The possibility of Telegram being vetoed in electoral campaigns this year because it does not have a representation in Brazil to receive and comply with court orders has entered the agenda of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). as showed the Estadãoa group from the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) more connected to the fight against cybercrime had been defending this interpretation internally and advising the other prosecutors in this regard.
The president of the TSE, Luís Roberto Barroso, will take the topic for debate with the other ministers when he returns from recess. In a note released by the Electoral Court, he states that “no relevant actor in the 2022 electoral process can operate in Brazil without adequate legal representation, responsible for complying with national legislation and judicial decisions”.
On December 16, Barroso sent a letter to Telegram, via email, requesting an audience with Pavel Durov, founder of the Dubai-based company. He wanted to discuss cooperation against the misinformation that circulates on the app and affects confidence in Brazilian elections.
Barroso was ignored. At least four mailing attempts were also unsuccessful. The court does not intend to send a representative to the company because it has information that the office in Dubai does not have a de facto representative of the company. Only a small group of low-ranking employees work on site.
Telegram represents today one of the main concerns for this year’s electoral disputes. Without local representation, the platform is beyond the reach of Brazilian justice, and experts point to the risk of it being a channel for the dissemination of fake news, attacks on institutions and hate speech. Investigators also complain that the app does not cooperate even in national investigations into crimes such as apology for Nazism and pedophilia.
The idea of prohibiting the operation of services without representation in Brazil, with a view to the election, is based on an interpretation of the provisions of the 1997 Elections Law and the TSE resolution on electoral propaganda. The texts require that candidate, party and coalition “sites” be hosted on an internet provider established in the country. Telegram and other services such as Gettr, Parler and Gab would be included in this rule, in the interpretation of MPF members.
However, the thesis is not the majority. It faces resistance among specialists and even within the TSE. In sectors of the court, there are those who consider that the applied understanding of the law and the resolution is to “force the bar” to try to solve a complex problem.
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In November, the Estadão was in the building where Telegram’s Dubai office is located. There is no apparent identification that the application operates from there. The headquarters are located on the 23rd floor of a commercial office complex, in Tower A of the Business Central Towers. Building security did not allow entry to the report.
Telegram is close to the emirate’s business center, in a modern high-rise region that the sheikhs developed to attract technology and telecommunications companies. The neighborhood is known as the Internet City, next to the Media City, and there are the headquarters of local and multinational telephony operators such as the North American Oracle and the Chinese giant Huawei.
The application was transferred to Dubai after clashes with the Russian government, on the grounds that it would have tax advantages there. One of the founding brothers met with the royal family that rules the emirate – the meeting, in April, was with Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum.
“To be truly free you must be prepared to risk everything for freedom,” wrote Pavel Durov, who often posts cryptic pictures of life in the desert, on social media.
fake news
Responsible for elections in Brazil, the TSE is pressured to adopt strategies that make disputes take place fairly, and that the internet is not used to erode the credibility of the process. Among the main pre-candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, who will run for reelection, has encouraged his supporters to migrate to Telegram, where he has more than one million followers.
Despite the arrival and growth of other pre-candidates on the app, Bolsonaro is a skyrocketing leader in the number of connected followers. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been intensifying actions to contain fake news and hate speech, especially in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic and drawing up their own rules for the election period, but there is no news of any change on the part of Telegram.
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