Explaining Brazil #231: Hacking Brazil’s chief electoral justice

Shortly after the violent January 8 riots in Brasília, which saw pro-Bolsonaro radicals storming government buildings and demanding a military coup, Brazil’s federal police searched the home of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres — and they found the draft of a presidential decree that would put the top electoral court under a “state of defense” and allow the far-right former President Bolsonaro to launch a coup d’état.

Then, last week, a pro-Bolsonaro senator told a prominent Brazilian magazine that Bolsonaro had tried to recruit him as part of a plot to wiretap head electoral justice Alexandre de Moraes. The idea, which the judge himself described as a fool’s errand, was to secretly record Justice Moraes in the hope that he would say something to raise suspicion about last October’s electoral results.

Taken together, the two events provide evidence of a coup plot at the heart of the Bolsonaro government. But bombastic revelations from The Brazilian Report this week have added new elements to this conspiracy.

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Background reading on the plan to hack Brazil’s chief electoral justice:

• Read our special report about the operation to hack into Brazil’s chief electoral justice’s cell phone, by Amanda Audi, Gustavo Ribeiro, Euan Marshall, and Ana Ferraz. We also have a Portuguese version of the story.
• In 2019, Walter Delgatti gained notoriety for hacking into the Telegram accounts of hundreds of authorities. Messages exchanged between federal prosecutors and a federal judge ahead of Operation Car Wash were published by The Intercept Brasil — and helped weaken criminal cases against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Remember the case.
• In a cyber defense ranking that includes the 20 largest economies in the world, Brazil comes in 18th. Government systems were penetrated three times during the pandemic alone, suggesting the country still underestimates cybersecurity risks.
• Last year, Brazil’s Federal Accounts Court published a booklet about the high-risk situation that federal public agencies continue to face with regard to cybersecurity.

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• #elections
• #justice