The superintendent of Agency Supervision, Gesilea Fonseca Teles, reiterated the request for the agency to have greater powers in order to ensure the correct blocking of illegal sites.
Brazil.- During the hearing of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) on Betting, Gesilea Fonseca Teles, superintendent of Supervision of the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), stated that for the regulatory framework of sports betting to be effective, it is necessary to remove from the market the companies that do not comply with the rules. In this regard, she defended the expansion of Anatel's legal powers to strengthen supervision and sanctions in the sector.
According to Fonseca Teles, the activities to block irregular betting sites follow the guidelines defined by the Ministry of Finance. There is a communication procedure between the agencies, formalized through a cooperation agreement, where the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) sends the list of sites so that the providers can block them.
“Since October 2024, Anatel has already blocked more than 8,560 illegal betting sites. And how does this blocking work? The Ministry of Finance sends us a list of websites that should be blocked. Anatel, in possession of this list, informs the providers that provide Internet access. Who are these providers? They are mobile internet providers, which we know as mobile phones, and fixed internet providers. How many providers are we talking about? There are more than 21,000 providers,” explained the official about the magnitude of the process they are part of.
Fonseca Teles explained that it is not Anatel's responsibility to block websites, but to communicate to the providers the ministry's decision to interrupt the operation of the page. “With all this procedure that Anatel adopts, we cannot have interferences in the network of the operators. What we do is simply communicate a decision that is not within our competence,” she explained.
The Anatel official warned that the use of VPNs by users to mask their location and avoid the blocking of websites could weaken Anatel's actions.
“The VPN establishes an encrypted connection between the user and the VPN server and then you don't know where that user is. So, if this user connects to a VPN abroad, for example, the communication providers here do not know that he is in Brazil. And he is physically in Brazil, but virtually he is not. It is a way to circumvent a blocking order,” she explained.
Gesilea Fonseca Teles also highlighted that the rapid change of names of illegal websites and the limitation of Anatel to a closed list prepared by the Ministry of Finance make it difficult for the agency's actions, since the blocking can only be extended to new websites after the ministry has updated the list. “The illegal sites themselves can change their names. So today what is ABC Bet, tomorrow changes to ABCD Bet. They make a change of one letter in their website and Anatel works with a closed list that the Ministry of Finance sends us.”
In this regard, the rapporteur of the CPI, Senator Soraya Thronicke, stated that Anatel is “drying ice” by advancing with the blocking of sites that with only very simple maneuvers can be online again the next day, evading controls.
“VPNs are not illegal, but they can change just one point, one letter, and continue with the same platform, continuing with another name. It is something that impresses us a lot, I usually say that we are trying to change the tire with the car running and we arrive very late. Because they are already light years ahead of us,” she stated.
The jurisdiction of Anatel is limited to making notifications to telecommunications providers. The agency is unable, for example, to reach, in legal terms, the agents of the digital ecosystem, such as social networks or the actual online betting platforms.
The superintendent explained that Anatel has no influence over the providers of public domain name translation services, called DNS, and content distribution network providers, CDN, such as Google and Cloudflare. In this regard, Foseca Teles defended modifications to the Civil Internet Framework (Law 12.965) to grant Anatel powers to monitor, regulate, and apply sanctions to companies responsible for services that allow connectivity.
“Precisely to expand the competencies of Anatel. We have to be able to reach the DNS, we have to be able to reach the CDN to have a stronger action and a supervision competence over what is happening in the world of betting. As the legal delimitation stands, we do not have this competence.”
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Furthermore, the official added: “It is important that there can be a modernization of the Civil Internet Framework so that both the Internet connection provider and those responsible for other services that allow connectivity and Internet application providers can be considered civil and administratively responsible if they disobey judicial orders and, most importantly, administrative orders.”
In this scenario, Senator Soraya Thronicke reported that she has already received the draft of this project, however, she is studying the possibility of negotiating with the Executive so that the change can be made through a provisional measure.
