In light of the NSA spying on Brazil’s telecommunication
data, Brazilian leaders want to break away from the U.S. centric based Internet
system and create their own Internet space away from the prying eyes of outside
agencies. This would require many companies
such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many others to host data centers to keep
local information within Brazil.
President Rousseff ordered Brazilian lawmakers to put a hold on all
other matters until they vote on whether they will require companies to do this
or not.
Google is arguing against this move because it greatly
hinder growth into the Brazilian market as a result of the high costs for
building the infrastructure. However, not agreeing to this new law would end in
a 10% sales cut from Brazil, which happens to be the third largest Android
market in the world. The US Chamber of
Commerce told Brazil that moving a data center to Brazil would have several
negative outcomes for the country, being a loss of competitiveness worldwide,
increase in costs of working with these companies and make their citizens more
prone to hacking. Google’s current security strategy of spreading data out over
several centers would be irrelevant in Brazil if they opened up a data center making
their users less secure leaving them vulnerable to hackers.
The same outrage has also been seen in the European Union as
they are currently attempting to revamp their online privacy rules for
violations. The EU is currently putting
a lot of the blame on companies such as Google and Facebook for tracking their
citizen’s private information then sending it to other countries outside the
region. The EU could possibly be seeking
fines for damages in the $100 to $200 million dollar range.
Brazil’s plan to attempt to keep US spies out of its new
network is to lay fiber optic cable underwater straight to Europe as well as
to connect themselves to other South American companies through their own
network. Brazil is one of the largest
international markets for many online based companies so if this law follows
through and several other countries take after Brazil, this would take a heavy
toll on companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, permanently changing how
internet companies are started as well as how the internet is used in general.
Brazil is supposed to voting on this law today or tomorrow
so I will update news in the comments section or if anyone beats me to it feel free
to comment. I am interested in thoughts
on the impact of this happening and of course any and all updates on the matter
concerning these countries as well as others not mentioned.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/nsa-spying-allegations-put-google-on-hot-seat-in-brazil.html
