DENATRAN is the government organisation actively involved in progressing this legislation through in Brazil.

The government’s decision to install tracking systems on all new vehicles created a lot of public debate in Brazil. Whilst some were in favour of the idea, others were strongly against the legislation. This led to a number of civil actions to test the legitimacy of the mandate in Brazilian courtrooms.

One of these is the recently overturned decision from April 2009, when the judge of the seventh federal court of São Paulo ruled that the legislation to mandate fitment of tracking systems was unlawful, because it represented a significant invasion of the privacy of the vehicle owner, or driver. This judgment was made on the understanding that it would technically be possible to recover the location history from a tracking system, using local diagnostics for example, regardless of whether the owner had given their consent to activate the system or not.

Although the government initially announced their intention to appeal this decision, it ultimately adopted a conciliatory approach. Informed by the federal court judgment, it made small alterations to the technical criteria with two new documents published in July 2009. Despite an initial ruling that the amendments hadn’t gone far enough, it appears a different judge has acknowledged that DENATRAN had met all the requirements by proving it was technically impossible to locate the vehicle without the consumer subscribing to a tracking service.

View the announcement in full and the latest schedule for anti-theft device installation (only available in Portuguese)

If you would like to receive more insight in to this subject including technical requirements, approval processes and certification bodies, then download the information bulletin on SBD’s report entitled “The impact of mandatory anti-theft systems in Brazil”.

For more information on to obtain this research, contact Juanita by email on jappleby@sbd.co.uk