Tech Roundup: Brazil joins international cybercrime convention

This week: Brazil joins the Budapest Convention on cybercrime after last week’s government hacks. Will Open Finance ever take off in Brazil? A study of black startups shows diversity is still missing in Brazil’s innovation environment.

After hacker attacks, Brazil joins Budapest Convention on cybercrime

About a week after multiple hacks of the Health Ministry and over 20 other government agencies caused havoc in Brasília, senators approved Brazil’s ratification of the Budapest Convention — the first and most-used international agreement to deal with cybercrimes.

Why it matters. The 20-year-old Budapest Convention facilitates international cooperation in fighting cybercrime. The treaty has 66 signatories and is used by a total of 158 countries as the standard guidelines for national cybercrime legislation.

• In its early years, the convention was largely geared toward fighting pedophilia and international organized crime. However, with a dramatic worldwide increase in financial extortion and ransomware attacks, its main focus has changed.

Red flags. The recent hacks were not the first of their kind against the Brazilian government, which only shows how unprepared Brazil is to deal with cybercrime, despite having powerful data protection legislation.

• But, while Brazil’s data protection laws are comprehensive, the country has struggled to enforce them. Data Privacy Brasil researcher Daniela Eilberg told a congressional hearing that international standardization on the matter is, undoubtedly, important.
• However, “Brazil’s adherence to the entire convention standard without a broad and technically mature debate on applicable reservations on specific themes and provisions represents a serious risk to the harmony of the national regulatory framework related to digital rights,” she explained.
• Before Brazil became a signatory of the convention, Ms. Eilberg pointed out the National Data Protection Agency (ANPD) should already be less submissive to the executive branch and that the country should already have clearer ideas about a Criminal LGPD,...