Online anonymity in Brazil: identification and the dignity in wearing a mask

• Ano de defesa: 2017
• Autor(a) principal: Monteiro, Artur Pericles Lima
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Anonymity; Freedom of Speech; Internet; Intimidade; Liberdade de expressão; Privacidade; Privacy
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/2/2134/tde-10122020-214152/

Anonymity has long been held in disrepute by Brazilian constitutional law literature, which typically assigns it no value. Prevailing scholars insist on an interpretation of the constitution which reads an identification requirement into the clause on anonymity. The internet presents a challenge for this understanding of freedom of expression. This dissertation addresses that challenge by adopting an interpretive approach. It starts by considering what the implementation of that reading of the constitution would look like in practice, exploring the strategies adopted by the Press Act of 1967. Calling into question, both for pragmatic and substantive reasons, whether those strategies would be available if applied as a general imposition on communication, the argument turns to other practices admitted by Brazilian law, or explicitly provided by the constitution, that are inconsistent with the reading of an unrestricted identification requirement. What the anonymity clause means is thus shown to turn on a question of value. We must consider that question in light of the best theory of the point of our constitutional rights, particularly freedom of expression. By adopting a constitutive justification, which connects it to democracy, to political legitimacy and, ultimately, to dignity, we appreciate that anonymity must be protected by freedom of expression just as any part the content of the speech would. Identification is expressive, and so is anonymity. The internet makes this patently clear by enabling anonymous personal communication, which creates the possibility of \'anonymous intimacy\'. This approach of constitutive justification of freedom of expression also serves us well in our understanding of the right to privacy. It provides us with the best basis for why surveillance is wrong, even when it is successful. So conceived, the right to privacy insists that government must not interfere with the private lives of individuals in a manner which is inconsistent with dignity. Having rejected the identification paradigm, the dissertation then offers a reinterpretation of Brazilian law as regards online anonymity tools, anonymous platforms and anonymous content.