The Brazilian Supreme Court has upheld the ban on X/Twitter as well as efforts to crack down on VPN usage in the country.
Last week, we reported on a Brazilian judge who ordered the blocking of X/Twitter. While the events leading to that ruling wasn’t all that surprising given Elon Musk’s poor handling of the situation (like his handling of pretty much everything else with his platform), what was especially eye-brow raising was the effective banning of VPN services, threatening users with fines if they use such services to access the platform.
Such an order would be considerable collateral damage considering the many legitimate uses of VPN services – both in the general public and within the business community. We’re treading on pretty dangerous territory with something like that. The good news, though, is that the VPN part of the ruling was temporarily held back. While that part is at least a small bit of good news, the fact that going after VPN services was even considered in the first place is definitely troubling.
Today, we are learning that the Brazilian supreme court has not only upheld the ban on X/Twitter, but also the fines associated with using a VPN service. From CTV:
A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.
The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as a renegade and authoritarian censor of political speech.
The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for having failed to name a local legal representative as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded US$3 million, according to his decision.
The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users, and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.
De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais (US$8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court to review that provision.
But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes.
Unless the report is wrong, then it appears that we are witnessing the criminalization of using a VPN in Brazil. That, honestly, is pretty scary and will no doubt be a shocking development to the business community operating in the country. I would definitely agree with that one judge. Unless it can be shown that an actual crime is being committed with the use of a VPN, then it’s completely insane to prosecute someone for simply using a VPN in the first place. That doesn’t make any sense at all.
What’s more, I’m still struggling to see how something like this is going to be enforced. Unless someone is spying on an individual through a window using binoculars, finding that they are using Twitter on a computer, then calling the cops on that person, how exactly does one go about policing such a thing in the first place? What are they going to do? Ask ISPs to perform deep packet inspection to detect anything going to a VPN service? Even then, do you really think the bigger and reliable VPN services haven’t thought of that and found a way to thwart such a thing? Heck, even file-sharing clients pre-dating BitTorrent worked on thwarting such efforts.
Again, there is nothing illegal about using a VPN service as far as I’m concerned. If people want to use such services, the most you’re going to be able to do is tell them what the real strengths and weaknesses of a VPN service actually is. If the use of the VPN is simply to change the location of your detected connection, then I say, “fly at it”. What’s more, if you are using encryption to help protect your personal information, you are not a criminal for doing so. There is nothing wrong with asking for a bit of privacy and to suggest that only criminals use encryption technology is grossly misleading at best.
At any rate, while the events leading up to the X/Twitter ban is understandable, the moves to restrict VPN services is a huge misstep in Brazil. It will come back to bite authorities sooner or later.
To find out who to fine, Brazil will simply order Twitter to tell them which Brazilians are using Twitter.
Or try and order VPNs that don’t keep logs to divulge their logs to authorities. XD