Rio de Janeiro: GatoNet Goes to Anatel Hell!

The paramilitary Netroots. Source: Bobagento, who suggests that the Traffic in Rio is running underworld ISPs. Reports suggest, however, that it is more likely the militias — who will shoot you if you try to shop around for another content provider.

PF estoura empresa clandestina de TV por assinatura (G1/Globo): Federal police and the Brazilian FCC (sort of), Anatel, bust another pirate TV operation in the shantytowns of Rio. This time it was satellite. Al-Jazeera and DirecTV, that sort of thing.

The blogger Bobagento is doing some blogging on the GatoNet phenomenon — including reporting on militia-controlled broadband Internet acccess. It echoes disinformation, I think. I will try to translate some of that, and see if I can find any other Baker St. Irregulars doing good clipping on the subject:

Rio – Depois do ‘GatoNet’ — desvio de sinal de TV a cabo — , uma nova modalidade criminosa com o uso de tecnologia está sendo explorada nas favelas: o fornecimento clandestino do serviço de banda larga da Internet. Se as TVs ilegais são mais operadas pelas milícias, a Internet, por sua vez, tem a participação do tráfico. Nesta quarta-feira, mais um ‘provedor’ clandestino foi localizado pela polícia, desta vez na Cidade de Deus, Jacarepaguá. Segundo a polícia, cerca de 400 assinantes usufruíam do ‘gato’.

After GatoNet — illegal tapping of cable TV signals — a new criminal business model for technology is being implemented in the shantytowns: underground ISPs. If the illegal TVs are more often operated by militias, the Internet is the province of the Traffic. Last Wednesday, another clandestine “ISP” was located by police, this time in Cidade de Deus, Jacarepaguá. According to police, the “cat” had nearly 400 subscribers.

Jacarepaguá is reportedly “the paradise of the militias,” however. Was this really the Traffic?

Probably not, I would say. Recreio dos Bandeirantes, after all, is where they “shredded the documents” on Inspector Tostes of the state police. See Rio: Tostes is Swiss Cheese on Toast.

Comments Bobagento:

É o tráfico ajudando o Governo no Programa de Inclusão Digital. Enquanto o primeira fornece banda larga o outro barateia os computadores.

This is the drug traffic helping the Government with its Digital Inclusion Program. The traffic provides broadband and the governments helps make computers cheaper.

The government recently rolled out a new program that forces ISPs to offer affordable Net access plans. See Brazil: Affordable Bandwidth Plan Announced.

Bobagento assumes the Traffic is doing this, but as he does not fail to note, it has more often been associated with non-narco vice-funed paramilitary death squads, and the Eastern Zone — out by the airport, guarding tourist access to the Green Zone of the Zona Sul and the facilities of the Pan-American Games — has a reputation as entrenched militia territory from way back.

So who knows? Perhaps the hard men compete for slices of this information-age hog heaven, like Apple and Microsoft (both of them now with Intel inside). But I have not seen a firm quarterly report on the state of market share yet, so I am flagging these reports for a second iteration through the informational Six Sigma loop.

A gato (“cat”) is an illegal or unauthorized hookup to the power or information grid, from the expression puxar um gato (“yank a cat”). Tapping a power box or signal distributor is like grabbing a cat by the tail and yanking it. Makes sense, right?

The PF crusade against informal and clandestine open-air broadcasting and has been unpopular with proponents of pirate radio as a way of leveling the playing field against the mainstream media.

They recently borked an informal WiFi network in Brasília, for example, that uncannily resembles the business plan of Spain’s FON.

See also Hard Men. Hog Heavens. A Latin American Corruption Newsreel for another look at professional media produced and distributed on behalf of organized anarchocapitalist sociopaths.

As much as I dig the romance of pirate radio myself, as an old college radio disc jockey (“The Joey Dharma Drive-Time Crosstown-Traffic Jamorama” and the educational “Uncle Egghead’s Radio Reader”) this actually seems to me like a coherent enough policy to follow.

Provided that it comes in tandem with the major reform of the media landscape that is under discussion now, with reform of concessions and the creation of creatively and editorially independent public broadcasting entitites.

The “formalization of the informal economy” — along some of the same lines explored by Hernando de Soto before his reputation was stained by association with Fujimorism — was a major topic of debate in last year’s presidential election.

On the wild and wooly saga of the mafia-paramilitary pirate cable TV network known as GatoNet, and other manifestations of “informality” in the market for urban and information infrastructure needed to operation such indispensable modern appliances as cheap PCs and the rational human brain, see also

• Sampa Diary: The Phone Co. and the Phony Co.
• Rio: GatoNet Goes Dark; Alleged Militia Chieftain Netted
• “Militia Laundered Money”: From the Rio Roundup

Hard to believe, but it’s true: The narcoparamilitary Second Superpower rebroadcasts Desperate Housewives and major-league baseball to Rio’s Bantustans via satellite.

Bread and circuses.

Bread and circuses.

A Polícia Federal e agentes da Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (Anatel) estouraram, na manhã desta quinta-feira (21), uma empresa clandestina de TV por assinatura na favela Beira-Rio, no Recreio dos Bandeirantes, Zona Oeste do Rio. Ninguém foi preso.

On Thursday, the Federal Police (PF) and agents of Anatel broke up a clandestine subscription TV service in the Beira-Rio shantytown in Recreio dos Bandeirantes in the Eastern District of Rio de Janeiro. No one was arrested.

Why not?

The Eastern Zone, centered on Jacarepaguá, one reads from a number of sources, is the hog heaven of the mafia-paramilitary hard men.

Os policiais tiveram que arrombar uma janela para conseguir entrar na empresa clandestina. No local, os agentes da PF encontraram um receptor de sinal via satélite, um celular e aparelhos utilizados para a transmissão de imagens.

The police had to break a window to gain access to the clandestine operation. At the scene, PF agents found a satellite receiver, a cell phone and equipment used to transmit images.

And sound, presumably.

De acordo com a polícia, a empresa era tão organizada que havia fichas de cadastros dos supostos “assinantes”. Os agentes da Anatel acreditam que, pela capacidade dos transmissores, a empresa clandestina atendia a mil residências.

According to police, the firm was so well organized that it had registration files on its supposed “suscribers.” The Anatel agents believe, from the capacity of the transmitters, that the clandestine enterprise was serving 1,000 residences.

A polícia ainda não conseguiu identificar o responsável pelo local. Duas pessoas que estavam na casa foram levadas pela PF para depor como testemunhas.

The police have not yet managed to identify the person in charge of the location. Two persons who were inside the hosue have been taken in for questioning by the PF as material witnesses.

Durante toda manhã de quinta-feira os agentes federais investigaram a existência de centrais clandestinas de TV por assinatura em 13 pontos no Rio. O crime, de acordo com a polícia, ocorre geralmente nas comunidades carentes, onde os moradores não têm condições de adquirir o serviço.

Throughout the morning on Thursday, federal agents probed the existence of clandestine subscription TV centers at 13 points in Rio de Janeiro. The crime, the police say, generally occurs in poor communities where residents are not able to get service.

Segundo a Anatel, a distribuição de sinais de rádio, TV e telefone, sem autorização da agência, é crime federal, com pena de dois a quatro anos de detenção. A polícia desconfia que a empresa tenha sido montada por uma milícia que controla a favela.

According to Anatel, the distribution of radio, TV and telephone signals without Anatel authorization is a federal crime, with penalties of 2 to 4 years in prison. The police suspect the business was set up by a militia that controls the favela.

Em Pedra de Guaratiba, também na Zona Oeste, os policias apreenderam equipamentos necessários para a roubar sinais de TV por assinatura em uma casa.

In Pedra de Guaratiba, also in the Eastern District, police seized equipment that could be used to steal subscription-TV signal from a private residence.

Did you get that? They targeted 13 GatoNet distribution points. We only get to read about the bust at one of them. What happened elsewhere?

Going after the militias through their illegal business enterprises: This is a preliminary glimpse of the strategy to come, I believe.

Of course, if you believe what you read in the Washington Post — The WaPo on Rio Militias: Foreign Desk Does Foreign Disservice to Facts — the militias are honest, law-abiding vigilantes doing their best where the State has failed.

But the Washington Post and Associated Press are simply lying to you. Again.

See also

• Rio Militias: Vigilantes or Pseudo-Vigilantes?
• “Vigilantes Impose Peace in Rio Slums”