've always wanted right? No government interference and regulations on the Internet, the last bastion of freedom and democracy.
So banning spying on the Internet sounds like a very reasonable proposal to me.
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Re: "I really like the idea of banning spying from the Internet."
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Re: Re: "I really like the idea of banning spying from the Internet."
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Re: Re: "I really like the idea of banning spying from the Internet."
1) Stop using their services.
2) place
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
in your Robot.txt file on any pages you host.
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Re: Re: "I really like the idea of banning spying from the Internet."
Forget Google. After the NSA, the biggest threat to the freedom of the Internet is . . .
Hollywood.
RIAA
MPAA
SOPA
PIPA
PROTECT-IP
Sick Strikes
etc etc
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Re:
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So you want "global governance"? That's the WORST idea!
Similarly with stopping "balkanization". The globalists want all the keys to power in one place so easy to grab. You need to muse on the allegory in "Lord of the Rings": concentrated power should always be opposed.
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How quickly could this escalate?
Because, y'know, the USA qualified for the FIFA World Cup last week, and that's being hosted in Brazil next summer. And Obama, our West Ham United supporter-in-chief, isn't going to want a repeat of the 1980 Olympics on his hands.
And neither does ESPN. Can you imagine Bob Iger and John Skipper trying to negotiate a deal between Obama and Rousseff over this? Crikey.
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You are a cancer that is killing this country from the inside out. Just like the corrupt judicial, executive, and congressional branches of this country, and those who occupy them.
Your traitorous actions, and those of your co-conspirators, will not be forgotten.
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Re:
the real cancer is that the "American Public" as a whole just doesn't give a (*&^ about it, at least not enough to actually do anything beyond posting about it.
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Far too many get their information regarding what's happening, both locally and abroad from basically government PR departments masquerading as 'Independent news agencies', meaning they never hear a word about what's actually happening, only what the ones charge in the government and corporations want them to hear/know.
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Re: Re:
The government is broken. If you want to place blame, another good place to start is at the top of global mega corporations.
We have a constitution. It's simply that people are being paid to ignore it. Other people's job is to keep the public so distracted that they ignore it or believe it must be necessary. Think of the children.
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NSA is not OK
Not "rather than", but "in addition to". The NSA has been tapping undersea cables for quite a while now.
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Impressed ?
About 438,000 hits
A pretty rare word (google agrees) that I have never heard before... but The Balkans makes sense now. Shame the American spelling with a "z" puts the word into even more obscurity.
I shall tap my dactylion on my cheek, ignore my boreism, my aura of jumentous and willfully forget that I am a slubberdegullion. For now I can enjoy being an autolatrist but really if you knew, you'd know I am a philosophunculist.
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Re: Impressed ?
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Re: Re: Impressed ?
To put it into perspective ""quantum mechanics"" gets 6.5 million hits in google.
On a similar scale with 627,000 hits is ""baryons""
"baryons" is actually mentioned more on the internet than "balkanization"
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Re: Re: Impressed ?
Seriously, it seems a rather specific word with narrow meaning.
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Re: Re: Re: Impressed ?
I've also frequently heard it used in news reports, mainstream and otherwise. Admittedly, less so now than in years past, but still. When used here, it's been in its original sense.
I've also heard it frequently used in a social sciences context, referring to the fracturing of social groups into subgroups.
By the way, using Google hit counts to measure how common something is is a highly suspect practice, for a lot of reasons.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Impressed ?
Never studied social science and think that applying the term to fracturing social groups into subgroups would only apply IF those social groups were fractured geographically. Even then it's a really abstract application as it ignores the nature of country/state.
You wont convince me that it is a widely used popular word. Not because I have only just heard of it, but because the word has such a narrow meaning and applies only to fracturing political units into separates based on geographical regions.
It also heavily implies... "similar to what happened to the Balkans". You can't really apply that*, to that many things without dropping part of the meaning.
Google hits are a reflection of a words use in real life. Of course it is not 100% accurate but it does give a very good indication. Google do scrape millions of nodes and billions of web pages after all.
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Re: Impressed ?
Balkanisation?
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So...
Even Bush didn't get this reaction.
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Re: Bush did start this mess...
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Re: Re: Bush did start this mess...
Hell, I blame Clinton for allowing the economic collapse to start when he signed the bill that ended glass-steagle, not to mention his role in the Middle East for allowing 9/11 to happen by allowing so many innocents to die in Iraq, which just pissed off the Muslims worse than they already were.
I blame Reagan for allowing Saddam to come into power.
I blame every President from Truman to Nixon for their role in meddling with world affairs from Korea, to Vietnam (though Nixon DID do a lot of good stuff in 5 years, gotta give him credit for that), to helping Bin Laden out against the Soviets...
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We openly admit that we want the diplomatic influence associated with having a seat in UN's security council. We even gave up our military nuclear program for over 20 years because we wanted to show we are commited to peace. We sent man and materiel to Haiti and Africa in UN sanctioned interventions. We Reach to other countries shunned by the West, trying to have a cultural exchange. China had our validation to enter WTO. And overall has been a better partner. Brazil and China are co developing satelite and communication tech, openly.
So, take your ball, there are plenty of games to play around.
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Russia will follow
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too late!
As opposed to the opressive government with current technical control over the Internet using that to crush free expression?
Better the devil you voted for than one beholden to someone else!
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Re: too late!
As opposed to the oppressive government with current technical control over the Internet using that on behalf of private industry to crush free expression?
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Re:
(Irony: the US government has been supplying Al Qaeda-led rebels in Syria with weapons with which they slaughter innocent people, while simultaneously doing everything it can to prevent law-abiding Americans from exercising their 2A rights.)
We're on a slippery slope towards serfdom. It's happened many times throughout the course of history, with various examples of it in the past century alone.
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