Serious Privacy

Brazil: Privacy on the Ground

• Rodrigo Dias de Pinho Gomes, Fabricio da Mota Alves • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Despite the Corona crisis, the California attorney general has announced the enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act will go ahead as planned later this year. However, in Brazil, the Senate on April 3rd adopted legislation to postpone the entry into force of the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (LGPD) until 1 January 2021. Enforcement is not foreseen until August next year. But postponed or not, the new omnibus data protection legislation in Brazil will have a major impact on companies doing business in the largest country in Latin America. Reason enough to invite two Brasileiros to our program to learn all about the LGPD and the culture of privacy in Brazil. 

Join us to hear Rodrigo Dias de Pinho Gomes and Fabricio da Mota Alves discuss the evolution of the LGPD and concerns around its enforcement. In addition, we also touch on judicial ability to rule on cases with personal data implications and the concern about privacy among the population. We were also reminded about Brazil’s interplay with WhatsApp in the 2015 - 2017 timeframe (see link below). 

Should you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to us via seriousprivacy@trustarc.com, or via Twitter at @podcastprivacy. You will find K on Twitter as @heartofprivacy and Paul as @EuroPaulB.

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  • Audio: CC-BY Private Eye by Kevin McCloud
  • Voiceover: Tim Foley

If you have comments or questions, find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @seriousprivacy, and on BlueSky under @seriousprivacy.eu, @europaulb.seriousprivacy.eu, @heartofprivacy.bsky.app and @igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu, and email podcast@seriousprivacy.eu. Rate and Review us!

From Season 6, our episodes are edited by Fey O'Brien. Our intro and exit music is Channel Intro 24 by Sascha Ende, licensed under CC BY 4.0. with the voiceover by Tim Foley.

Paul

Despite the corona crisis, the California Attorney General has announced the enforcement of the CCPA will go ahead as planned later this year. However, in Brazil, the Senate on April 3rd adopted legislation to postpone the entry into force of the Lei Geraldo Proteccional de Dados until the 1st of January 2021. Enforcement is not foreseen until August next year. But postponed or not, the new omnibus data protection legislation in Brazil will have a major impact on companies doing business in the largest country in Latin America. Reason enough to invite two brasileiros to our program today and hear all about the LGPD. My name is Paul Breitbart.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm Kay Royal, and welcome to Sirious Privacy.

Paul

Joining us today are Rodrigo Gomez, who is a lawyer in Rio de Janeiro, as well as Fabricio da Mota Alves, who is one of the representatives of the federal Senate appointed to the National Council of Data Protection in Brazil. But indeed, let's ask both gentlemen to hear a bit more about their backgrounds. Rodrigo, maybe you would like to go first.

SPEAKER_03

Hello, all again. I'd like to thank you for the invitation. It's a great honor for me to be here talking with you guys. And first of all, I'd like to apologize for my English. But I apologize for that. Speaking about talking about my background, briefly, I'm a lawyer, like you just said, and I'm also a doctorate student. Great. And uh my uh the subject of my research for the doctorate, the main subject is uh legitimate interest for data protection law, and we also have legitimate interests here, the LGPD. So I plan to develop all the activities around that. I'm already doing that, but not concluded yet. And I'm also Oh, that's fascinating! I I'll do a great dialogue with GDPR because it's also there, legitimate interest. So I'll have to go deep in GDPR as well. So my subject for the doctorate, for the PhD, like you say. I'm also a teacher at some universities here, uh, and I also call the law and technology coordinator at the Brazilian Bar Association School in Rio de Janeiro. So I have uh nowadays, uh, one of my main occupations is teaching. I teach all subjects regarding law and technology, especially LGPT. It's our new law. You mentioned before, that's the main focus right now.

Paul

That's great. Fabricio, up to you.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. Thank you all for this opportunity. It's very very good to be here. Uh, I also uh I do have a podcast myself, so I believe in the power of podcast. Uh it's a pleasure to be here to disseminate all this knowledge, all this information. As you said, I'm a lawyer and I'm also uh representative of the federal senate in Brazil, nominated to our National Council of Data Protection, which is part of our DPA. Brazilian DPA has some bodies, and one of them is the National Council, which is a consultative council. And I also I'm also a teacher in data protection uh here in Brazil in some institutions, some universities as well. I'm a member of our federal bar association uh in the committee of data protection. So data protection is my business, data protection is my actual and only uh way of life, and I we we are trying here in Brazil to make this subject something more cultural than ever, because we we don't have this kind of view. We are beginning, we are in baby steps, so we count on your help, all of you. Uh as I told Paul, I'm his student as well. That's something important to say. So uh I had I had the pleasure to to go through the the DPO course uh back in Brussels, the Brussels campus of Master's University. And uh was a very a very good, very good opportunity, very enrichment time. Well, that's it. Let's let's go to this subject.

Paul

Great. Well, thank you both for introducing yourselves. And I think we couldn't have wished for better guests with a better background from two sides of Brazil, Rio on the one hand, Sao Paulo on the other hand. So that's uh that's great. Thank you for joining us again. Okay, take it away.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so if you've listened to our podcast and I never assume that someone has, I do an unexpected question for the guests, and I never warn you what's coming. But I was gonna ask what your favorite Halloween candy is because I happen to have chocolate bunny sitting here in front of me. My husband just bought me. But instead, I'm gonna ask, what is your favorite pleasure food that you're going to right now during the quarantine? We all talked about how we're restricted from restaurants and bars and things like that, but I know that I have found a go-to food that I normally would not be eating. And so my go-to food has been these fantastically fattening, gluten-free cupcakes. And they're horrible, and I shouldn't be eating them. What is your favorite illicit go-to food during the quarantine?

SPEAKER_02

Go, Rodrigo, you go first. You go first.

SPEAKER_03

That's a tough question. So let's see. Uh for me, I think it's there is a supermarket here around the corner, and that they sell uh custom made they made they made they make by hand uh a pasta with truffle. And I you can buy by the the way pound, like you say in the US. So I sometimes buy uh those small portions with truffle inside, and I just love it with wine. For me, it's uh it's been uh it's been one of the ways I'm I'm trying to keep my sanity okay, but I'm I'm failing miserably on that. But it helps sometimes, and also port wine, port wine, port wine, uh I'm drinking a lot.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, well, that's uh very actually that's a very easy question, you know, because uh in quarantine, uh well in the first the first two weeks I was as I was actually losing some weight because I was all alone and I don't cook well, so and nobody was delivering at that time, so I I didn't have so much to eat. But my wife and son they came back to my house and she's pregnant, so she's very hungry all the time. She's demanding a lot of candies, a lot of sugar. So uh let me say that today one of our favorite, our our favorite food, patty food, is Nutella, which is a very wonderful chocolate, chocolate cream. So that's it, Nutella with bread, with everything, you know, with fruit, with cookies. Uh you can put Nutella everywhere, everywhere.

SPEAKER_01

So everywhere.

SPEAKER_02

That's Nutella. That's that's the enemy today.

SPEAKER_01

I love it, Paul.

Paul

Well, my guilty pleasure at the moment are the Harry Bow gold bears. Oh, I used to get them from a great aunt when I was a kid, and I've always liked them, and I probably will always like them, but I also do a lot of Indonesian cooking at the moment, with more time, um, more have being forced to stay at home. There is more time to cook, so I'm trying out my grandmother's recipes that she left behind, all handwritten in her very neat teacher's handwriting, trying to rediscover what she liked to cook.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that is fantastic. And the other day he was talking about a meal that he had made that sounded wonderful. Meanwhile, I was notching on chocolate and cupcakes. So, Paul, on to the substantive matter of the podcast. I'll let you take it away.

Paul

Absolutely. Well, let's let's dive immediately into the latest news because it seems that the LGPD won't kick in in uh in August as we had expected. It already didn't kick in in February, as was the original plan, but now it seems it's going to be postponed until next year. What can you tell us about the legislation that is that was adopted by the Senate last week and I I believe is now before Congress before final adoption?

SPEAKER_02

So actually, we had some movements here in Brazil since last year. Some sectors of our society were already trying to push a little bit our politicians to convince them to make some effort in the direction of postponing the legislation. So this is something really we say in Portuguese taboo, how do you say in English? Uh the same? Yes, so taboo because everybody was doing that as if it was something criminal. So it was really, really in the shadows. Nobody was being transparent or even going uh into the light uh of day to do so. But with uh coronavirus uh situation, with all this crisis, many sectors, including some some of these old ones, they came together in order to make a very hard effort to push the situation, make a very good pressure in our senators, and it was very uh very useful and also effective because uh we had two bills in this uh very same uh situation in our house of representatives since last year. Uh but but we had no no no bills and no declarations and no speeches and no movements in the Senate. So the Senate was silent uh about this uh this desire of postponing the legislation. But then suddenly we had this strong, very strong situation. We had uh this bill postponing uh our LGPD is also uh a bill with a lot of subjects, uh, a lot of situations. It's called emergency, uh emergency. How do you say, Rodrigo? It's the emergency regime. The the emergency regime for for private uh reasons. Yes, that's it. Something like this. That's it, it's emergency regime, so it deals with a lot of subjects, including LGPD, the final part. It's a little, it's a very bit part of the legislation, the bill, the bill itself. This situation helped all those sectors and some others, and uh, we had uh some some people say it's not it has never been confirmed, but some people say that the president of our supreme court, Minister Giastoffoli, Josette Giustoffoli, uh, was working on with uh Senator Anastasia, Antonio Anastasia, uh who's the the one that presented the bill. And then as as it is something planned by Supreme Court and also the Senate, one of the most important senators, uh, which is the the first vice president of the Senate, Senator Antonio Anastasia. So there is a very strong political uh link, and it was it was just impossible to do anything different. So I talked to uh many senators, uh they asked for advice, and but in fact, even with all my uh my alerts and all my advice, they couldn't do much different because it was something that was coming from some sectors, so it was really a situation of representing of taking in into account the need for some sectors of society. So it just passed with uh almost no discussion, with unanimity, and now uh the bill is in the house of representatives, uh confirmed or it maybe uh changed in some some way, but it's almost uh we are pretty sure that it's going to be uh reality in a few weeks, two or three, three weeks at most.

Paul

Okay, so that means that indeed the legislation will be postponed until next year, um, and that companies will also have more time for compliance, because that is, of course, the the reverse side that they they they can take a bit more time to prepare. So what you you already mentioned there was already a push from companies to get the application date postponed. What are the main concerns that they have? Is it just general compliance because so far there hasn't been a data protection culture? Are there any specific things that they are afraid of? I know it's a big question.

SPEAKER_02

So many of them were worried about financial resources. This uh this process, at least in Brazil, it demands a lot of costs, uh a lot of time, and a lot of human resources as well. Most of these companies, uh, which are the companies in the front line of the crisis of the the uh the COVID-19 crisis. So they just need to halt all the process, everything, because uh this this kind of process in Brazil, the data protection adequacy is faced as an investment. So everything that is not essential for these companies are is going are going through some kind of postponing. So this is pretty much the situation, and other companies were complaining that we need some guidelines from uh non-existent uh DPA, they are going through adequacy, but we are everybody is looking to GDPR and the European Union standards, which are good, of course, but we need some official guidelines, official guidance, and we have none because we don't have a DPA. So these are the two the two main uh complaints uh of these companies.

Paul

So we'll get back to the DPA in a moment. Rodrigo, I'd I'd first like to hear also from you because you work with a lot of organizations helping to get them ready for the LGPD. What what concerns do you hear? What are they concerned about? What are they afraid of uh apart from the time and money it's gonna cost?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I agree with almost 100% that uh Fabrice said, and what I hear in the companies are they are like uh afraid of two main things in my experience around here with the companies I've been working. The first of them is the the the financial penalty because I'm doing the my focus is in small and medium business. I don't have any huge multinational clients, I just have medium-sized business, and for them 15 50 million reais today would be like 10 million dollars approximately year or less, is a lot of money, and they are afraid that the uh the press and some articles are talking about that, and they say, Oh, I don't I don't want to pay 10 million uh dollars uh monetary fines, which is not true because that's the absolute exception, and I think I think Fabricio already told that another time, and I hear a lot from people with uh deep knowledge about data protection here. I think that the maximum penalty will be the exception, and it will you know it it will take uh a little time to hold because the the authority is not there yet, so it's not uh for me, it's not it it shouldn't be the main concern, and I think the other the the second main concern that I hear a lot is regarding the the reputation. So I'm doing this, I was doing this for some schools and for some uh companies that uh that do medical medical records data, they treat uh sensitive information regarding the uh medical records, and they are a lot very afraid that this data can leak, or someone can uh like people say feel that uh that data, and they are really afraid that this can damage their reputation, the the consumer market. So I think those two main concerns are the ones I see empirically here with people and the clients that I'm working with. But uh another thing that uh just to complement what uh Fabricio said, I think we don't have uh a culture here in Brazil like we see in Europe regarding data protection. The the common sense, the the majority of the population, they still don't have any idea of the the the deep implications uh regarding civil liberties, civil rights, even democracy, that data protection is directed directly linked. I don't see that people talking about that in the street. We just I just see among the academics and some big companies, of course, all big companies, the the the consumer technology telecom companies, they are very aware of the subject, but the main the main population I I don't see yet.

Paul

Yeah, that is absolutely something that applies to many countries around the world that are introducing data protection legislation for the first time. Would you would you say that it was the GDPR that inspired the Brazilian legislation, or at least also the the need to have data protection legislation? Or or was there another reason why this law was introduced in the first place?

SPEAKER_03

I think that the main reason here in Brazil was Cambridge Analytica. Even the the news at the time, I think Fabricio can talk better about this, but in my point of view, in my research, Cambridge Analytica was what watershedding event for us, because we we were having an election at the time as well, so we were very concerned, and I think that this was rushed to this rushed the all the political will to pass the legislation uh regarding data protection, and yes, uh our law is 110% GDPR inspired. Even in the if you if you read the specification of the bill in the House of Representatives, they mention GDPR and they say that that was their inspiration. All the legislators they openly talk about GDPR as the main inspiration of our law. But it doesn't mean that we copied everything. We have some articles and some subjects in our law that are specific for for us, but our inspiration is uh in my point of view 100 more than 100 GDPR. We adopted that model.

SPEAKER_02

Well, uh, can I say some words about it? Because I forgot to mention that I was uh I was also the legislative advisor at the Senate at the time of the bill, so I can you're to blame for it. Yeah, I can uh I can appoint uh the reasons, some of them, of course, some some I can't. So uh the ones I can uh Rodriguez right. Well, of course, we have uh uh huge inspiration on the DPR, but our legislation, our bill uh was was running before the GPR. So of course the first inspiration was the the directive 9546, and then uh when GDPR came into force in 2018, we were already working on uh make all the the texts uh most similar uh in a possible in the possible way we could. And we had the we had, of course, some pressure from some uh multinational companies in Brazil. Uh they had a lot of uh tension in the data protection review because, of course, for many reasons, one of them is for some sort of uh to unify the regulatory frameworks they're going to deal with. So it's better for them if they deal with GDPR that they could deal with some GDPR-like uh legislation in Brazil. It's would be better for them. So we had this kind of uh nuance uh in our political process. Uh, but we had uh we had also uh the Cambridge Analytica Federation, Rodrigo mentioned it was actually something to move to make some movement because the bill was a very freeze situation for some months, and we also Also had uh the election year. If we didn't approve the bill until July of 2018, uh, we would never ever have data protection legislation in Brazil because it was the last window opened for this kind of situation. So we use all this situation to make a huge effort to approve uh with uh society and with many companies and uh organizations representing society as well. Uh and we could do uh the best, best effort and the last the best and the last effort possible. So we do have our legislation now because of all this all this situation.

SPEAKER_01

Rodrigo, when you say that the privacy awareness around the general populace is uh not very high at all. Uh I understand that being here in the United States. We're just now kind of waking up to privacy ourselves. But is there a specific other than Cambridge Analytica, is there a specific event that may have spoken to the Brazilian people that they needed to wake up and pay attention to privacy? Any particular breach that resonated or a use of data in a way that they may not have liked that really resonated with the individual?

SPEAKER_03

I don't recall right now one specific event, but what I could say that uh it's raising awareness daily before coronavirus. I don't know the exact expression, but I think new nuance false when you're like spam, spans with text messages.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_03

So I think this is something terrible, was something terrible before coronavirus. Every comedian in Brazil would make jokes about that because we uh the the regular Brazilian people would receive like 10 unauthorized calls a day, human calls a day, uh offering some kind of service or product or annoying calls, and that that is raised uh for me, my point of view, this is this is a tangible example of the awareness because everybody is complaining, and some people even they don't answer any of any phone calls otherwise only if they know the number, if they know that phone complex, just because they will touch to it's unauthorized of something, and that involves data protection at the end of the day. So I think this this subject is raising daily uh daily raising awareness for the general population. Uh and I think right now with uh coronavirus, everybody talking about cellar phone data to track movement and to track temperature. I think this will be another watershedding event for the data protection because people will open their eyes and see, you know, that this is our data. A lot of people will agree with that, but what about after that? What will happen after that? So I think now we are living, we are going through this awareness time. Coronavirus is 100% related with data protection, my point of view. And I think uh it's starting to improve the awareness for the general public.

Paul

I know here in Europe we currently have a pretty big debate in many member states about mobile apps that could be helping to fight the virus or or monitor contagion of people and then alert people who might have been close to somebody who was contaminated with the virus. Um, so that is a pretty intrusive way of tracking. Do you see any debates like that going on in Brazil right now?

SPEAKER_03

The the Ministry of Economy, uh, along with the health minister, they already did some public features uh regarding that subject. That one of the medium-term plans for the government is to track test people, and once they are cleared for the COVID, they would receive any kind, some kind of paper or uh paper in the cigarette way of work, some kind of allowance in maybe in their cell phones, saying that they can return to work. Uh, and I'm pretty sure that the government at this time today they must be at least studying technologies uh with successful uh implementation in other countries to try to track and deal with the situation. So that that's already in place here in the public sphere and also in the private sector as well. And that's that's a daily debate in the news. Everybody is debating that. So I think uh that is raising awareness of 12 inside teacher and a lawyer that uh works with uh data protection like Fabito. Every day now I'm receiving a lot of sorry, a lot of WhatsApp messages from friends and uh colleagues uh with news regarding the this kind of subjects because they they know that I studied this, that I like this, and they want to show me look, I I report this news in the um in the journal, in the newspaper, things that they would start tracking people. So I I think this is watershed regarding data protection and also worldwide, not in Brazil, but in Brazil, I I feel this way.

SPEAKER_02

And then Fabricio, I know you were going to speak to that, your perspective on this situation is is a really challenging situation because we are uh some people say that the postponing of the bill is going to ruin data protection in Brazil, but I don't think so. I think that's the opposite situation, because we are going to have a lot more discussion about privacy, about crisis, about massive use of data, of personal data, uh, just like every every everywhere else, not just Brazil, so in Europe, uh, in the North America, other countries in South America, Central America, Asia, especially Asia, we're doing what the Chinese government is doing, and other Asian government. So I think that this kind of situation is going to help make some awareness about data protection, about the privacy of individuals. But the only problem that the postponing of the bill of the legislation, sorry, uh in Brazil uh is going to bring is some extra difficulty organizing the legal system because we already have today some emergency legislation which were brought by our government by our government because of the situation, because of the emergency we're facing. And this is this legislation, this legislation, uh, it's opening a situation, it's authorizing data collect uh personal data collection, but there is no prediction of uh what if the purpose is some some some some way changed? What if uh government use this data for other purposes? What if some public servant or public employee? What if it what if these servants or employees sell this data or misuse this data? What what what are the consequences? What what are my rights as a data subject? We don't have this kind of of uh uh legislation in Brazil. LGPD is supposed to be the legislation to answer all these questions, and we don't have it. That's because that's because of this situation that we created a bill like that and we approved a bill like that. That's that's all all due to all this situation in Brazil that we have an LGPG to organize to make our uh legal system more modern about privacy issues. And if we postpone the legislation, we are going to postpone the uh all the organization of this legal system, all the answers. So I think that the main consequence, negative consequence for citizens in Brazil is this uh we don't know what's gonna happen. We hear the telecommunication uh companies, some other companies that deal with deal with a lot of personal data, they're sharing data with government. We we know that some judges are actually making some legal efforts to force this company, some of them with some higher standard in privacy and data protection issues, they are refusing to share with the government. So the government is going to the judiciary branch, to the the courts to force them to share data. So we already have in this kind of situation in Brazil, but nobody, nobody, not even a judge, not even the government, not even just some companies are actually worried about the post-time of pandemic crisis in data protection issue in the private sector. So today we just want to collect and process somehow. We have a uh clear purpose today, but in a few weeks, maybe some months, we're gonna have some different situations. I've heard myself, I've heard myself that the government was thinking of another legislation to take some of this data and to use it for a statistic purpose. So they're thinking already, changing the purpose, the original purpose of processing data.

Paul

So nothing's gonna be so basically all you need is a strong supervisory authority to keep them in line.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's it. I like it. That's it.

Paul

So where is Brazil in in terms of preparing the the setup of the data protection authority? You mentioned that you have been appointed to or nominated to be part of the data protection council. What will the DPA look like and and when will it when will it be created?

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's a very good question. If Rodrigo can answer, I will be delighted to hear because that's that's a very difficult situation as well. Our bill was approved in August 2018. We had some reform last year in 2019, but the parts of the legislation which regulate the existence of the DPA uh are already in force since December 2018. So our government uh had almost two years to create DPA and all their bodies, and we we couldn't, we we didn't see any any effort. Nobody in our society knows who are going to be the commissioners. Uh nobody knows uh how many people are going to work on our DPA because no there is no public public servant or employee uh invited to work on our TPA. So we don't know we don't know the staff that are gonna be part of the staff. We we actually know nothing about it. What I see in the political uh analysis of the situation is that it's today in Brazil we have a very bad time in the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch. Our president, Jair Bolsonaro, inaugurated some sort of uh a new policy, uh a new way of making politics in Brazil, but so far it's not not going, it's not working so well because we have some other agencies in Brazil uh responsible for other regulated sectors, and uh they all they are all uh having a lack of directors and commissioners as well. So our legislation, our constitution demands that these directors, these commissioners should be approved by the Senate. They need to be appointed to the Senate, and the Senate needs to approve it, approve them. And we have already 30 over 30 names appointed to many agencies waiting in a very long line to be approved in the Senate, and that's happening because uh the government is not aligned to the president of the Senate. So I think that when our DPA, if it's going to be close to to exist, our president should appoint some names, and these names are going to be at the end of this long line of appointed uh authorities, so it's a very difficult situation. Very difficult. I don't know if Rodrigo has something else to say.

SPEAKER_03

I think you are the best, the best one to answer this subject because you are leaving this, uh you are feeding and waiting literally, and uh I agree 100% because we we don't see any political will to do this thing, and I I even see in the opposite way. I see uh not express but uh total uh political will to postpone uh as much as possible. That's the way I see it for the exec branch.

SPEAKER_01

I do want to ask one last question, and it may be a simple yes and no answer based on what y'all talked about. Here in the United States, we have a problem that a lot of our judges don't understand technology or the privacy implications for technology, which makes it very challenging to use old laws to try to interpret what we should be doing with data. Is that also a problem in Brazil? Do you do you need to do education of your judges and the people in charge of the laws in order to make sure that they understand the consequences and the far-reaching effects of technology and use of data?

SPEAKER_03

I think yes. Technology is not a subject that majority of the judges know, especially in the high the high courts, when you have people with that when they started to work as a judge, there was absolutely no technology in Brazil, the judiciary branch. So it was imposed by by the time, and I think uh data protection is still something that we only see some islands, if I can say it like this. We we know some judges and some people that that they have the the knowledge, but lots of them they they still have in my point of view that proprietary uh view about uh uh personal data. They they uh there was a decision uh last year regarding data protection, uh, that the judge said someone could uh not uh rent or sell the data related to that subject. So it it shows that the the judge did don't have any any any kind of uh knowledge about the subject, and I think we still don't have it mainstream. It's not even uh a subject when the when they when you make the entry exam. Yeah, the entry exam for the the judges, it's not there yes, it's not mainstream in the judges, and it's very difficult to implement because we have a very pulverized system in Brazil.

SPEAKER_01

Anything to add to that, Fabricio?

SPEAKER_02

But I think that's it. What Rodrigo said, we have a lot of problems in Brazil. You can imagine that if I'm not mistaken, the very first court order blocking WhatsApp was uh Brazilian court, so that that means a lot, I think. Because yeah, in in the world, I don't, I'm not sure if it's the first or the only one, but I'm pretty sure it was the first at least. But and that was in a criminal uh procedure uh in which WhatsApp and or Facebook were not even part of the procedure, they were just companies with some means of providing some ways of evidence, and because of privacy issues, they couldn't share information to the the this court, and uh the court didn't didn't buy the the argument and just said, well, if you do not bring me the evidence I'm asking, so am I going to to block WhatsApp in Brazil? And they did block WhatsApp. We had we had WhatsApp blocked for some hours, maybe more, even though uh despite the situation, because our Supreme Court uh overruled all this this kind of court order or decision, but they actually tried to arrest some uh the vice president of Facebook, I think.

SPEAKER_01

I remember when that happened, but had not put the two together with Brazil. I was pulling up stories, but we'll make sure that we post links to some of the stories, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you so you can imagine how how much we are not proud of it because that's that's the situation. Brazil is one is one country which uh consumes a lot of internet services. We are a very huge consumer market of digital services, but our institutions, I think they don't understand the the importance of the digital services and how they work and how they're they help society to to improve, to make other rights even effective. Uh, we can say that democracy in Brazil cannot exist today without digital services because everybody just does that. Our president was elected in a very massive network of citizens dealing with digital life, digital opinions, and digital uh politics. So you can imagine what it means to block a WhatsApp or any other services. We had some time before uh the blocking of uh YouTube in Brazil because one uh actress was shot on a very intimate moment in the beach. She filed uh in Spain, yes, and she filed uh uh a procedure, uh, an action uh into the court demanding YouTube to remove all just like that. So this lawyer of them said, remove everything, they just do that, remove everything, and the and the judge. Okay, I agree. I I'm ordering you to remove everything and YouTube. How can I do that? Because I need to understand the content, I need to know. You just remove, that's it, and then we don't care how, just do it, just do it as you too. Yeah, that you could remove because of obvious situations, and they just block YouTube for some hours. It was a long time ago, so that's the kind of situation, and we do have this kind of this sort of of uh decisions, court decisions in Brazil, even today, uh, in any any kind of of uh procedure and family dispute procedures when the ex-wife needs to know if the ex-husband was talking to to whom he was talking to. So uh judges are facing the situation to upgrade privacy in many ways and to demand evidence to WhatsApp, Facebook, and a lot of a lot of it's just difficult, you know. And our legislators, they're worse because they they think of something really bad and they propose as a bill.

Paul

So, well, we have more education to do, that's uh that's for sure. But luckily, we have two great data protection educators here who can uh can help the Brazilian population better understand uh the privacy needs, the technology needs. Thank you both for being on our show today. We very much appreciate you taking the time to uh to speak to us and to all our listeners. If you like our series, please subscribe now in your favorite podcast app. Just find us under Serious Privacy, hit that subscribe button, uh, and then uh we can see the numbers go up. And it is so exciting for us to see these numbers rise week by week, and of course it's easier for you because then new episodes will automatically end up in your feed. Also, please do tell your friends and colleagues about us. And if you have any questions or suggestions, or if you want to be a guest on the show, or if you can suggest a guest that you would like to listen to, please reach out to us at seriousprivacy at truststalk.com or via Twitter at podcastprivacy. You will easily find Kay and myself on Twitter as well. Kay is part of privacy. I'm Europol B, so reach out to us as well if you have any questions that you would like to raise with us. Thank you for listening to Sirius Privacy this week and until our next episode. Goodbye.

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Dr. K Royal

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Paul Breitbarth

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Ralph O'Brien

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