Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Brazil is Keeping its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet

posted by LaminatorX on Friday October 31 2014, @02:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the take-my-ball-and-go-home dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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.

http://gizmodo.com/brazils-keeping-its-promise-to-disconnect-from-the-u-s-1652771021

[Additional Coverage]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/brazil-to-portugal-cable-shapes-up-as-anti-nsa-case-study.html

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Brazil is Keeping its Promise to Avoid the U.S. Internet | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 34 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday October 31 2014, @03:41AM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Friday October 31 2014, @03:41AM (#111781)

    I'm hoping the next step they take is to extract themselves from Microsoft. If you're a non-US government concerned in any way out security, you shouldn't be using Microsoft products. They play *way* too well with the NSA.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @04:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @04:58AM (#111794)

    500,000 seats in Brazil's public school system. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [lwn.net]
    That was 2011. I suspect it's even larger now.
    The closest things I've heard is IBM's 300,000 and Panasonic's 300,000 (a client of IBM).

    Here's a Brazilian corporation with 53,000 employees running on Linux. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [mrpogson.com]

    Brick & mortar retailers were Linux-friendly in Brazil earlier than their counterparts elsewhere. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [mrpogson.com]
    (I like the additional comment by Agent Smith.)

    Brazil is pretty awesome in a lot of ways.
    Some Radical Approaches That Have Worked in a Country Almost the Size of USA [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [organizingupgrade.com]

    -- gewg_