Summary: What started as a debate around privacy is now
becoming a money matter
By Angelica Mari , Brazil
Tech
While Brazilian politicians try to agree on the country's
first set of regulations around data and Internet governance, local storage
requirements are most likely to go ahead.
Brazil's "Internet Constitution", the Marco Civil
da Internet, was due to be voted last October by the House of
Representatives. However, disagreement between politicians and ISPs -
particularly around the point of providers being required to treat all data
that goes through their network in the same way - meant that the Marco is yet
to become law.
Despite all the to-ing and fro-ing between public
representatives and companies around net neutrality, requirements that data
collected about Brazilian internet users is to be stored locally are pretty
much agreed on within the government. This was initially presented as a
mechanism to protect citizen data - but the government is now becoming much
more aware of the value of information.
During the Mobile World Congress last month, Brazilian
communications minister Paulo Bernardo reinforced the point that local storage
plans will go ahead and criticized the likes of Google and Facebook.
"Google told us that it could not hand data over to the
Federal Police in Brazil because the information was stored in the United
States, so the company has to comply with the laws of that country. Then they
tells that they store the data in a random-access system - it is not possible
to believe in everything they say," Bernardo told trade publication
Convergência Digital.
"What is certain is that data is turning into money and
we can't afford to be out of this business. Data will be the motor of the
economy in the next few years. Datacenters of companies like Google and
Facebook also have to be in Brazil," he added.
The requirement to force companies to store data
locally has been criticized by business people and activists alike, such as
World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who said this is an "emotional
reaction" to the NSA spying episode and will not have any
practical impact in reducing espionage risk.
Brasscom, the Brazilian IT trade body, warned that the local
data storage provisions will mean an increase in costs incurred by local
IT companies and prompt these firms to move their operations elsewhere.
And small business owners who rely heavily on cloud services
to operate their businesses are also not happy about the government's
intentions. That is the case of Bidu, a insurance price comparison
start-up, who stores all its data on systems operated by Amazon Web Services
and Google.
"[If the government requires local storage], Brazil
will take a massive backward step. It would be such a big setback for Brazil
that small companies would be a lot less competitive," says Bidu's
founder, Eldes Mattiuzzo.
The Marco Civil da Internet is now being processed as a
matter of constitutional urgency and the fact it is still up in the air
prevents various other proposals from being voted. Until an agreement is
reached around net neutrality, voting cannot take place.