Brazil’s Superior Elections Tribunal (TSE) allows GNU/Linux voting machines, but bans blogs?

Brazil’s Tribunal Superior Eleitoral will use 430,000 GNU/Linux machines for this year’s election, according to a press release (pt) published on the TSE website (h/t Ada Lemos). Giuseppe Janino, the Tribunal’s secretary of IT, promises that this migration will make the elections more secure and transparent, reducing the potential for ballot rigging and tampering.

This impressive news follows on the heels of a much less promising announcement: it looks like the TSE is trying to ban blogs and just about everything else on the Internet (link is to a portuguese language PDF on the TSE website) from covering the elections. Paula Góes analyzes Brazilian bloggers’ responses to this decision over at Global Voices, concluding that the TSE’s misguided attempt at limiting political speech is basically a disaster that will only generate confusion and resentment.

Ségio Amadeu, the former President of Brazil’s National Technology Institute, bemoaned the decision on his blog.