MidnightBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, has quietly updated its README to reflect a new geographic restriction. The project has added a clause that bars residents of any country, state, or territory with OS-level age verification mandates from using MidnightBSD
Controlling people in the way you mean goes all the way back to “Revolta das Vacinas” and the higienistas. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is digital control over what people do. You think Brazil doesn’t have the US technology to control what people do over the web, but look at all the Amazon and Oracle datacenters that keep appearing on Brazil.
It might not be direct technology transfer, but it is at least licensed to process brazilian info and, if with Bolsonaro, to help the government with direct knowledge against public interest.
CPF, fingerprint, photos,… that’s all well knowledge of fingerprinting the citizen. But what about the digital fingerprint? That could be much larger: what you do, your psychological profile, and what you do on your free time.
Can you imagine; all those companies in contract with the government. Suddenly they have access to your profile and how you respond to everything. I’m not talking directly about the democratic government here, since it doesn’t matter if it is Lula or Bolsonaro on this. But you have to keep in mind that the personal interest, by which I mean the interest of the peoples initiative, association and expression, is defended by the left, not the right.
You’re in for a surprise if you think the government doesn’t want absolute control. In an age where people use their phones, are constantly online. Maybe you will find out there people who “just want to get in peace to their homes”, or “just want to be left alone”, or that the basic for life is “being able to walk carelessly on the streets”. It’s the complete reversal of what is human and what we need to be human: connection, food, water, development.
People need education and knowledge, but more than that, people need the right to build, the right to tinker, the right to find out who they are, the right to find out what’s best for everyone in society and for their own groups, the right to participate democratically.
None of which are guaranteed in Brazil right now, and certainly won’t be with Bolsonaro. Don’t be surprised if Bolsonaro talks trash of the Fediverse or of what the radical left thinks is freedom of expression and association.