As Rio de Janeiro residents sheltered at home last year during the deadliest phase of Brazil's COVID-19 outbreak, police detective Gabriel Ferrando said he got a tip that something suspicious was upending local internet service.
Access had vanished across broad swaths of Morro da Formiga, or Ant Hill, a tough neighborhood on the city's north side. When Ferrando quizzed a technician from broadband provider TIM SA tasked with fixing the outage, the worker, whom he declined to name, said armed men had chased him away with a warning not to return.
