Professor warns about agency that will regulate digital after Lula's decree

The creation of new decrees that establish rules for the actions of so-called big techs places the ANPD (National Data Protection Agency) at the center of the debate on digital regulation in Brazil. In an interview with Agora CNN, Carlos Affonso, law professor at UERJ (State University of Rio de Janeiro) and specialist in technology and the internet, warned of the importance of the body's independence and contextualized the scope of the new measures.

When detailing the structure of the ANPD, Affonso explained that the agency was created in 2018, linked to the General Personal Data Protection Law, with the mission of monitoring and sanctioning practices related to the processing of personal data.

Over time, it took on the format of a regulatory agency, which implies greater budgetary autonomy and directors with functional independence. However, the expert highlighted that the directors are appointed by the President of the Republic and that, currently, two directorship positions are vacant. "It is a regulatory agency with directors who are appointed by the president", he pointed out.

The professor also highlighted that the ANPD has accumulated new duties in recent times. She started to oversee the so-called digital ECA - the law protecting children and adolescents on the internet - and now, with the new decrees, she gains competence to deal with content moderation and platform governance.

"The ANPD, with these new decrees, becomes the true regulator of digital issues in Brazil", he stated. For him, the agency tends to become the most popular among Brazilian regulatory agencies.

Internet: space separate from current legislation?
Affonso highlighted that there is a recurring mistake in the discussion about internet regulation: the idea that the digital environment would be a kind of separate territory, disconnected from existing laws.

According to him, Brazil has had legislation applicable to the network for more than a decade. "The Civil Code, the Penal Code, the Consumer Protection Code, the laws apply on the internet. The internet is not a spaceship hovering over the highlighted reality of what happens every day", he stated.

The expert also questioned the second premise commonly repeated in the public debate: that what is a crime outside the network must be reclassified for the digital environment.

For Affonso, this separation is unnecessary and wrong. "When legislation says something is a crime, that applies to what happens both on and off the screen. Being on the internet is being in the real world", he highlighted.

Adjustments, not reconstruction from scratch
When asked about the need for new specific laws for the internet, the expert argued that the most appropriate path is to adapt existing legislation, and not to create an entirely new legal framework with each technological advance.

He recognized, however, that some specificities of the digital environment - such as the speed of information circulation and the way users interact with content - justify specific adjustments. "It's much more adaptation work than there is," he said.

Artificial intelligence and fake nudity: what changes with the decrees
Affonso also addressed the issue of unauthorized sharing of intimate images, clarifying that article 21 of the Marco Civil da Internet already provided, since 2014, for the liability of platforms that did not remove this type of content after reporting it.

What the new decrees add is, among other points, the definition of deadlines for the removal of content and the regulation of the use of artificial intelligence to generate false nude images.

"You take an image in which someone is dressed and ask to take the person's clothes off. Of course, this is already prohibited by law", he explained. The decrees now require that platforms that provide applications with this functionality prevent this type of use, reinforcing the protection of people's image rights and privacy.

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Source: CNN