Brazil passes groundbreaking Internet governance Bill

Brazil has made history with the approval of a groundbreaking post-Snowden Bill which sets out principles, rights and guarantees for Internet users.
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

 

Last night (25), an overwhelming majority of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of the Marco Civil da Internet and its provisions around net neutrality, right to privacy and freedom of expression online.

The Bill, which now needs to be cleared by the Senate before it is sanctioned by president Dilma Rousseff, had its voting postponed several times in the last three years. It gained prominence after the NSA spying scandal and became the center of a political minefield due to disagreement over several crucial points.

The provisions around net neutrality are a key reason why the Bill is considered a major victory for the civil society and activists alike. Just as in other countries, telcos want to maintain their ability to favor certain internet services over others to their own commercial advantage - if it becomes law, the Marco Civil will ensure that this can't happen.

In order to speed up the progress of the Bill, the government gave up on the local storage requirements last week. The measure was intended to ensure the privacy of Internet users as well as government data following the news of NSA spying activity, which allegedly included monitoring of communications between President Dilma Rousseff and key aides.

Due to the removal of the requirement for local storage, the project rapporteur Alessandro Molon stressed the need to "strengthen" another article of the Bill, which states that companies storing and managing data generated by Brazilians should comply with Brazilian law when it comes to privacy rights, data protection and secrecy of private communications regardless of where datacenters - and the data itself - are located.

The Marco Civil also preserves protection against intermediary responsibility, which means that Internet service providers will not be liable for any offensive content published by users - currently, Brazil has no specific rules on this and court decisions vary around whether companies or users should be penalized over offensive pages.

According to the Bill, service providers will only be liable for damage caused by third parties if they don't comply with court orders requiring the removal of the offensive content. The purpose of the rule, according to the project's rapporteur Molon, is to strengthen freedom of expression on the web and avoid falling into what he defined as "private censorship."

The Bill is still subject to changes by the Senate, but its supporters are confident that the Marco Civil might, after all, become law before NETmundial, the global conference on Internet governance that will take place in Brazil next month.

The founder of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee has called for Brazil's first set of internet governance rules to be passed "without further delay or amendment." “If Marco Civil is passed, without further delay or amendment, this would be the best possible birthday gift for Brazilian and global Web users," says Berners-Lee."By passing this Bill, Brazil will cement its proud reputation as a world leader on democracy and social progress and will help to usher in a new era – one where citizens’ rights in every country around the world are protected by digital bills of rights," he adds. The scientist pointed out that Marco Civil has been built by internet users in a "groundbreaking, inclusive and participatory process" and has resulted in regulations that "balances the rights and responsibilities of the individuals, governments and corporations who use the Internet."

Brazilian cloud computing market to reach $1.1bn by 2017

The Brazilian cloud computing market should see a jump in market revenues from $328.8m in 2013 to $1.1bn by 2017, according to research by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

According to the study "Analysis of the Brazilian Cloud Computing Market" the segment is rapidly gaining traction due to its "ability to turn capital expenditure into operational expenditure and its provision of anywhere-anytime access to information," as well as infrastructure resource flexibility to end users.

While pointing out that the cloud market in Brazil is still incipient, the study mentions that there is "significant demand" in the areas of software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), with IaaS becoming increasingly attractive to small and medium enterprises.

Verticals where cloud services have had a significant uptake in Brazil include e-commerce firms, as organizations that are subject to big variations in seasonality turn to these services to reduce costs, as well as telecom operators, says the study.

However, the concerns over data security and connectivity have also been highlighted. The Frost research points out that companies are concerned about storing critical data on the cloud, as well as availability and continuity of connectivity services, which could possibly prevent them from accessing the information when needed.

"Owing to the lack of awareness, companies are reluctant to give third parties access to their information, especially after the news of data espionage in the United States broke," says Frost & Sullivan ICT Industry Analyst, Guilherme Campos.

As a reaction to the aforementioned spying episode, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff voiced her intentions of enforcing local storage and wanted to include the requirement in the country's upcoming "Internet Constitution." However, the plans were strongly criticized by businesses and the opposition and eventually dropped. 

OrCam's 'vision' system for visually impaired paves the way for new wearables

Summary: With Intel rumored to be backing the company, OrCam's glasses frame-mounted camera could help the blind - and create new categories of hardware products.

By David Shamah for Tel Aviv Tech

An Israeli-developed device to help the visually-impaired "see" contains technology that could end up powering a new category of wearable devices, according to Erez Naaman, VP of engineering at OrCam.

The Israeli startup, barely two years old, has created the first commercially available system to enable blind and visually-impaired people to navigate their surroundings.

The OrCam system is promising enough that it has reportedly solicited an investment from Intel's venture capital organization.

OrCam's technology uses cameras, algorithms, and audio to provide what Naaman described as "the next best thing to being able to see clearly". As it's not a medical device, OrCam does not require implants, unlike similar systems developed in the US.

OrCam's product consists of a camera attached to a glasses frame. The camera sees objects, shapes, sizes, words, or anything else around a user, analyzes the image, and tells users what they are 'seeing'.

Using their finger, users point in the direction of the object they want to 'see', and the system instantly announces what it's seen. As a result, a visually-impaired OrCam user could use the system to cross the street, just by pointing at a traffic light and waiting for the system to announce "green light". In a supermarket, users can pick up product and the device will tell them what it is, even reading off the ingredients. The system can read all manner of text: all a user has to do is point to words in a newspaper, book, restaurant menu, or other printed material, and OrCam will read back what they are looking at.

StoreDot: Inside the nanotech that can charge your phone in 30 seconds

Summary: If you've ever had just five minutes to charge your smartphone's flat battery and wished it didn't take an hour, help is at hand. An Israeli company is working on a nano-material that could see your mobile fully charged in just seconds.

By Niv Lilien for Tel Aviv Tech 

  

In offices in a dusty street near the Diamond Exchange building in Ramat Gan, something interesting is afoot: a company called StoreDot is working on battery technology that many mobile users will have been longing for for some time.

The basis of StoreDot's work was discovered during a University of Tel Aviv research project into Alzheimer's disease. The researchers found that a certain peptide molecule that 'shortens' neurons in the brain causing Alzheimer's was also seeming to show high capacitance, thanks to an ability called 'charge trapping' — where electrons are effectively held in place.

According to Professor Gil Rosenman, who worked on the project and is now StoreDot's chief scientist, two of these molecules can be used to create a viable crystal only two nanometers long. These crystals form the NanoDots at the heart of Storedot's technology.

Artificially synthesised from the same building blocks — elements such as oxygen and hydrogen — as natural peptides, these NanoDots could prove disruptive to multi-billion-dollar industries such as batteries, displays, image sensors, and non-volatile memory.

Doron Myersdorf, former head of SanDisk's SSD division and now StoreDot's CEO, says that the company has decided to focus on NanoDots' uses in smartphone related technologies, including faster memory; more sensitive camera sensors ultrafast-charging batteries; and flexible, energy-efficient displays.

Founded in 2012, StoreDot is now chiefly concentrating on the last two areas. Demoing this week at Microsoft's ThinkNext event in Tel Aviv, StoreDot showed a prototype of a battery using NanoDots — powering a standard Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone — that charged from flat to full in under a minute.

How does it work? The NanoDots cover the tiny 'cavities' that cover an electrode found in a standard battery, extending its reactive surface, and allowing its capacity to be increased tenfold.  Through the addition of the NanoDots, the electrode becomes "multi-function" — at one end, the electrode stores electrical energy creating a capacitor, and at the other, lets it flow into the battery's lithium.

In layman's terms, StoreDot has created a 'buffer' that stores electrical current coming from the wall socket over a period of around thirty seconds, then letting it flow slowly into the lithium. Myersdorf says that eventually, the company plans to get rid of the lithium in the battery altogether.

Changing the chemical reactions occurring inside the battery should also improve battery life in long run — allowing thousands of charge cycles instead of hundreds today — while still keeping the same weight and form factor.

The NanoDots have other intriguing qualities too. When embedded into polymer and everyday screens, they can replace the toxic materials like cadmium used in modern displays. They can also be manufactured in different colours, using a special version of basic colours to create a full, rich colour matrix.

StoreDot's team, at the behest of manufacturers, is using blue backlighting instead of white, and the NanoDots can be used in both LCD an bio-LED screens — or, in Myersdorf's words: "We can do displays for both Samsung and Apple", a reference to the different display technologies each company is using today (Apple with LCD, Samsung with organic LED).

StoreDot already has prototype displays in its lab, and showed me this week how it's lighting a standard iPhone display. There's not a full colour range yet — only 70 percent — but the company is working towards more than a full NTSC colour gamut. StoreDot future displays are equally free of toxic materials and, as a bonus, they're flexible too.

The NanoDots also have applications in the pharmaceutical industry as drug delivery agent and could one day replace metals such a gold or silver currently needed to penetrate cell membranes and deliver the active ingredient.

With several patents filed and several more pending, as well as a big smartphone company onboard as an investor, Myersdorf intends to have his company's products ready for marketing in 2015 and on sale in 2016. But don't rejoice too much just yet: StoreDot's new batteries will cost twice as much as the regular ones.