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How was the justice system able to communicate the shutdown order, but not able to communicate the request for user data?
Because they ordered the shutdown to brazilian internet providers. These internet providers company block the access for Whatsapp services. And they are more than happy to comply, as they hate Whatsapp for taking their SMS revenue. But they are in fact only obeying an justice order.
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I think this statement weird. End-to-end encryption is very recent, the data asked by the judge is for communication made before this feature roll-out. So I'm assuming Whatsapp do have the information for these two particular cases. But I could be wrong. Anyway, maybe they are just using it for PR support on their position against the court decision, betting that all of that Telegram new users will come back to Whats…
End-to-end encryption for Android to Android conversations has been in place since November 2014: https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/
What most people outside of Brazil don't realize is that WhatsApp is almost universally used by Brazillians to communicate about EVERYTHING, even your doctor [0][1]. My wife is Brazillian and uses it to communicate with her family in Brazil every day. This will have disastrous consequences for Brazilians domestically and internationally. This policy is being put in place by unelected judges and cartel of monopolistic…
That's quite an overstatement. People know how to adapt. On the first court order, people were posting on Facebook about how to connect using VPN providers. Millions others downloaded Telegram. I, for one, think that this kind of thing is a very good example on why we should NEVER rely on closed services. Whatsapp may be doing all of the right things (creating new features, improving privacy, keeping the product free…
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There seem to be a few problems with this analysis. First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact prohibited from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content, except in emergencies. Instead, foreign law enforcement must make a request for assistance to the US DoJ, which will then (eventually, and maybe)…
I can believe them when they say they don't keep data. When I got a new phone (the old one broke), I was expecting my conversations to be in the cloud somewhere so that I could recover them. Nope, I lost everything that I hadn't backed up. I don't see what they can gain from storing masses of old chats and then not allowing users to download them onto new devices. If they kept chats to do analytics on, there's no rea…
If that's true, I'm in awe of their integrity. Skype on the other hand now has complete disregard for user privacy. Skype stores your voice mails and video messages forever[1]. This is something that they started doing 2-3 years ago and few people seem to be aware of it. It's amazing how low Skype fallen from its early days when it was considered a beacon of privacy and on the cutting edge of encryption and security.
[1] Details: Clicking on Preferences -> Privacy -> Delete history (OS X) or Options -> Privacy Settings -> Clear history (Windows) pretends to delete the voice/video messages but it merely hides them from your view. If you re-install Skype on the same computer or run Skype on a different computer, all those "deleted" voice mails and video messages re-appear. The delete and clear buttons are basically lies; there's no polite way to put it.
I'm here to defend the judge's ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil. Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there. Now, the judge ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation (a suspect…
Your position is very unpopular for several, very important reasons. Not the least of it is the shutdown of a communication service that is used by most of the population, on the grounds of a single case.
There are other ways to go about this issue. Starting by the Itamaraty(Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Don't forget that this was a single judge, from a single state. By all means block whatsapp in that state if you must. But Brazil was supposed to be a federation.
So it is very unlikely they have any plaintext data for the users in question. Especially if the investigation happened recently since the roll-out of E2E on all devices.
Additionally, it's possible WhatsApp did not even store old messages for non-encrypted devices beyond a certain timeframe.
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You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.
Sure you can! Imagine if Brazil tried to ban Bitcoin. How successful do you think they would be?
People said The Great Firewall would never work. They were wrong about that, too.
The real world CAN infringe on the networked world--quite strongly.
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Your analogy between the terms 1st/3rd world country and that particular racial epithet is beyond absurd. To confirm this just try saying one or the other at work to test the reactions you get.
I am saying this because people do take offense on the 3rd world monicker. In many fields that term is considered offensive when used in public discourse. This is not a joke. What a group perceives as normal speech may be a term that in other circles is considered bad and better terms and classifications might be in place
You are full of crap. The seventh world economy in the terms you are refering to is meaningless. By your logic, is Brazil welthier than Switzerland or Netherlands? NOT even close. GDP is MEANINGLESS if you really want to know how the average citizen lives in a country. The fact is that in Brazil the prices/inflation are through the roof, housing and goods are extremly expensive and their salaries are ridicusly low. L…
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Monopoly isn't even about market size it's about companies exploiting their market position using anti-competitive practices. There is no indication WhatsApp has done any of this except being the most popular product in a highly competitive and open market.
Principally, a monopoly is precisely about market share. Anti-trust and monopoly laws exist for situations where such monopolies are created by unethical or illegal means or when they abuse their monopoly position (directly with ability to charge customers for products and services, or indirectly by somehow shutting down competition). And that's where, as you point out, WhatsApp hasn't done anything wrong. Even if th…