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Desecuritization, Cyberpolitics and the Brazilian Civil Framework for Internet

Civil Society
Cyber Politics
Democracy
Latin America
Public Policy
Security
USA
Constructivism
Tiago Vales
Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra
Tiago Vales
Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra

Abstract

The recent denounces of electronic espionage by the American National Security Agency (NSA) brought to public by its former employee Edward Snowden provoked some bilateral and multilateral tensions among many countries. This situation highlighted some debates concerning the security in cyberspace and the safety and protection of privacy in Internet. In this context, two main reasons put Brazil as one of the most visible actors in this discussion. Firstly, the US espionage acts focused on many national leaders or heads of governments around the world and Brazilian leaders - including high representatives as the president Dilma Rousseff - had their e-mail accounts and personal files intercepted by US. In addition, on the other side, Brazil was committed to domestic and international initiatives promoting governance as a means of protecting the cyberspace and the right of privacy of public and private actors in cyberspace. The spy complaints ended up strengthening the Brazilian initiatives for the governance of cyberspace. This work intends to analyze the Brazilian behavior and interests on this issue of governance of cyberspace through the lens of Securitization Theories. By asking how the discourse concerned on the security of cyberspace helped Brazil to formalize its interests and policies, this work argues that while Brazil started a desecuritization process of cyberspace that could be understood as the approbation of the “Legal Framework for the Internet”, this same set of rules may contribute, at the same time, to a re-securitization of cyberspace as it shows no clear limits to the state or government actions on this field.