Brazil to lead the governance of the internet

Brazil President Dilma Rousseff's questioning of US mass surveillance at the 68th United Nations general assembly on September 24 brought her a lot of attention. Will her speech result in concrete changes internationally, as well as in Brazil? Civil society groups hope they can still influence the draft bill “Marco Civil” to make it the progressive internet legislation envisaged in Brazil since 2009. Internationally, the next steps of Latin American countries with regard to internet governance and to their national infrastructure are expected to be decisive.

At the last UN general assembly, Brazilian President called the US mass surveillance programmes “a breach of international law” and warned the “argument that the illegal interception of information and data aims at protecting nations against terrorism cannot be sustained." According to reports by the Brazilian paper Globo based on information leaked by former NSA-subcontractor Edward Snowden, Brazil was/is a high interest surveillance target.

Support for Rousseff's strong statements - which contrast with the silent reaction of European Union governments, came in from the European parliament, where Hannes Swoboda, leader of the Socialist & Democrats group tweeted that the parliament should side with the Brazilian President. Brazil’s president had said: “The time is ripe to create the conditions to prevent cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war, through espionage, sabotage, and attacks against systems and infrastructure of other countries." Rousseff announced next steps, including a hint at efforts to secure the networks in Brazil.

Meanwhile, during a conference on internet governance last week, the Council of Europe criticised European governments who took shots at the media reporting on the fall-out of the mass surveillance revelations.

Infrastructure independence?

Latin American governments now are pondering over their potential defense. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño told Reuters during the UN session: "We have decided to begin to work on new internet communication systems of our countries, of our societies, to avoid continuing being the object and prey of illegal spying that U.S. spying entities have developed against us." According to Reuters, the defense council of the regional Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) – made up of the region's defense ministers – is in charge of examining how to implement the idea.

One project with regard to an alternative international infrastructure for Latin American countries has been going on for some years already: the so-called BRICS cable (Brazil, India, China, South Africa). The large optic fibre sea cable project is expected to link-up African, Asian and Latin American countries. Existing fibre optic cables including the large sea cables were heavily tapped, according to Guardian reports: 200 fibre taps were attributed to the British Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) alone.

Another likely fall-out of the Snowden revelations are re-newed discussions about the special role the US has with regard to core components of the internet infrastructure. Brazil had belonged to the group of countries challenging the US oversight over the Domain Name System since the preparations for the first World Summit of the Information Society.

Multi-Stakeholder vs. Multi-lateral – and the Marco Civil

Rousseff in her speech already requested that the United Nations "play a leading role in the effort to regulate the conduct of States with regard to these technologies." Brazil would present proposals for the establishment of a civilian multi-lateral framework for the governance and use of the internet. These muli-lateral framework mechanisms should ensure the principles of cultural diversity, net neutrality, freedom of expression and privacy, multi-lateral and democratic governance and universality.

Brazil's civil society certainly recognises these principle, which stem from work on Brazil's own internet legislation, the Marco Civil, which has been under way since 2009. Snowden's revelations were needed to bring about another push for the much debated legislation. Marco Civil was initially developed by the Fundação Getúlio Vargas and the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and promoted as a forward looking legislation developed in a multi-stakeholder way.

Yet, Rousseff's choice of the word multi-lateral instead of "multi-stakehoder,“ which seems to focus on inter-governmental governance only, has triggered some discussion between civil society groups – and certainly attracted some old mantra-like warnings about the UN (or the International Telecommunication Union) "taking over“.

The Marco Civil model got a lot of scratches, especially when a provision for intermediary liability was introduced unilaterally by the government at a later stage. Rousseff now calls the Marco Civil an “emergency measure” and intends to include a provision that may oblige intermediaries to keep data of local users local, instead of transferring them out of the country.

The discussion over the legislation is on again and international civil society groups came together to support their Brazilian colleagues in getting the right balance for the final text – a letter of support went out to the president on September 26. Avri Doria, a US-Swedish academic and expert in internet governance had some reservations about not making a much stronger point in it on the need to include all stakeholders down the road. A weakening of the multi-stakeholder model would be a great setback, she warns.

Will Snowden's revelations help the strengthening of multi-stakeholderism? Beyond Brazil's leadership on internet governance, this question still remains very much open.