Brazil Divorcing the American Controlled Internet

[Jacob]

Okay, maybe not a divorce yet, but a trial separation.

Brazil was not bluffing last year, when it said that it wanted to disconnect from the United States-controlled internet due to the NSA's obscenely invasive surveillance tactics. The country is about to stretch a cable from the northern city of Fortaleza all the way to Portugal, and they've vowed not to use a single U.S. vendor to do it.

At first glance, Brazil's plan to disconnect from the U.S. internet just seemed silly. The country was not happy when news emerged that the NSA's tentacles stretched all the way down to Brazil. And the country was especially not happy when news emerged that the NSA had been spying on the Brazilian government's email for years. But really, what are you gonna do?

Brazil made a bunch of bold promises, ranging in severity from forcing companies like Facebook and Google to move their servers inside Brazilian borders, to building a new all-Brazilian email system—which they've already done. But the first actionable opportunity the country was presented with is this transatlantic cable, which had been in the works since 2012 but is only just now seeing construction begin. And with news that the cable plan will not include American vendors, it looks like Brazil is serious; it's investing $185 million on the cable project alone. And not a penny of that sum will go to an American company.

The implications of Brazil distancing itself from the US internet are huge. It's not necessarily a big deal politically, but the economic consequences could be tremendously destructive. Brazil has the seventh largest economy in the world, and it continues to grow. So when Brazil finally does divorce Uncle Sam—assuming things continue at this rate—a huge number of contracts between American companies and Brazil will simply disappear. On the whole, researchers estimate that the United States could lose about $35 billion due to security fears. That's a lot of money.

We knew there would be backlash to the Snowden leaks, but it's not just political; Edward Snowden cost the United States a lot of money, even if that wasn't his plan. Yet here we are, waving goodbye to information technology revenues from one of the world's largest countries. Still, that's a small price to pay for knowing just how little privacy we've had all along.

http://gizmodo.com/brazils-keeping-its-promise-to-disconnect-from-the-u-s-1652771021?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[CountDeMoney]

Good, too many goddamned Brazilians with their pidgin Portuguese on the Playstation network as it is.  Good luck with MangoNet.

[Razgovory]

And they will still get spied on.

[lustindarkness]

Good, too many goddamned Brazilians with their pidgin Portuguese on the Playstation network as it is.  Good luck with MangoNet.

That was my first thouht too. 

[Admiral Yi]

A cable that only connects Portugal and Brazil is not even a trial separation.

[Josquius]

I've not heard of this before. I've only heard of the potential trouble with Russia's moaning about the data of Russian citizens only being on Russian servers (its a good time to invest in the hosting business in Russia).
The separate email system in particular is interesting.

But still, good news, lets hope the  internet decentralises even more.

[frunk]

A cable that only connects Portugal and Brazil is not even a trial separation.

It depends on how big the pipe is and if they plan on cutting their other connections.

[Admiral Yi]

If they were planning on going full Pyongyang I think they would have mentioned it.

[Malthus]

How is this going to work? Won't Brazillians want the same access to content they had before? Only, now everything will be routed through Portugal?  Not sure what practical impact this will have, other than creating a massive data choke-point: if anything fucks with/taps into that cable, all of Brazil is screwed.

Strikes me that, if they would otherwise have used (presumably superior) US vendors if the projects were put to competitive tender, the impact will be two-way - that is, it will cost the Brazilians as well as the Americans.

[celedhring]

How exactly laying a comm cable is "disconnecting from the US"? We have plenty of comm cables in Europe that don't involve the US, you know.

[Josquius]

How exactly laying a comm cable is "disconnecting from the US"? We have plenty of comm cables in Europe that don't involve the US, you know.

Maybe all Brazilian data previously went via the US?
But yes, saying it is divorcing the internet is a huge leap.

[grumbler]

Strikes me that, if they would otherwise have used (presumably superior) US vendors if the projects were put to competitive tender, the impact will be two-way - that is, it will cost the Brazilians as well as the Americans.

that's the problem with thinking that stories like these are real news; they ignore little things like TANSTAAFL, and so pretend that the loss is all on one side.  I dare say that the Brazilian people lose a lot more than American companies when their government ignores the lowest bidder in favor of the best-politically-connected one, no matter how much it dresses it up as Yanqui-bashing.

[frunk]

If they were planning on going full Pyongyang I think they would have mentioned it.

Cutting other connections isn't going full Pyongyang, they'd still be connected.  It would just force all the Brazilian traffic through this new line.

[Admiral Yi]

Cutting other connections isn't going full Pyongyang, they'd still be connected.  It would just force all the Brazilian traffic through this new line.

Then what's the point?  Presumably they can't reach an Amazon or Google server through this new line alone.

[Barrister]

Cutting other connections isn't going full Pyongyang, they'd still be connected.  It would just force all the Brazilian traffic through this new line.

Then what's the point?  Presumably they can't reach an Amazon or Google server through this new line alone.

As I understand it, the NSA arranged to have backdoors put in on undersea fiber optic cables which allowed them to have access to all that data.

The point of installing their own cable, and cutting out any and all American companies, is to remove that ability.