Brazil considers DP bill again
The Brazilian government is again discussing the possibility of creating a data protection agency and a data protection regulation. According to Pablo Palazzi, a solicitor at Allende & Brea, Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Data Protection Bill, drafted nearly two years ago but never introduced to Congress, may now be opened again. The Bill has been debated and discussed in academic fora during the last two years. The debate around the US National Security Agency's surveillance of Brazilians may well be the spark that will help Brazil to finally be able to join the data protection club, Palazzi says.
Meanwhile, a Mercosur meeting of foreign ministers has introduced the idea of requesting foreign companies to locate their servers in the region (for example, in Argentina or Brazil) as a condition to operate in Mercosur countries (the same happened with Blackberry in India a while ago). Mercosur is a political and economic agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
"The requirement of installing servers locally seems to be only an idea that may never materialize as it is unenforceable", Palazzi writes in his blog.