Will Brazil Censor Tweets?

Brazil could become the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor Tweets at government request.

The move has sparked alarm among privacy groups, who fear governments will use the same policy to silence dissenting voices.

The Brazilian government has requested an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police road blocks, speed traps and drunk-driving checkpoints.

Free-speech groups say it appears to be the first use of Twitter’s controversial new censorship policy.

Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow governments to censor Tweets, making ‘illegal’ Tweets completely invisible in their native countries.

The move sparked alarm among free-speech activists, and Twitter has been closely watched to see which countries will use the facility to ‘silence’ people within their country.

Previously, Tweets worked on a global level – if someone Tweeted in one country, it was visible everywhere.

‘As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down,’ said Eva Galperin of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

Galperin, who described the foundation as ‘a digital liberties organization,’ predicted other world governments will be taking similar opportunities to censor Twitter traffic.

‘Twitter has given these countries the tool and now Brazil has chosen to use it,’ she said.

‘One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice,’ Twitter wrote in a blog post when it unveiled the changes.

‘We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The tweets must continue to flow.’

Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues Alves, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office, said the injunction request was filed Monday.

He said a judge was expected to announce in the next few days whether he will issue the order against Twitter users.

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that tweeted alerts about police operations jeopardize efforts to reduce traffic accidents and curb auto thefts and the transportation of drugs and weapons.

According to the statement, traffic accidents throughout Brazil kill 55,000 people each year and cost the country 24.6 billion reals, or about $14.3 billion.

If the judge rules in favor of the injunction, anyone who violates it could be hit with a daily fine of 500,000 reals ($291,000), the statement said.

San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. said in an email that it had ‘nothing to share on this issue.’

Under Twitter’s new policy, unveiled last month, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there at a government’s request.

But it adds that censored tweets will still be seen elsewhere.

Twitter has said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives.

It said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal.