Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office until 2030
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
[1] - https://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/politica/2023/01/50659...
Remember what the TSE judge-king said? The voting machines are "unquestionable". It's trivial to raise reasonable doubt against such standards of perfection if you bother to look. The military audit for one said the voting machine software's makefile would download unaudited libraries off the network and link them to the final binary. It's fruitless to try to convince laymen who barely understand what source code even is of the importance of that fact but I'm sure anyone here on HN will appreciate the potential for a supply chain attack on the voting machines. You know, the very same type of attack people submit blog posts here on HN about every few months, same attack vector that compromises developers of big tech corporations. Faced with such criticism, they should have released the signed binaries that ran on election day so we could reverse engineer them. Instead, they grepped the report for the words "there was fraud", didn't find it and censored everything as "fake news". Literal censorship. You call this a democracy?
You apparently forgot all about the relentless, nearly unilateral censorship campaign against Bolsonaro in the months leading up to the elections. Lula defends abortion but it's fake news to claim he did. Lula is friends with communist dictators but it's fake news to say he is. Lula is a socialist himself but it's fake news to say he is. Lula was condemned by multiple judges for corruption but it's fake news to say he was. Only yesterday he went to his communist forum and openly said he's proud to be called communist. I just saw news that there will be "military exercises" with the countries of Lula's dictator friends, hell he welcomed the Venezuelan dictator on our soil.
You call this a democracy? These supreme court judges are openly biased and they think nothing of blatantly unconstitutional political censorship. Who are you supposed to turn to when your supreme court judges start openly shitting on the constitution? I'm supposed to believe my country even has laws after witnessing that? Whatever bullshit the judge-kings write on their paper is law.
I'm not convincend this coup nonsense is anything but smoke and mirrors. Actually I wish these people had the balls to attempt it. Given the entire justice system turned into this circus, only the military could possibly bring order to this mess. As far as I'm concerned, the judiciary planned and executed their own coup, they practically named Lula president. Even you admit it yourself: "Even though the superior courts have a political nature".
Big day for brazilian democracy? We aren't one. It's a judiciary dictatorship. They're working to censor Bolsonaro friendly radio stations right now. Ever seen a democracy do that?
Selective outrage judiciary system is a hallmark of Tier-3 dictatorship.
That means that government's law enforcement, spy agencies, and other instruments directed at combating criminal activities inside the country or unfriendly regimes -- are now turned to be used against political opposition.
Selective outrage judicial system, obviusly means that justice is not blind. That, in turn means -- the justice is lost.
Tier 2 dictatorship -- will be legislative changes curbing dissent (in both elections into legislative bodies and the laws themselves around elections, financial instruments, etc).
Tier 1 -- will be constitution changes solidifying the extended rule of one or several individuals for unlimited amount of years.
I'm seeing subtle tier 1 shades as well. Lula and his people used official government social media accounts to celebrate Bolsonaro's fate. That's prohibited because it implies they are the government but they did it anyway.
Your post will fall on deaf ears. As leftists, they hate Bolsonaro and love Lula. So they'll cheer this on. Simple as that.
Same way they loved Chavez before he destroyed Venezuela.
The political nature of superior court in Brazil is disgusting and will destroy the democracy.
I watched god knows how many politicians get arrested. I saw one get caught with dirty money in their literal underwear. Now I get to watch the supreme court presided by these same judge-kings erase everything they did one by one, and censor anyone who reminds people of facts because they're "spreading fake news". I get to watch Lula give them government positions where they make about 30x what the average brazilian makes on salary alone. That's the "father of the poor" right there.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just cancel the election and choose the President themselves?
For the next presidential election, any not-too-exteme right wing candidate has great odds of beating Lula, if he were to run for reelection.
I mean Lula can beat anyone if the Supreme Court keeps this up.
If Bolsonaro had not made fun of covid victims and needlessly spilled hate on every other word that came from his mouth, he'd be the current president of Brazil.
A moderate right wing candidate will likely win for 2026, just like an hypothetical moderate Bolsonaro would have won last year.
The US has its own analogy: FBI interference with the Hunter Biden investigation, as documented by the IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, while heavily prosecuting Trump. You don't need to be a MAGA flag waving GOPer to see there is some imbalance there.
To recap the non-exhaustive list of what went down with the DOJ:
- Tipped off Hunter Biden's legal team about a search warrant on his storage unit
- Prevented investigators from executing a search warrant on his house
- Ordered a "cease and desist" on investigating Hunter during the 2020 election
- Prevented investigators from asking questions about the "big guy"
- Verified his laptop was real in 2019 and then went to Big Tech and told them to censor it during the election
- And didn't even have the key witness in the case testify before the grand jury.
This is simply how it works, not just in Brazil. The deep state isn't neutral, how could it be?
[0] https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/167486766474371892...
I hear about Hunter Biden 100 times more than Kushner.
I'm all for equal applications justice. I see lots of pure-evil privilege, modern indulgences for the gentry.
I think all finances of a President, justice, and Congressperson and their family should be public and in a blind trust. And severe criminal liability for any attempts to enrich themselves.
If you don't like it, don't run.
Everything else creates perverse incentives and attracts parasites.
That's essentially what they did. As far as I'm concerned, they named Lula president.
Please note that I’m not claiming fraud here but the sheer arrogance of the Brazilian government in positioning themselves as a source of truth. “It’s safe because I say so”. Am I being unreasonable? Here is a decade spanning thread of the Brazilian government trying to convince Mozilla to accept their super CA audited by… themselves: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825
So just open source it and add a feature citizens can verify the firmware. It will shut up the rightoids or any future sore losers of course but it will also bring the attention to every field related researcher on the planet to find the ugly vulnerabilities and shitty software quality and they don’t want that.
And why the hell something that decides the future of a country the side of Brazil is closed source and kept in secrecy? No other reason than conceiving a terrible job I would say but while I’m assuming incompetence I can’t also blame whoever claims foul.
> “It’s safe because I say so”.
That's not quite the case. There are members from different parts of society, including regular civilians, who audit the system. Moreover, the political parties (the most interested parties in this whole thing, arguably after the general public) all have representatives who can audit the system.
O procurador regional eleitoral deve indicar, então, um representante do Ministério Público para acompanhar os trabalhos da comissão. Os partidos políticos, as coligações, a Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB), o Congresso Nacional, o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), a Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU), o Departamento de Polícia Federal, a Sociedade Brasileira de Computação (SBC), o Conselho Federal de Engenharia e Agronomia (Confea) e os departamentos de Tecnologia da Informação de universidades também podem indicar representantes para acompanhar os trabalhos do grupo.
The regional electoral attorney must indicate a representative of the Ministério Público [0] to follow the works of the committee. The political parties, the alliances, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB), the National Congress, the Supreme Federal Court (STF), the Controladoria Geral da União (CGU), the Federal Police Department, the Brazilian Society of Computing (SBC), the Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy (Confea) and the IT departments of universities may also indicate representatives to follow the works of the group.
Link: https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2020/Dezembro/ve...
So you see, there's a lot of space for people from outside of the Government, the Electoral Court and the political system in general to take part in the audit proceedings.
I personally know someone who has followed the audit process. He's also fighting for opening up the source code but has vouched for it. In fact, one of his arguments for opening up is precisely the fact that the audits have all come out well (with observations for improvements).
> Proceeds to mention the few government and government related entities that can audit the system.
> I know someone...
...
Seriously I'm appalled if you think your arguments are reasonable.
That's a very classic brazilian response, to have trust and faith in the smart people doing the work for you. It's probably a scar from the times of dictatorship.
I don't trust. I want to verify.
> I don't trust. I want to verify.
Please re-read the very first sentence in my original comment. Hopefully uou'll see that we agree in this point.
> None of those institutions operate outside of the government sphere of influence
No one is outside of the government's sphere of influence. What that committe is, is a reunion of many different organisations with different points of view and participation of people from all levels of society.
I would hope that you don't think Bolsonaro's PL and the PCdoB (Communist Party of Brazil) both have the same interest in defrauding the elections or letting a bad system stay in place. SBC, Confea and the universities all have regular people, some of whom any one of us know, are or have worked or studied with.
That's where the "someone I know" anecdote comes in.
I'm not saying anyone should believe or trust this random person who's an aquantaince of another random person on an Internet forum. It's just an anecdote to illustrate a point. There's no need to be rude about it.
> Seriously I'm appalled if you think your arguments are reasonable.
That's your prerrogative, I have no power over what appals you.
> That's a very classic brazilian response
This is prejudiced and offensive. Please refrain from this kind of comment.
> to have trust and faith in the smart people doing the work for you.
Not my point, but please tell me how much auditing and verification you do on every single other aspect of your life. Or do you trust people "smart people" to, I don't know, write your banking software? The e-commerce websites you buy from? The banking system behind payments and transfers? The systems that hold your investments, your pension... Please, I'd love to hear about all of that auditing and verifying you do.
> It's probably a scar from the times of dictatorship.
I have no idea what you mean by this. It honestly makes the opposite of sense to me, but if you could elaborate a little, perhaps you'd help me understand.
By sphere of influence I mean payroll and permission to operate. Even so it's not true considering anonymous and foreign researchers or pretty much anyone who can clone a git repo on the internet.
> What that committe is, is a reunion of many different organisations with different points of view and participation of people from all levels of society.
You don't seem to understand how problematic is this idea that there are groups of people who are guaranteed to have the populations best interest in mind. All while in the payroll of the entity they are supposed to audit.
I get you trust such a committee but you shouldn't expect everyone doing the same.
> This is prejudiced and offensive. Please refrain from this kind of comment.
Its not. I am brazilian and have lived over there for a long time. I'm guessing you are too so you are familiar with the term "carteirada" don't you? You on the other hand is condescending:
> Not my point, but please tell me how much auditing and verification you do on every single other aspect of your life.
I verify signatures for every important software I download. Even if I don't there are tools doing this for me like package managers. My main work basically hovers around verifying data every 10 minutes or so. Chances are your computer boot loader and most of its applications are signed.
But somehow for voting we just trust the pros?
And this is besides the point. If a normal citizen cannot attest and verify for the trustworthiness of the digital election system that is deciding the future of his life for the next 4 years then the system is flawed and you can't really blame the people who are calling it a sham.
> I have no idea what you mean by this. It honestly makes the opposite of sense to me, but if you could elaborate a little, perhaps you'd help me understand.
"Don't question. Just trust the authorities" is a scar of a time where such things would put you in jail. The idea that a normal citizen cannot interfere in government affairs and instead leave it to a group of elites is common in dictatorships.
I don't even know why are you arguing about this. Why are you trying to convince me into trusting third parties when we agree the best solution is to have government release the source code and let anyone audit it?
But that's te thing, everyone and every organisation needs permission from the government to operate. Even you as an individual do. You have to pay taxes, you have to abide by rules and regulations, you are not allowed to purchase or operate certain substances or equipment unless you have the proper permits etc.
In terms of payroll, unless you mean that every single individual in every organisation that's in the committee are somehow being paid by the electoral court, I don't understand your point. Even in the last elections, when the administration was fiercely attacking the whole process, the auditors still came out with a positive analysis of the system. If the government had that much power over them, how come the committee didn't side with the government?
> You don't seem to understand how problematic is this idea that there are groups of people who are guaranteed to have the populations best interest in mind.
I don't think they're guaranteed to have the best interest of the population. I'm of the opinion that they have a very broad set of points of view, some widely opposed to others, and they still all come out with overall positive analyses of the system. There are proper technical people doing those analyses, and they're just regular people. They could be myself, or yourself. Which is, again, the point I was making about actually knowing someone, a regular individual, who has been part of the committee.
> you shouldn't expect everyone doing the same.
I don't. I don't expect anything from anyone. You're free to trust or distrust whomever you like.
> I am brazilian and have lived over there for a long time.
This doesn't shield you from being prejudiced against Brazilians. Surely you've heard the phrase "complexo de vira-lata" (loosely translated, for the foreign audience, "stray dog complex").
Your comment was:
That's a very classic brazilian response
> I'm guessing you are too so you are familiar with the term "carteirada"
Surely am. That's usually when individuals use their position to get around limitations that apply to most people, as if they belong to a superior caste. I don't see how that's related to the voting autit committee.
> I verify signatures for every important software I download.
Do you verify the entire chain? Or do you trust someone to attest validity of keys at some point?
> You on the other hand is condescending
Fair point, apologies for the snark.
> Even if I don't there are tools doing this for me like package managers.
Which again are based on trust. Trust that the developers who signed the packages are in fact trustworthy. Trust that the package manager doesn't contain bugs that could make the verification process moot, or have been compromised otherwise.
> Chances are your computer boot loader and most of its applications are signed.
By a supposedly trusted entity.
I bet you also trust that Intel ME or whatever equivalent your CPU has is not doing anything malicious, or that your BIOS/UEFI system is not working against your interests in any way, right?
Have you taken a peek at your browser's trusted CAs? I bet there's scary stuff in there, and you trust them implicitly by using the browser. I'm almost certain you haven't vetted each of those CAs, and even if you did, you're still trusting that they haven't been compromised since then.
> But somehow for voting we just trust the pros?
Not just for voting, as I have hopefully demonstrated above.
> If a normal citizen cannot attest and verify for the trustworthiness of the digital election system
As opposed to how it was before? I have some scary stories to tell you about the old school paper ballot counting.
> you can't really blame the people who are calling it a sham.
I'm not blaming anyone for anything. Just pointing out that in my opinion it's wildly exagerated, and trying to demonstrate why that's how I think.
> "Don't question. Just trust the authorities" is a scar of a time where such things would put you in jail.
That's not me, I guarantee you that - and I will point out that it's again prejudiced of you to assume so.
> The idea that a normal citizen cannot interfere in government affairs
My idea actually comes from the opposite point-of-view: that the government serves the "normal citizens". The government cannot be seen as the enemy. They need to be seen as our employees, and the people need to act like such. Yes, that still means we need to push for better public auditing, for better systems, for improvements all around. We absolutely should. After all, they work for us.
> Why are you trying to convince me into trusting third parties
I'm not. :)
> we agree the best solution is to have government release the source code and let anyone audit it
That we do!
Our difference in opinion seems to be just about how good or bad the current system is.
You are wrong about package trust. It is indeed signed by people but anyone is still able to verify it, even obscure blobs like IME. The same can't be said about the firmware of the voting system audited by a few chosen.
Mentioning CAs is a straw since there are degrees of trust. A let's encrypt certificate on acesso.gov.br (I guess in the end they gave up on trying to shove that bogus CA?) just means the host matches the certificate. The contents are malicious.
And about where we disagree you trust a set of governmental entities to audit the government while I find the idea preposterous.
[1] Equivalent in the US would be the Government Accountability Office, according to user vulcan01 (thanks!)
I will not be satisfied until they release all the signed binaries that ran on the machines on election day for the whole world to see. None of this "nothing but pen and paper" bullshit imposed by the courts either, we have reverse engineering tools for a reason. What are they so afraid of?
They should have to prove beyond shadow of doubt that this system is not compromised. Open source both the software and hardware and release the binary artifacts used on election day. Let the whole world take the whole thing apart in Ghidra. If the system is so "unquestionable" as the judge claims, no one will find anything wrong with it. If that happens, I'll never again speak of this matter.
What do they do instead? Censorship, arbitrary fines, intimidation, persecution.
How do you know this? I thought it was all inauditable! Also, what does it matter if "the build system links" whatever libraries, if said libraries are not used by the program? Or do you admit that the source code would in fact show that usage? If it's the latter, then I suspect the answer to your very first question should be obvious.
> I will not be satisfied until they release all the signed binaries that ran on the machines on election day for the whole world to see.
Good stuff! Neither you nor I should be satisfied!
Note:
As for the rest of what you wrote, I won't engage. I've already seen plenty of your behaviour on this website and it's mostly of the "enraged Facebook/WhatsApp uncle" / "old man shouts at clouds" / "someone is wrong on the Internet" type. If you'd like to discuss more of the above, in objective terms or subjective but civil, I'm happy to do so. Otherwise this is my last comment on this branch of the comment tree.
It says so on the military's audit report.
They observed network connections during the compilation of the voting machine software. Software libraries that have not been audited are downloaded and linked.
> I thought it was all inauditable!
I never said that. I only ever claimed the audits were insufficient. Especially TSE's limited "pen and paper" audits. I even gave you an example of an audit I personally would deem sufficient.
> Also, what does it matter if "the build system links" whatever libraries, if said libraries are not used by the program?
If you link malicious code to your binary, it's pretty much game over. Of course it matters. Are you saying the libraries aren't linked to the voting machine program? How do you know that?
> Or do you admit that the source code would in fact show that usage?
I admit nothing of the sort. I state that it's precisely the opposite. You can have perfectly good source code and still end up with a malicious result. Earliest example of such a thing is of course the famous text Reflections on Trusting Trust. More recently, there are numerous examples open source software libraries with malicious code shipped to package managers like npm and pypi. Supply chain attacks that have compromised people from this very site. One of the reasons reproducible builds exist is to mitigate exactly that attack, it works by establishing cryptographic relation between the compiled binary and the source code used to build it.
> I've already seen plenty of your behaviour on this website and it's mostly of the "enraged Facebook/WhatsApp uncle" / "old man shouts at clouds" / "someone is wrong on the Internet" type.
Look who's prejudiced now.
If you don't want to reply to me because you don't like me or what I think, I'm okay with that. It's not acceptable for you to paint me as some unthinking moron though. Perhaps I came across as "uncivil" in my words because of my disgust for the status quo but I never did anything of the sort to you. My hatred is reserved for the brazilian institutions which I perceive as total failures. So either refute what I said or leave it be but don't accuse me of being some "enraged WhatsApp uncle".
I also wonder how far states will distort democracies using the judicial system, until humans decide they ve had enough and replace politicians with AIs
I have my own take, but then again it is heavily influenced by my own bias. It's hard to share an unbiased opinion here.
The idea that Lula is using his political power to take Bolsonaro out of the game is laughable, IMO.
This elite in Venezuela is responsible for keeping Maduro where he is today. And its Brazilian counterpart is responsible for releasing Lula from prison and making him a president within a 2 year time span.
Maduro and Lula cannot do any of that by themselves.
I doubt Lula is calling up Superior Court justices and telling them what to do-but he doesn’t need to. It is like the 2000 US case of Bush v Gore-all the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices voted for Bush, all the Democratic-appointed justices voted for Gore. The first outnumbered the second, so Bush won the Presidential election. Neither candidate or party ordered the justices to vote a particular way-they didn’t need to.
The US court system has been corrupted by politicisation. The same appears to be true of Brazil-and Argentina too. Indeed, I wonder if there is any judicial system in the Americas which is free from that disease. (Canada, maybe?)
Huh? He literally said he ran for president out of a petty need for revenge against everyone who wronged him. Everything he said he would do, he's doing right now. There was even a torture and assassination attempt against the judge who convicted him and his family about a day after he openly and publicly said he was going to fuck the guy.
* the new "Great Reset"
China is going to be a meaningful player no matter how far in the dumps they get, and India is doing fine.
The rest? lol.
Both countries are going to work to their individual interests like they do today.
If you are left-wing, this was actually a terrible day. If you disagree, you are not paying attention.
I still don't consider this a good day though. This blatant and shameless persecution and censorship makes a mockery of the very concept of justice. They had to bury the constitution to do this. Why should anyone take this circus seriously after all this?