The Supreme Big Brother

“Perhaps the most important detail, though, was how each [residential] unit was color-coded,” describes Vivian Wang’s report, published in the New York Times on May 25 of this year. “Green meant trustworthy. Yellow, needing attention. Orange required ‘strict control’.” This is one of the methods used by the Chinese Communist Party to keep the country’s population under control. The tricolor chart is pinned to the wall of a police station and maps the apartments of a building complex located in Beijing. In addition to the classification by “risk” level, there are residents’ details such as names, phone numbers, among others.

On May 28, Oeste revealed exclusively that the Supreme Court had opened a bidding process to hire a company to monitor in real-time what is being said about the Court on social media. According to Cristyan Costa’s report, the service will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The topics addressed by users will be sorted into three categories: positive, negative, or neutral – similar to the colors that categorize the apartments in the Chinese capital. Also resembling what is done in Beijing, besides the classification by “risk” level, the company hired must identify, among other things, who made the post and from where it was made.

“The Supreme Court requests in the bidding document that the company hired uses a specific tool in the monitoring,” describes a report from Veja magazine published on June 18. “It needs to be capable of ‘identifying audiences, opinion leaders, discourses adopted, georeferencing the origin of the posts, as well as evaluating the influence of such audiences, the message patterns, and any organized actions on the web.’”

Unprecedented Surveillance

Designed by a local police officer to “address hidden dangers in [his] jurisdiction,” the Chinese scheme aligns with what President Xi Jinping desires. “The Chinese Communist Party has long wielded perhaps the world’s most sweeping surveillance apparatus against activists and others who might possibly voice discontent,” reports the New York Times. “Then, during the coronavirus pandemic, the surveillance reached an unprecedented scale, tracking virtually every urban resident in the name of preventing infections.”

Now it is clear, according to the NYT report, that Xi Jinping wants to make this control permanent and as comprehensive as possible. Volunteers and retirees who play chess outdoors are being recruited to be the party’s eyes and ears on the streets. In the workplace, employers are required to appoint “security volunteers” who regularly report any suspicions to the police. “It is clear now that the government’s heightened intrusiveness during the pandemic was an acceleration of a longer-term project,” warns the NYT.

The Right to Censor

The adoption of real-time monitoring of those who criticize the justices on social media is just another step towards a Chinese model of population control, which began to be implemented five years ago with the establishment by the Supreme Court of the so-called Fake News inquiry. Dubbed by Marco Aurélio Mello, a former justice, as the “end-of-the-world inquiry,” this process gave the Highest Court the right not only to censor whatever it deems necessary but also to accuse, investigate, prosecute, and condemn whoever it wants, whenever and however it pleases.

“I learned about the establishment of this inquiry at Luís Roberto Barroso’s home, from the president of the Supreme Court on the occasion, Dias Toffoli,” Mello recounted in an interview published in the 206th issue of Oeste, in March of this year. “He looked at me and said: ‘I determined, by ordinance, the establishment of an inquiry and appointed the rapporteur. Marco Aurélio, I know Your Honor will not agree.’ Notice that Toffoli did not even draw the case but chose its lead, justice Alexandre de Moraes.” Newly arrived at the Court, Moraes, who was a rookie then, received the inquiry as a gift, which was absolutely unusual in the Supreme Court.

According to Mello, although the Attorney General’s Office and the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the end of the procedure, they were not heeded. “The investigations have been ongoing for five years – and I confess I do not know why –, which also takes an enormous toll on the Supreme [Court]’s image, once it has been acting as the ‘victim’ and the investigator,” he says. “I see this as bad for the Democratic Rule of Law.”

The first episode of sheer censorship occurred in April 2019, when Moraes ordered the site O Antagonista and the magazine Crusoé to remove reports and notes that mentioned the then-president of the Supreme Court. The texts revealed that the character called “friend of my father’s friend” in emails exchanged between Odebrecht executives was Dias Toffoli. The case also inaugurates another practice that has become routine in the Court: the imposition of million-dollar fines. Regarding Crusoé report, a payment of R$100,000 per day was stipulated if the magazine did not take the article down. Faced with the negative repercussion, the justices backtracked a few days later.

The peak of the series of arbitrariness occurred on January 8, 2023, when thousands of Brazilians were arrested accused of attempting a coup d’état

On February 16, 2021, federal deputy Daniel Silveira was arrested after releasing a video with offenses and threats against Supreme Court justices. The arrest warrant was issued by Alexandre de Moraes, who ignored Article 53 of the Constitution: “Deputies and Senators enjoy civil and criminal inviolability on account of any of their opinions, words and votes.” The persecution of Silveira disregarded even a presidential pardon given by Jair Bolsonaro in April 2022.

These are just two examples of a series of episodes that include the arrest of other congresspeople, the judging by the Supreme Court of people without privileged jurisdiction, the persecution of businessmen who shared emojis in a WhatsApp group, and the censorship of journalists and media outlets. One of the most sordid chapters of this B-movie was the prohibition of the production company Brasil Paralelo from publishing a documentary about the attack suffered by Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, on the eve of the election.

In her vote, justice Cármen Lúcia pondered that “censorship cannot be allowed to return under any argument in Brazil.” She then added: “Measures like this, even in the preliminary phase, need to be taken as something that may be either poison or remedy.” Despite recognizing the unconstitutionality of the decision, she allowed the return of censorship “until October 30, 2022.” The resolution, however, remains in effect.

The peak of the series of arbitrariness occurred on January 8, 2023, when thousands of Brazilians were arrested, accused of attempting a coup d’état. None were armed, and there was no involvement of the Armed Forces or political groups. The crimes committed by the vast majority were simply being against the elected president and being present at the Esplanade of Ministries on the day when Congress and other public buildings were invaded and vandalized by groups of rioters. Septuagenarians, housewives, autistic individuals, and advanced-stage cancer patients are among the “highly dangerous coup plotters” who received sentences of up to 17 years in prison.

Fundamental Rights

The hiring of a company to monitor citizens in real-time is the latest chapter in this theater of the absurd. “A society is sick when its Supreme Court of Justice announces that it will hire a company to tell it everything that is being said or written about it by the people it is supposed to protect,” says J.R. Guzzo, in the cover article of this edition. “What’s the point, since Brazilians have the constitutional right to give their opinion about the Supreme Court, or about anything else?”

For Samantha Meyer, post-doctorate in Constitutional Law, the first questions that should be asked in this case are: Does a judicial body need to monitor what is being said about it? Is this an attribution of the Supreme Court? “The role of the Supreme Court is to judge, not to monitor,” she says. “It is not up to it to supervise, which is a responsibility of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”

According to anthropologist Flávio Gordon, a columnist for Oeste, this is “another step toward dictatorship, censorship, and complete population control,” he says. “They seek mechanisms to punish any kind of criticism, always anchored in virtuous causes: ‘combat fake news,’ ‘disinformation.’ In reality, it is all about defending a power project.”

Samantha draws attention to the cost of the operation, estimated at around R$350,000 – money that, according to the lawyer, should be invested in the exercise of jurisdiction, such as speeding up the Judiciary. “Monitoring people is what happens in China, a totalitarian regime, not in a democracy,” she says. “The Judiciary must be impartial, but the very classification of what is positive, negative, or neutral is already a value judgment.”

The title of an article published on the Supreme Court website states that “The Supreme Court fulfills the role of guardian of fundamental and human rights.” One of these rights is – or should be – freedom of speech.