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Brazil - April 22th 2014 - We from Saravá Group are worried about arbitrary and reckless action of the Public Prosecutor's Office. The Office is requesting access to content we host.

Saravá is a group offering technological infrastructure and political reflection to civil society for ten years[0].

Our main research topic is the construction of safe autonomous communication systems respecting the privacy of our users and the democratization of this knowledge[1].

Earlier this year, we became aware of repeated requests from the Public Prosecutor's Office for access to our server hosted at Campinas State University (Unicamp). The Federal Police made these requests to Unicamp without a court order, supposedly to investigate alleged misconduct.

Despite the intervention of the Unicamp Rector to avoid a new server seizure as occurred on the past[2], the police insistence leaves us apprehensive about the security of the websites and mailing lists we host.

This week, Brazil provides an example to the world by organizing and leading a meeting to discuss the future of internet governance[3]. But these actions show that our country is in fact behind other nations in the development of freedom of expression and privacy on digital media.

Ironically, the State that approves the Marco Civil Internet bill to protect Brazilian users against police state measures is the same that in practice does the opposite of their own policies.

We reiterate that our server is used for legitimate social activities. There is no justification for compromising the privacy of all our users to get specific information that is allegedly stored in our server.

A huge part of this content is, by its nature, online and publicly available. It is unnecessary to request a copy of content that is already supplied automatically. Additionally, to respect to the privacy of our users we don't record acess information of users connection.

We demand an immediate halt of this police attack against our server and our users's data.

More than ever, it is time for the Brazilian Government to give an clear example that it respects and protects the privacy of Internet users.

The whole world is watching.

Saravá Collective
contato AT sarava.org

[0] Saravá principles: https://www.sarava.org/en/principles
[1] As an example, see the initiative: https://policy.sarava.org/
[2] Seizure of Saravá server on 2008: https://www.sarava.org/en/node/46
[3] NETmundial: http://netmundial.br

Source: https://www.sarava.org/en/node/99