Lovely, indeed!

Now, thieves are stealing CCTV cameras! And I always thought CCTV cameras were to protect people, assets, whatever.

RFID-license plates are coming!

São Paulo Mayor, Gilberto Kassab, announced that his city will be the first Brazilian city to implement the National Automated Vehicle Identification System (Siniav), a privacy-eroding system made up by chips embedded into license plates and RFID readers throughout the city. It will cost roughly R$ 300 mi ( US$ 166 mi) to be fully operative.

Surprisingly, a privacy-oriented opposition to the system has emerged in Brazil since the National Council of Transportation (Contran) laid down an ordinance creating Siniav. Kassab denied São Paulo's Siniav is going to be a "Big Brother". However, transportation officials from Kassab's City Hall said it's difficult to keep the massive amount of data secret. Moreover, officials from the very deparment also said Siniav isn't hacker-safe.

Quite a good riddance!

My favorite assemblyman (Sarcasm Index: Very High), Carlos Gomes (PPS) introduced a bill, PL 317/2007, to take Act 12714/2007 out of RS' statute books. Act 12714/2007 requires every cardholder to produce a government-issued ID card in order to perform any credit or debit card transaction. This Act outraged both cardholders and store owners, with several clients stopping short of assaulting shopkeepers.

Bill 317/2007 will exempt every card transaction of mandatory ID exhibition but non-PIN credit cards. I hope some day Mr. Gomes apologized Gaúcho people for his legislative nutjob.

This is for sure the very cause of the Brazilian Air Mess

Brazil's National Civil Aviation Anarchy Agency, a.k.a. National Civil Aviation Agency, (Anac) rolled out a new ad campaign called as "Identity Campaign". Yeah, I wrote it right! Anac is spending lots of money to remind passengers that their privacy and liberty to travel are being fettered by outrageous Civil Aviation Instruction 107-1002/2002, which demands government-issued ID cards to every person who wants to board an airplane. I wonder how important this issue should be, as key areas of air traffic are left in utter neglect.

It's about to time to start a new campaign, Brain Campaign, which would require mandatory MRI scan in every person applying for a job befor Anac.

Este post tem uma versão em português:
"Deve ter sido que causou a crise aérea"

"Quasi-battery" cases

Rio Grande do Sul Legislative Assembly enacted into law one of the dumbest bills ever: Bill 83/2007, which requires mandatory producing of government-issued ID card at every commercial transaction with credit or debit cards. Bill, currently Act 12714/2007, also mandates writing down ID card number on credit or debit card slip. Failure (or refusal) to produce ID card might lead to refusal of the card, or even annulation of the commercial transaction.

Now, the Porto Alegre Chamber of Commercial Managers (CDL-POA) is assessing legal remedies to overturn the Act. CDL-POA says customers are acting furiously when asked to produce ID card, retorting stores' employees, and in some cases, stopping short of assaulting stores' personnel, or, like CDL-POA said, "[engaging in] quasi-battery cases".

This blog has also dennounced the unconstitutionality of the Act, calling the Attorney-General's Office for an inquiry about this Act. For this time being, my complaint is being analyzed by the Deputy Attorney-General for Juridical Issues.

Just for comparision purposes, Section 1748.08 of the California Civil Code forbids such a practice.

Este post tem uma versão em portugês:
"Casos de 'quase-agressão'"

Kids' fingerprints are safe again!

fZero Hora (newspaper) reported this Monday that a national program to track school attendance by massive use of fingerprints is everything but inoperative. Zero Hora said School Attendance Tracking System (Safe, in its Portuguese acronym) was relinquished and many of the related paraphernalia is deteriorating in some storage room. In March 29 of 2006, 94 public schools of Capão da Canoa and Gravataí received each one a computer to run the system and, a fingerprint-plus-contactless card reader. 15 months later, such devices are stored away in those schools’ cabinets. Luiz Moschetti School [in Capão da Canoa] Principal, Lurdes Silva, said:

“[T]here were some days in which system worked properly, but in other days, system didn’t work at all. In December [of 2006], system shut down entirely. They said they would replace the fingerprint reader, but nobody showed up and, I'm not sure whether someone will show up [and replace broken fingerprint reader].”

Riachuelo Educational Institute in Capão da Canoa, one of the biggest public schools in Rio Grande do Sul’s Northern Coast, many students hadn't received the identification card and, fingerprint reader was installed within a metal box whose key is now missing. Institute’s Clerk, Marlene Correa, said “[fingerprint reading, attendance tracker] program went nuts all the time. Moreover, many students haven’t received ID cards and several students lost their cards.” In Gravataí, Nicolau Chiavaro Neto State School received a computer but not the fingerprint reader. An unidentified school officer ironically said “[we, the school] are looking forward [the reader]”.

One of several smoking guns of Safe’s failure was Brazilian government’s refusal to discuss it. Ministry of Education says the responsibility of Safe’s operation falls under National Educational Research and Study Institute’s scope. So does Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro), which was in charge of setting up Safe’s infrastructure. Inep said Safe was a Ministry of Education issue. After three contacts by Zero Hora reporters, Ministry of Education said “Attendance Project [umbrella project of Safe] no longer exists and it was absorbed into Educacenso [a nationwide census of school students]”. Both Ministry of Education, Inep and, Serpro declined to discuss Safe’s costs, which would cost anything ranging from US$ 55,000,000 to US$ 66,000,000 to set up Safe infrastructure (computers, fingerprint readers, ID cards and, related IT) throughout Brazilian public schools.

iGnoring the facts

There is no such a revenge as truth. Senator Delcídio Amaral (PT-MS) sponsors a bill (PLS 279/2003) requiring all e-mail providers to have customers' CPF numbers produced. Bill also set heavy penalties for those (either ISPs or citizens) that fail to produce such a number. CPF is the Brazilian counterpart for American SSN.

For this time being, there is no legal requirement of what information ISPs have to demand from their clients. However, iG does require customers' CPF in order to provide e-mail, blogs, internet access and so on. iG says that this requirement is necessary to protect (sic) identities from real users and to avoid the use of email for criminal purposes. Is that so? Let's check out a list with some topshots of Brazilian society:

• Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil
• Geraldo Alckmin, former Governor of São Paulo and current presidential candidate
• Eduardo Azeredo, Federal Senator
• José Serra, former Mayor of São Paulo and current gubernatorial candidate
• Lula, current President of Brazil seeking for re-election
• Marta Suplicy, former Mayor of São Paulo
• Roberto Marinho, late owner of TV Globo.

I do wonder why Lula, Cardoso do need that amount of e-mail in a free service when they have a huge infrastructure behind them. It's the smoking gun that iG policy is a crappy, totalitarian one.