The Glass Asylum: Big Brother Brasil

He’ll build a glass asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He’ll build a better whirlpool
We’ll be living from sin, then we can really begin
–Bowie, “Big Brother”

I have been inoculated — by Greg House, M.D. —  against TV Globo’s Big Brother Brasil 10 (BBB10), but not even X-men mutant antibodies can shut down the virus completely.

Every newspaper in Brazil dedicates about ten times as much space to developments in the “show of life” — references to The Truman Show are common — than they do to the details of pending legislation. A random sample of top news items as selected by the Google News algorithm:

Corinthians F.C. is the grand champion of the moment, but the “unprecedented” paredão — putting someone up against the paredão means executing them by firing squad — that ousted Angêlica is 2.5x more important than whether or not avian flu is a pandemic.

The show is hosted by “actor-journalist” and former filmmaker Pedro Biale, co-host of Globo’s Sunday night infotainment magazine, the aptly named Fantástico. See, for example

• Biomagnetism: TV Globo Debunks Itself

TV Globo (Fantástico) debunks “quack science” that TV Globo (Fantástico), in a past report, has uncritically endorsed.

My favorite example is this moment from another Fántasico segment:

Voiceover: Corruption is genetically determined! Just ask this doctor!
Doctor: Corrupt behavior is mainly the result of environmental influences later in life.
Voiceover: QED! The corrupt are born corrupt! Corruption is a disease without a cure!

Pedro Biali of Fantaśtico and BBB10: "Actor-journalist." Fact is fiction. Gabba gabba HEY!

These idiots are too lazy even to line up an expert who will actually corroborate their thesis. They simply declare that black is white and move on with their brainless diatribe.

The references to The Truman Show (Truman: o show da vida) in critical discourse on, and promotional copy for, the program — which can be hard to differentiate — prove once again that some Brazilians are completely tone-deaf to cultural irony.

The utopian planned community of Alphaville, here in São Paulo, Sambodia, for example, derived its name from the dystopian sci-fi flick of the same name by Godard.

Still, no notebook on the current cultural moment in Brazil is complete without some reference to this virulent meme, and so I offer two vignettes fresh from the morning papers.

First, digital democracy Globo style.

Digital Democacracy, Globo-Style

O blogueiro José Mello, de Limeira, no interior de São Paulo, decidiu fazer uma campanha ousada contra o lutador Marcelo Dourado, participante do “Big Brother Brasil 10″.

Blogger José Mello of Limeira, in upstate São Paulo, has decided to launch a daring campaign against fighter Marcelo Dourado, the BBB10 contestant.

O paulista criou um endereço na internet que ganhou repercussão rapidamente por oferecer um prêmio a quem votasse para eliminar Dourado do programa.

The São Paulo resident created a Web site that quickly generated buzz when it offered a cash prize to those who vote to eliminate Dourado from the program.

Source: Folha Online, which links to the site so you can go claim your easy money.

Sambodian Snooping: Who Bugged the Toucan Man?

DEIC started investigating the illegal scheme in 2004. At that time, a group was discovered in which 5 state judicial policemen were involved. They would forge court orders authorizing the use of wiretaps and hand them over to the telephone companies.

Polícia aponta esquema de grampo ilegal e prende nove: In a case they have been working with their usual maximum efficiency for five years now, São Paulo anti-organized crime police up and arrest nine persons engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of politicians, business rivals, and unfaithful spouses.

Uma operação da Polícia Civil de São Paulo desbaratou quadrilhas de dois detetives particulares que quebravam ilegalmente sigilos telefônicos, bancários e fiscais. Os dados eram usados em espionagem industrial e investigações sobre infidelidade conjugal.

An operation by the state judicial police of São Paulo broke up the criminal conspiracies headed by two private detectives who illegally invaded the privacy of banking and tax records and telephone conversations. The data collected was used in industrial espionage and investigations into spousal infidelity.

Having recently read Bruno Lima Rocha’s (nearly unreadable) study of one celebrated case of industrial espionage and media scandal, the “BNDES Wiretaps” (above), I’m reminded of the author’s main conclusion.

The Brazilian press tends to treat the leaking of illegal wiretaps (to the Brazilian press, often) as a scandalous exception to the general way of things, but in fact it is standard operating procedure for a corrupt permanent state security apparatus that remains oriented toward surveillance of “the internal enemy.”

In that BNDES case, for example, some of the Brazilian intelligence officials found guilty of producing the wiretaps — published by the Editora Globo’s flagship newsweekly with great fanfare — which suggested the 1997 telecoms privatizations may have been “steered” by senior government officials, were found to have been working second jobs as private detectives.

They were even listed in the telephone book as offering telephone surveillance services.

Same here: Five São Paulo state policemen were allegedly misusing their authority to invade the privacy of persons being probed by private investigators … much as the late Sen. Magalhães would use his pull with prosecutors in Bahia to add the names of his political enemies to the list of wiretap targets in criminal cases they had nothing to do with.

Uma das vítimas dos criminosos foi o deputado federal José Aníbal (PSDB). “Isso vem confirmar que o grampo ilícito está se tornando um problema muito grande no país. Milhares de pessoas podem estar sendo vítimas desse crime”, disse ele.

One of the victims of the criminals was federal legislator José Aníbal (PSDB). “This just confirms that illegal wiretapping is becoming a very big problem here in Brazil. Thousands are being victimized by this crime,” he said.

Dantas’ Inferno and Veja’s Source: Fortes on the Chief Justice’s Private Spy Shop

OCULAR PROOF OF THE IMPENDING APOCALYPSE: “They are watching us. Even the Presidency and the Supreme Court suspect they have been targeted for espionage. No one is safe. This is the end of privacy in Brazil.” The principal basis for this hysterical Veja magazine report, dated 13 August 2008, is a bug-sweep report from the office of security of the Supreme Court. Now there is a question about whether or not a military officer serving in that office might have been recruited to help the cause of Daniel Dantas, through contacts with a Dantas henchman just convicted of bribing a federal agent. Hmmmm. Very odd.

Cirillo says that handing the report over to Veja was agreed on in a meeting among Gonçalves, Special Operations chief Ailton de Queiroz and press officer Renato Parente. They agreed to give Veja the report on the condition that the document not be reproduced, so that the signatures on it could not be identified.

“Who or What Is Bugging Gilmar Mendes?”

A fascinating conundrum upon which oceans of ink have been spilled here in Brazil.

Luis Nassif went out and bought CartaCapital magazine — I should just break down and subscrbe — before I did today.

Reporter Leandro Fortes follows up in detail on an intriguing detail contained in the ruling this week that found Daniel Dantas and two co-conspirators guilty of bribing a federal police agent:

That one of Dantas’ co-conspirators was in contact with a military intelligence specialist hired to provide security to the Brazilian Supreme Court.

See

• Dantas’ Inferno: Did Daniel Have a Man in Supreme Court Security?

Among the many interesting features of this established fact is that this very same office leaked a document to Veja magazine supposedly “confirming” that the Chief Justice had been bugged — allegedly, according to the Chief Justice himself, at the behest of the lower-court judge in the Dantas case.

The story appeared in the August 13 edition of the magazine (above) and included a facsimile of a bug-sweep report from the office where this friend and colleague of the convicted cop-briber worked.

The two had worked together at the Instituto Sagres, an NGO (an OSCIP, in local parlance) set up by former military men and offering strategy and intelligence services. Sort of a local version of STRATFOR, I guess.

Fortes reports on the dealings with Veja over the leaking of the document, providing some insight into how this neo-Lacerdist fountain of disinformation goes about its dirty business.

I translate Nassif’s paraphrase for the record. It will have to do for the time being.

A Carta Capital desta semana traz matéria de Leandro Fortes com Sérgio de Souza Cirillo, o ex-assessor de segurança do Supremo Tribunal Federal que mantinha contatos com Hugo Chicarone – o lobista que tentou subornar o delegado da Polícia Federal.

CartaCapital this week has a report by Leandro Fortes on Sérgio de Souza Cirillo, the former security aide to the Supreme Court who maintained contacts with Hugo Chicaroni, the lobbyist who tried to bribe a federal police investigator.

Segundo a matéria, antes de Mendes assumir a presidência do Supremo, em 23 de abril de 2008, a segurança dos Ministros e do Tribunal dependia da Coordenadoria de Segurança e Transportes, ligada à Diretoria Geral da casa. Mendes desfez à estrutura e criou a Secretaria de Segurança, diretamente subordinada à presidência. “Ou seja, criou seu próprio grupo de arapongas”, diz a matéria.

According to Fortes, before Mendes became Chief Justice, on 23 April 2008, court security was handled by the Security and Transport Coordinator, part of the court’s general administration office. Mendes undid that arrangement and created a Secretary of Security, directly subordinated to the Chief Justice’s office. “That is to say, he created his own group of intelligence officers,” the article says.

Dantas’ Inferno: Pandemonium as Sea of Leaks Precede a Crucial Week

TERROR AT THE SUPREME COURT. Veja, August 2007. “It is intolerable, this atmosphere we live in, with the abusive conduct of federal agents or agencies deeply enmeshed with the machinery of the State. Generalized wiretapping is an indicator of, and an exercise in, authoritarian politics,” says Justice Celso de Mello. “Supreme Court justices react to the suspicion of wiretaps in the highest court in the land.” The story was immediately publicly discounted by its principal source at the court, who said the only concrete indication he had of wiretapping at the Court had proven to be a crude hoax e-mail. Ecce Veja.

Also according to Veja, Queiroz was “prophetic” in saying: “News reports will come out that we bugged the Supreme Court or that ABIN did …”

… the internal disciplinary board of the São Paulo federal courts is investigating whether Judge Adriana Pileggi Soveral of the 8th Federal Criminal Bar of São Paulo passed details of the operation to Dantas defense attorney Nélio Machado.

Attribution to another publication … cannot serve as license to print rumors that would not meet the test of The Times’s own reporting standards. Rumors must satisfy The Times’s standard of newsworthiness, taste and plausibility before publication, even when attributed. And when the need arises to attribute, that is a good cue to consult with the department head about whether publication is warranted at all. –The New York Times, Guidelines on Integrity

Protógenes sabia de habeas corpus no STF: Police inspector Queiroz knew in advance of Daniel Dantas’ applications for a habeas corpus writ in the Supreme Court!

The Folha de S. Paulo reports, parroting anonymous leak-based reporting by O Globo and Veja magazine.

Caveat lector: Veja is possibly the least credible news source in the Western Hemisphere — second only to the U.S. news outlets who vouched for the credentials of Martin Eisenstadt, perhaps.

Queiroz is the federal police investigator who arrested banker Daniel Dantas, former São Paulo mayor Celso Pitta and investor Naji Nahas in July of this year on money laundering and related charges.

Dantas has already been charged with attempted bribery of a federal agent, and an indictment on financial fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and so on, is said to be imminent.

After the arrests, Queiroz was taken off the case and replaced with the money-laundering expert Ricardo Saadi.

The meeting with top federal police leadership during which he was taken off the case was recorded. A portion of the tape in which he appears to be resigning voluntarily was published. Later, he complained formally that he was forced off the case.

The entire of the recording of that meeting apparently leaked to Veja and O Globo for publication at this strategic juncture in the case. Veja and O Globo published more selective excerpts from the recordings, just as as a judgment against Dantas on the bribery charge is due to be handed down this week.

Also this week: Efforts to remove the judge in the Dantas case — whom an op-ed in the Estado de S. Paulo recently described as “Nazi-inspired,” amazingly — are due to be decided.

Veja.com blogger Reinaldo Azevedo — the permalink points to the wrong post, unfortunately — repeated the “Dantas judge is a Nazi” meme in his most recent column, where he writes

Eu acho que Dantas não vai dançar. Ele pode até se dar bem. O delegado Protógenes e o juiz De Sanctis, resta evidente, meteram os pés pelas mãos. Pecaram por ideologia e incompetência. Pelo visto, eles queriam menos punir as eventuais ilegalidades de Dantas do que testar a elasticidade do estado de direito.

I think Dantas is not going to go down. He could even get off. The police investigator, Queiroz, and Judge De Sanctis quite obviously botched the job. They sinned on the side of ideology and incompetence. It seems they were less interested in punishing alleged wrongdoing by Dantas than in testing the limits of the democratic rule of law.

On Azevedo, see also

• Ecce Veja: The Designated Blogger on Dantas’ Inferno

The Estado de S. Paulo chimes in with a story, based on the same hearsay — it merely cuts and pastes what O Globo and Veja reported — headlined “Queiroz’s words increase suspicion that Supreme Court was wiretapped.”

The Folha is not prepared to go quite that far, noting that according to its own reporting, the feds already had e-mails, obtained under a court order, in which Dantas’ legal strategy was discussed among his lawyers.

Therefore, the implication seems to be, the information could have been obtained without wiretapping the Supreme Court.

Protógenes sabia de habeas corpus no STF

Queiroz knew of Supreme Court habeas corpus

Em reunião da PF, delegado disse conhecer estratégia da defesa de Dantas, mas não especificou como obteve tal informação

In meeting with federal police superiors, Queiroz said he knew Dantas’ defense strategy, but did not specify how he obtained this information.

It is, however, prepared to print the usual gabbling hearsay and rumors just because they appeared in Veja.

Mendes afirma não “haver fato novo, só confirmação do que já se sabia; havia espionagem no gabinete do presidente do STF”

Chief Justice states “there are no new facts here, just a confirmation of what was already known: the office of the Chief Justice was spied on.”

In a sidebar to this coverage in the Folha, sources at Dantas’ Opportunity asset management house allege that Queiroz’s investigation into Dantas — which Queiroz formally complained was stripped of official funding and resources after a change of leadership at the federal police — received improper outside private funding from business adversaries of Dantas interested in seeing him prosecuted and ruined.

“I am a victim of political persecution” has been the constant tenor of Dantas’ defense.

Opportunity is ranked 20th in assets under management among Brazilian investment banks.

A Operação Satiagraha, desencadeada em julho pela Polícia Federal, tinha um “trabalho de inteligência” que apontava para a concessão de um habeas corpus no STF (Supremo Tribunal Federal) em favor do banqueiro Daniel Dantas. A revelação foi feita pelo delegado Protógenes Queiroz na reunião que selou o seu afastamento do comando das investigações, em 14 de julho, na sede da superintendência da PF de São Paulo.

The Satyagraha investigation … had “intelligence work” that indiciated the Supreme Court would grant a habeas corpus writ to Dantas. The revelation was made by Queiroz in the meeting that determined his suspension from the case, on July 14, at PR headquarters in São Paulo.

A expressão usada pelo delegado, segundo reportagens da revista “Veja” e do jornal “O Globo”, consta da íntegra da gravação da reunião realizada entre Protógenes e seus chefes na PF, como o diretor de combate ao crime organizado da direção geral da PF, em Brasília, Roberto Troncon, e o chefe da divisão de combate aos crimes financeiros, Paulo de Tarso Teixeira. A íntegra da gravação, de três horas e 50 minutos, não foi tornada pública.

The expression used by Queiroz, according to reports published in Veja and O Globo, are part of the recording of the meeting between Queiroz and his superiors, including organized crime director Troncon and financial crimes director Teixeira. The entire recording, 3 hours and 50 minutes in length, has never been made public.

Luis Nassif: The Supreme Court Correspondence

"To Heck With Ethics." The Chief Justice called the article on his alleged conflicts of interest "hired-assassin journalism." But Leandro Fortes is an honorable man.

Did someone bug the Chief Justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court?

It has been widely reported that the Brazlian National Intelligence Agency did, but because the evidence is slim to nonexistent, the message is ambiguous — and the messenger even more so.

Brazilian economic and business commentator Luis Nassif has been carrying on a fascinating online colloquy with the press office of the Brazilian Supreme Court recently on the subject.

I say “fascinating” because it is unusual for a public institution — much less the Supreme Court! — to engage in an open debate in a public space — much less with a mere “blogger”!

(Nassif is, of course, actually a seasoned professional: He also works as a TV commentator and syndicated columnist, and runs a seminar and news-service business of his own. But it is as a “blogger” that he has gotten the most attention lately.)

It is testimony, I suppose, first of all, to Nassif’s perceived influence as an “opinion maker.”

But try to imagine this as well: Chief Justice John Roberts makes an intensive round of press appearances claiming that They are out to get him, and that just because the FBI and Secret Service can find no evidence of malign actions by Them does not mean anything. The FBI and Secret Service could well be in it on it. [Cue theme music to The X-Files].

Justice Roberts might as well be wearing a tinfoil hat, you might be tempted to conclude. (It might be easier to imagine this if you pictured Clarence “High-Tech Lynch Mob” Thomas rather than the poker-faced and highly decorous Roberts.)

But something analogous is going on here in this intense information campaign being carried out by the Brazilian John Roberts.

You might conclude from this behavior that Brazilian judges do not get taught in judge school that ex parte remarks and colloquies tend to undermine the majesty of the law and create the impression of conflicts of interest.

But I am told by my sources that you would be wrong. There is a perfectly good Portuguese translation for the phrase, “Do your talking from the bench.” And judges are instructed, under the enabling legislation for the judicial branch, to follow it. Some feel they should not have to, though.

The specific context for the following: Nassif had noted a news item that raised the possibility that the Chief Justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court had himself been the source of a number of uncorroborated rumors (published in Veja magazine) that the Supreme Court was being illegally bugged, Nixonian plumbers-style.

Nassif raised the suspicion that the Chief Justice — a controversial figure for various reasons — had planted these rumors as part of some sort of a crude, preemptive disinformation campaign designed to position him as a victim.

A reader today takes the time to summarize the debate.

I translate for my running notes on the whole byzantine affair.

Esse jogo de perguntas e respostas em posts diferentes ficou confuso. Tomo a liberdade de organizar um trecho e repetir alugmas perguntas não respondidas.

This back and forth [between Nassif and the court spokesperson] has gotten confusing. I have taken the liberty of organizing a selection from the conversation and repeating some questions that have yet to be answered.

Nassif perguntou:

Nassif asked:

1. Quais as evidências que levaram o presidente do STF, Gilmar Mendes, a levantar a hipótese de grampo em diversos Ministros ou mesmo uma conspiração de tomada de poder – conforme reportagem de antes de ontem do jornal “O Valor”, do jornalista Raymundo Costa?

1. What was the evidence that led the Chief Justice to raise the hypothesis that various justices of the Court had been bugged, or even that there was a conspiracy to seize power, according to a report by Raymundo Costas, published the day before yesterday by Valor Economico?

Brazilian Bugging Brouhaha: The Return of the Ministry of Silence?

Good book to dust off and re-read: Figueiredo's "The Ministry of Silence."

Após grampo no STF, Lula manda demitir e enquadra a Abin: “After bugging of the Supreme Court, Lula orders firings and pressures ABIN.” The Estado de S. Paulo reports.

The remarkable thing about this entire saga — a contemporary Brazilian version of COINTELPRO — which broke in Veja magazine based on a single anonymous source, is the insistence by many news organizations that picked it up that it was a proven fact that ABIN, the Brazilian federal intelligence agency, conducted the wiretaps.

This is by no means a proven fact, as Luis Nassif pointed out yesterday.

What there may be in this case is another spectacular case of insubordination by permanent state bureaucrats to democratically elected leadership.

In the wake of an astonishing protest recently against the possibility of reviewing Brazil’s 1979 amnesty law for “political crimes” — see Rio de Janeiro: “Scenes from an Old Folk’s Home for Traumatized Cold Warriors” –  it may not be surprising that former elements of the military dictatorship still hanging onto their public-sector sinecures might be running little coup games again.

That is what this Estado report suggests: That the “R2s” were behind the bugging.

O ministro-chefe da Segurança Institucional, general Jorge Felix, à qual a Abin é subordinada, disse ao Estado que já conversou com o presidente Lula sobre as providências a serem tomadas. “Conversei com o presidente e pedi ao procurador-geral da República (Antonio Fernando de Souza) que, da parte do Ministério Público, investigue o que está havendo”, disse o general.

The minister of Institutional Security, General Felix, to whom ABIN is subordinated, told the Estado that he has spoken with President Lula about the measures to be taken. “I talked with the president and asked the federal attorney (Mr. Souza) to investigate what is going on here, through the Public Ministry (federal prosecutor’s office).

“Paralelamente, está sendo feita uma sindicância na Abin. Uma coisa é certa: tudo indica que houve uma gravação, porque os dois interlocutores reconheceram o teor da conversa. Se foi a Abin, pode ser e pode não ser. Mas que houve a gravação, houve. Quem fez isso será punido”, afirmou o general. Ele disse que condena esse tipo de atitude e que ela não será tolerada. “Não tem nenhum sentido fazer alguma coisa fora da lei”.

“At the same time, an internal investigation is going on at ABIN. One thing is certain: All indications are that there was a recording of a call, because the two participants in that call recognize the content of the conversation. Whether or not it was ABIN, it could be or it could not be. But that there was a recording, there’s no doubt. Whoever did it is going to be punished,” said the general. …

No Palácio do Planalto e entre funcionários da Abin, no entanto, existe a grave suspeita de que agentes egressos do antigo Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI), o serviço secreto criado pelo governo militar, estejam por trás dos grampos nos telefones do Supremo.

Inside the presidency and among ABIN employees, however, there is a serious suspicion that former agents of the old National Intelligence Service (SNI), the secret service of the military regime, are behind the wiretaps on the telephones of the Supreme Court.