Anatel tells Moraes it will use police power to take websites offline

The president of the Superior Electoral Court, Alexandre de Moraes, inaugurated this Tuesday (12) a new department to combat “fake news” and hate speech in elections. The Integrated Center for Combating Disinformation and Defense of Democracy (CIEDDE) will bring together members of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the Public Ministry, the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) at the Court’s headquarters.

At the inauguration, the president of Anatel, Carlos Baigorri, said that the body will be “teamed 24 hours a day” to guarantee “clean” elections, without disinformation.

“Anatel will use the full extent of its police power with communications companies to take down all websites and applications that are attacking democracy through disinformation and the use of artificial intelligence to deepfakes”, he said at the ceremony.

The Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, whose portfolio has ascendancy over the Federal Police, said that the primary function of the new body is educational, but that repression could also be carried out to curb abuses in electoral campaigns

“Although it has this primordial aspect of having this pedagogical and educational vocation, the Brazilian State will not hesitate to use its police power as a last ratio [último recurso]and then the Ministry of Justice will be a partner in this, if legal limits are exceeded”, said Lewandowski. He added that the participation of the MP and OAB would guarantee that the new body would not be “censorious”, but would serve to “promote democracy “.

Before, he celebrated the harmony between the Executive and the Judiciary achieved in the partnership.

In February, Moraes announced that he would form a partnership with the ministry to track down people who were attacking democracy. The measure has not been detailed since then, not even at Tuesday’s ceremony. The president of the court refused to answer questions from the press.

In his speech, he stated that the center will take a “leap in efficiency” to comply with the Court’s new resolution that regulates electoral propaganda in elections. The standard prohibits deepfakes (cloned images or audios of real people, with false speeches) and obliges social networks to remove, before a court decision, what the TSE considers to be misinformation, whether about electronic voting machines or about candidates and parties in the dispute.

As shown by People’s Gazette, the resolution applies rules not approved by law, still under discussion in the Censorship Bill, and contradicts the principle of the Marco Civil da Internet, which only provides for removal of content through analysis and judicial decision on each manifestation identified as illicit. With the resolution, social networks must act on their own initiative, which, in the opinion of experts, can increase censorship, even on legal or legitimate content, to avoid as much as possible any punishment by the TSE.

The president of the TSE said that the objective of the resolution and the center is to guarantee voters’ freedom in choosing their representatives and government officials. “This will has been attacked virtually, by digital militias that, through fake news intends to distort the free market of ideas with anti-democratic speeches. We are taking a further leap in this fight from the moment that disinformation was steroided by artificial intelligence,” said Moraes.

To house CIEDDE, the TSE reserved a room in the headquarters building, where representatives from the bodies will begin to meet monthly from this month onwards, biweekly in September and permanently in the weeks of the first and second shift. The partnership, however, already provides more immediate communication between the bodies. According to the Court, representatives of social networks may be invited to participate in meetings.