The “State Surveillance of Communications in Brazil and the Protection of Fundamental Rights” report, elaborated by InternetLab in partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), was re-released internationally today as part of the comparative project “Necessary and Proportionate”, that studied legislations of 8 countries from Latin and North America. In addition to gathering the reports in a platform that enables the visualization of the main results found in each country, “Necessary and Proportionate” also offers an analysis of the tendencies and attention points on the surveillance practices adopted in the region. EFF also summarized its most important findings in a post in English and Spanish.

In the Brazilian case, InternetLab’s report presents and evaluates the juridical regime applied to the surveillance of communications by the most varied state bodies. In other words, it consists in the mapping and the study of laws and state practices that have impacts on privacy and freedom of speech, whether it is for facilitating, authorizing ou implying the access of the state to past, present and future communications of and about citizens.

From this analysis, we highlighted the need to promote changes in the juridical culture in relation to the state’s surveillance capacity, familiarizing law operators with human rights principles applied to surveillance of the communications. We also highlighted the need to promote a better transparency about ANATEL and ABIN’s surveillance practices, as well as regulating the access to metadata generated by the use of telephone services, a matter today susceptible to abuses. Furthermore, we draw the attention for the necessity of monitoring the enforcement of the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework and of the Law of Interceptions, to assess if the guarantees contained in these laws are being respected in practice.

From information obtained in the National Council of Justice based in the Law of Access to Information, the report also presents data from the National System for the Control of Interception, with the average of (18.000) telephone lines intercepted per month in the country. In spite of being interesting, the data offered by the SNCI is not enough to assess the severity with which the Judiciary has been dealing with the requests for interceptions in Brazil and also do not allow us to conclude if these numbers are acceptable, as we have commented in more detail in an article for JOTA (in Portuguese).

Especially in a context in which draft bills that try to facilitate the access to user data by authorities advance in the National Congress, like PL no. 215/15 and PL no 3237/15, it is fundamental to follow the scenario and the current legislation in the countries of the region to assess the practices adopted in Brazil and reflect on the implementation of models that favor transparency and privacy protection, with respect to the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance.

See below the interactive map with the results of the comparative research.

By Dennys Antonialli and Jacqueline Abreu.

Translation: Ana Luiza Araujo