Monday, April 27, 2015

'Privacy isn't dead' Snowden’s South American legacy grows as Brazil’s crypto movement marches on...

CryptoRave, perhaps the largest conference on cryptology and Internet privacy in Latin America, kicked off Friday in São Paulo, Brazil. Several thousand people, including young programmers, activists, hackers and self-described “cyberpunks” of all types are expected to attend the 24-hour marathon of workshops, trainings, lectures, roundtables and, yes, some parties, all dedicated to cryptology, or the practice of using encoded digital communication to stop unwanted snooping.

But much has changed since the crypto movement took off in Brazil and Latin America two years ago. Activists are still concerned with the kind of US surveillance Snowden’s leaks revealed, but increasingly, they’re also asking questions about issues closer to home.

“I think it started thanks to Edward Snowden uncovering what the US is doing. And now everyone is turning to understand, ‘Oh, what is my government doing about my data in my country, where they actually have jurisdiction over me?” says Katitza Rodriguez, international rights director for the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and one of the keynote speakers at CryptoRave. “It’s not that they don’t care about NSA spying — they care — but actually all the discussion and the debate in the US have kind of informed the activists of the traditional human rights community to dig more into the surveillance infrastructure in their own countries.”

The movement around Internet privacy and security in Brazil grew dramatically in 2013 in the wake of Snowden’s leaks involving NSA spying on Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and government officials, including Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. The story and its repercussions reverberated in Brazilian media for months. Gustavo Gus, a 28-year-old organizer of the CryptoRave festival, credits the Snowden leaks with laying the foundation for the cryptology movement in Brazil. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Brazil building internet cable to Portugal to avoid NSA surveillance...
  2. Brazil is keeping its promise to avoid the U.S. internet...
  3. Brazil's new Internet 'Bill of Rights' protects privacy, ensures net neutrality...
  4. Future of the internet debated at NetMundial in Brazil...
  5. Germany, Brazil enlist 19 more countries for anti-NSA UN resolution...
  6. Battle lines drawn in India's internet debate...

No comments:

Post a Comment