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WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

theintercept.com

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Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#291

Post by robbiemitchell »

rglullis wrote: post #252
robbiemitchell wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a judge demanded a telco hand over an audio recording of any specific conversation, they must comply -- even though calls are not recorded and stored? If a judge demanded the postal service hand over an image of every envelope processed, it must comply -- even though no such images exist? Where does it end?

To become a telco, in the first place you need to comply with all of the laws to be allowed to operate. In the case of the US, this is CALEA, and every phone company should be able to provide a backdoor that allows the agencies to follow court orders and tap phones. Brazil has similar laws for the phone networks. The problem with the attitude of the Brazilian courts in regards to Whatsapp is that they are not a telco…

It's not about providing a backdoor, it's about retroactively having recorded all conversations demanded by a judge.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#292

Post by robbiemitchell »

soneca wrote: post #64

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…

Why can't the judge order the ISP to turn over the contents of the conversation, then shut the ISP down for failing to comply?

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#293

Post by HappyTypist »

soneca wrote: post #64

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…

Whatsapp is end to end encrypted and won't have the data.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#294

Post by rmsaksida »

coliveira wrote: post #210
soneca wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a judge just like that had authonomy to launch the biggest attack on corruption of our history, with a much welcomed independence from political influence. So this is not always for the worst! :)

That's what you think. You seem glad that this is happening because the government is unpopular. But judges can use this power to attack any government. This doesn't sounds like an advantage to me.

> You seem glad that this is happening because the government is unpopular

I, for one, am glad this is happening because this administration has practiced an incredible variety of crimes, and deeply hurt the country in their hubris.

> judges can use this power to attack any government

A government isn't perpetually in power once it is elected. A government is always legitimizing itself, and it can lose its legitimacy as time passes. (In particular, it can lose its legitimacy if it sets up the largest corruption scheme in known history; uses dirty money to finance its campaigns; and secretly maneuvers to hide fiscal problems to support their reelection). Once the legitimacy is gone, a government can and should be attacked.

It is funny how PT government supporters are pragmatic when the judiciary doesn't suit them, and suddenly become strict legalists when they become its target.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#295

Post by JDazzle »

cantrevealname wrote: post #214
joshvm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I can believe them [WhatsApp] when they say they don't keep data. 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 b…

I thought Skype only stores the last 30 days of data on their servers, while it will store every piece of data received on your local computer indefinitely (unless you delete it, of course).

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#296

Post by rb2k_ »

shostack wrote: post #265
joshvm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if they record the necessary analytics data from mining the text, and then delete the actual text. Depending on what data you're trying to mine, you may be able to get what you need on transmission, and then dump the source data in favor of the output of the analytics event.

The chats are end-to-end encrypted, so there is no plain text anyone could "mine"

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#297

Post by coliveira »

lanna wrote: post #232
coliveira wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people that say there is no coup going on are people supporting the coup. Please get informed about this discussion.

Ask the supreme court then: http://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/ministros-do-stf-dizem-que-im...

Whenever they're not making official rulings, what judges of the STF say is just a matter of personal opinion. To validate the impeachment these judges need to rule on the validity of the charges raised against president Rousseff.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#298

Post by School-Cotton »

grecy wrote: post #95
fnbr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP per capita is the relevant metric here, as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has. Using that metric, Brazil ranks 76th [0]. Ranking countries by nominal GDP [1] gives a lopsided view of the world's economy as you can have countries with very large populations of poor people that rank highly, such as China (#2) or India (#9). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...…

> as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has You've got to be kidding me. The US has a massive GDP per capita but there are 30 million people struggling to survive without even healthcare. GDP per capita tells you nothing about how much each person has, it just tells you how much there is and how many people. How's it's split among them is another story.

The U.S. is one of the most developed countries in the world, by any reasonable metric.

It's true that it's not doing the best in the world, or that it has no problems -- especially when you compare it to a narrowly cherry-picked set of countries in Western and Northern Europe[1], or island/pseudo-island megalopolises in East Asia like Japan and South Korea. But its massive GDP per capita lines up well with other measures of development, like its HDI.

[1]: As an aside, it's probably more fair to compare Europe as a whole to the US as a whole, and places like Norway and England to places like California and Washington.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#299

Post by cplanas »

School-Cotton wrote: post #96
soapdog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samstave, Just a bit of nitpick to save you some trouble in the future. Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal. Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word. There are much better, non-pejorative terms to be used. Brazil is a part of the…

Total GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not. HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GD…

I agree with your comment, particularly with the fact that HDI is a good index for monitoring the "richness" of a country.

However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#300

Post by HappyTypist »

gtirloni wrote: post #81
zorked wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also points to the fragility of Brazilian institutions.

If the institutions were fragile, the Internet companies would just refuse to comply and block WhatsApp. The fact that they complied shows how strong the institutions are.

I see telcos choosing to comply with the order instead of fighting back (like Apple) as a sign of fragility.
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