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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

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @04:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 31 2014, @04:51PM (#111946)

    To everyone who's saying this is a waste because they'll be spied on anyway, understand that this cable was planned before ANY revelations came forward. They are not building the cable to work around the spying, they are building the cable to increase their carrying capacity to Europe. This was already in the works. The only change is they're punishing the US economically as much as they can, and spending more money domestically as much as possible, to increase their domestic expertise and help local businesses as much as possible, then going to Europe/Asia for vendor support. This is a good thing for Brazil. Even ignoring the spying issues entirely, this is a good thing for Brazil.