Publishing information on the Internet under a pseudonym or a so called nickname is very common today, but we’ve earlier seen how China is trying to control the flow of information from its Internet users by forcing them to register with their real names. That China did this was hardly a surprise considering its views on the Internet and the freedom of speech. However, they are not alone as a Brazilian senator, Eduardo Azeredo, has proposed a quite controversial law, which would more or less put an end to Internet users’ privacy and anonymity.
The proposal says that you can get up to four years in prison for spreading a trojan or a virus, collect data from banks or networks without permission, but apparently it will also become illegal to send out e-mails, enter a chat or post in a blog. You will have to identify yourself for any kind of use while at the same time ISPs will save logs of all Internet users traffic up to 3 years. In other words, your Internet habits will be monitored and saved for 3 years, hardly what one would call democratic.
“The bill states that every user must fully identify herself before using the Net, with full name, current address, phone number and the equivalent of the Social Security Number. To access the Net without providing this information, or to give false information, will also be a crime.”
This is still just a proposal and we can only hope that the bill won’t pass, but it’s interesting to see what some politicians think of the Internet and the use of it.
