Nym Squad spotlight: Tupinymquim, bringing privacy to Brazil

Formed after Shipyard in 2023, the squad combined Nym with Brave to create a totally private, open source search engine

Author: Nym

March 22, 20245 mins read

Formed after Shipyard in 2023, the squad combined Nym with Brave to create a totally private, open source search engine

Here we are kicking off a series of squad spotlights. In the coming weeks, we will present the work of these makers and visionaries in the Nym community.

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When the incentivized Nym Shipyard privacy academy wrapped up in late 2023, the top graduates formed into squads. These are autonomous groups based on camaraderie and a shared enthusiasm for building the private internet of the future. They aim to make this possible through open source development, networking, and grassroots action.

The first to be profiled is Tupinymquim. The squad’s name nods to the Tupiniquim indigenous peoples from pre-colonization Brazil. Today the term has come to refer to the “Brazilian” national identity.

Tupinymquim have already built an incredible poc integration of Brave on the Nym mixnet. Let’s take a closer look.

Stay tuned to read about more fascinating projects and community initiatives worldwide.

State of privacy in Brazil

In Brazil, almost a quarter of the population has no internet access. And many of those who do are not fluent in English. This poses a problem since privacy debates and awareness are most mature in English-speaking communities. There is thus a lack of awareness of privacy violations in a country as vast as Brazil. Raising awareness is crucial in light of the corporate or state surveillance of activists and other gross intrusions into peoples’ digital lives across the globe.

Brazil responded strongly to Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of the NSA’s mass surveillance of the internet. Thanks in part to Brazil’s work, we saw the creation of a special rapporteur on privacy at the UN. The country also has specific protections for digital privacy in its constitution. Nonetheless, mass surveillance continues to be an issue. Privacy International notes that government agencies have invested heavily in drones and facial recognition systems. The federal police have also made contracts with malware providers, using official court warrants to spy on people.

“Considering Brazil enjoys a certain democratic status, the debate on privacy is more linked to the corporate than the political scene, even if there is state surveillance in the country,” Supermeia of Tupinymquim says. “One of the biggest difficulties in the privacy debate is the very awareness of the problem.”

Part of this problem, as Supermeia notes, is a “dizzying and worrying increase” in smartphone addiction. This is influenced by “content profiling and data surveillance.” Afterall, surveillance capitalism everywhere wants to keep us locked to our screens in order to squeeze profits from us. And, of course, there are the usual issues of data leakage and breaches. Let’s recall the images of peoples’ faces that no doubt will be sold on the dark web to fuel criminal deepfakes and identity theft.

It’s for all these reasons that the seven tech professionals that make up Tupinymquim — Supermeia, Vitorsantanna, Itsmevitinn, Izacabral, Psydenst, and Pedroarnaldo — formed their squad. Most were first introduced to Nym at Web Summit Rio, where Nym COO Alexis Roussel and CSO Jaya Klara Brekke presented the project. And they were quickly sold on the Nym vision of privacy for all of humanity.

How Tupinymquim created a mixnet-protected search

The Nym mixnet is an essential tool for real privacy protection. To put it shortly, the mixnet scrambles your communications and shuffles traffic in its inner-three nodes. This protects the content of your message as well as your metadata and traffic patterns.

This is essential because every single online application or service bleeds metadata. Adversaries can exploit this to dox and profile you even when you’re trying to stay private.

By safeguarding your metadata, the Nym mixnet essentially solves a huge privacy problem on the internet. No other available privacy-enhancing tool offers this.

The Nym mixnet is a layer-0 privacy infrastructure so it’s basically plug and play. Importantly, Nym can privacy-enhance any existing technology, network, or digital infrastructure. This is thanks to ongoing work in the SDKs and new tools like mixFetch, a replacement for the Fetch API that retrieves information privately via the Nym mixnet.

Tupinymquim has proved it with Incognito, their anonymous search tool that uses the Brave API for search via Nym’s decentralized mixnet.

“Our search tool preserves the confidentiality of metadata by ensuring that each application fetch occurs across a distributed network, further reinforcing user privacy,” the squad says.

Essentially, the Incognito search uses mixFetch magic to anonymize your search. Here’s how it works:

Check out the completely open source Incognito private search on GitHub and try it for yourself!

Since forming, Tupinymquim have also created six new nodes for the delegation programme. Their automated NodesBot tool helps operators check node score and performance quickly via Discord and Telegram. Plus they’re putting together translations, guides, and tutorials for operators and developers to work more efficiently with the Nym mixnet.

Next, the squad wants to further refine Incognito, including adding an image search to the tool. They also want to hold more events like privacy workshops to educate their communities on the importance of privacy and how to achieve it with Nym.

“Nym is still mostly unknown in Brazil,” Supermeia said. “But from the workshops we’ve conducted, which are mainly aimed at developers, we noticed the community was very interested in combating corporate and political surveillance.”

“However, in our view, Brazil is still in a moment of awareness about the issue of surveillance. Privacy is still a topic that does not circulate frequently in the public debate, making the production of curated content essential.”

Thankfully, Tupinymquim are on the case.

Follow Tupinymquim on X, Telegram and github!