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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

#391

Post by frostymarvelous »

gcb0 wrote: post #383
MoreTuple wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they operate in Brazil? They apparently have no offices there and are only available over the internet (as is true of all websites throughout most of the world.) How can anyone expect to hold what amounts to a random IP address on the internet responsible for anything?

BS! they have bank accounts and deals with many tel co to operate as they do in each country they are. you do not get pre-installed on the three biggest mobile operators phones (99.9% of market) and get deals where data to your service do not count as part of the limited data-plan on two of them, by just "being an IP address on the web".

Right now, it's more of a benefit to phone manufacturers to pre-install whatsapp than it is to whatsapp itself.

Same goes for the telcos. Offering free whatsapp and Facebook is a thing. And it's not because whatsapp had a "deal". It's because the telcos want more users.

Developing countries eat that up. People explicitly want to see whatsapp support or they don't buy the phone and many terrible devices have been sold on this premise.

Source: Experience

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

#392

Post by BrandonMarc »

gcb0 wrote: post #380
envy2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

> Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact prohibited from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content i know nothing about law, but where are you getting this from? does not seems to be the case with any company in china (yahoo gave in, google decided to leave) for example.

The difference is likely that these companies had the type of presence that causes Chinese law to come into effect ... such as physical presence (servers), buildings (owned property), human presence (employees, especially if they're Chinese citizens), financial presence (bank accounts, insurance), business/legal presence (i.e. local corp, subsidiary, company of some sort).

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

#394

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Grollicus wrote: post #302
gambiting wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>At which point you agree to adhere to their laws and regulations. Uhm nope. If my app(published on Apple Store/Google Play) violated a law in Saudi Arabia and they sent me a letter requesting me to appear and subject myself to 100 lashes for violating their law, I would very promptly disregard said letter, to put it politely.

You might do this and then you get convicted in absentia, Saudi Arabia will send a request for extradiction, your country will say no, done. Except: better not travel to Saudi Arabia or any other country that will extradict. Also Saudi Arabia will propably ban your App, which is what is happening in Brasil.

> You might do this and then you get convicted in absentia, Saudi Arabia will send a request for extradiction, your country will say no, done. Except: better not travel to Saudi Arabia or any other country that will extradict.

And that is the problem. You can't actually expect people to hire lawyers from 108 different countries to see if their app is legal in each of them just because they're going to distribute it on the internet, to say nothing of what happens when two countries have mutually contradictory laws (e.g. privacy vs. data retention). And a person who goes to see the Great Pyramids shouldn't have to worry about being hauled off to Saudi Arabia and then stoned to death because their app doesn't prohibit blasphemy.

> Also Saudi Arabia will propably ban your App, which is what is happening in Brasil.

Which only increases the proliferation of tools to bypass the restriction.

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

#395

Post by MichaelGG »

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…

Skype was never a reliable option. They never published their protocols or security (just that one "review" iirc). They took many measures to prevent people from inspecting the client.

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

#396

Post by frostymarvelous »

latj wrote: post #90
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…

You are missing the most important part of the story. Facebook and Whatsapp are not ignoring the request. They have said that it is impossible for them to provide the information requested.

Well finally.

Whether or not they have a presence, operate there, are required to comply or whatsoever is not an issue.

They simply can't comply. If they could initially they can't anymore. End-to-end encryption made sure of that.

Again, unless they're lying to us.

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

#397

Post by gcb0 »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #387
gcb0 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS! they have bank accounts and deals with many tel co to operate as they do in each country they are. you do not get pre-installed on the three biggest mobile operators phones (99.9% of market) and get deals where data to your service do not count as part of the limited data-plan on two of them, by just "being an IP address on the web".

Do you have a source for this? Why would bank accounts need to be situated in Brazil for these deals to happen? That doesn't make sense.

you can pay whats app directly via the operator. e.g. http://www.tim.com.br/sp/para-voce/planos/pre-pago/turbo-wha...

you can't do that in brazil without having the papers to do business there. in fact, you can't even sell anything without the right documents. Just like everywhere else.

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

#398

Post by gcb0 »

frostymarvelous wrote: post #391
gcb0 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS! they have bank accounts and deals with many tel co to operate as they do in each country they are. you do not get pre-installed on the three biggest mobile operators phones (99.9% of market) and get deals where data to your service do not count as part of the limited data-plan on two of them, by just "being an IP address on the web".

Right now, it's more of a benefit to phone manufacturers to pre-install whatsapp than it is to whatsapp itself. Same goes for the telcos. Offering free whatsapp and Facebook is a thing. And it's not because whatsapp had a "deal". It's because the telcos want more users. Developing countries eat that up. People explicitly want to see whatsapp support or they don't buy the phone and many terrible devices have been sold…

Source: 20+yrs on the online advertising industry.

Nothing that lives of ads or telecomunication companies survive only by "serving the user". The telco only pre-install something on the device if: A. they are paid upfront, B. if they get a percentage of the ads.

yeah, serving the user is good, but remember that you are talking about companies that charges for SMS. the day they have to rely on "pleasing the user" hell will freeze over. They rely on regional monopoly, just like in the US.

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

#399

Post by colejohnson66 »

newman8r wrote: post #313
t3nary wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person I was replying to asked "Do they operate in Brazil?". And considering that the app stores are on a country level, I'd say they do.

The app stores operate there as distributors. Just because my product is distributed somewhere by a third party doesn't necessarily mean I operate there. If an art dealer sells a painting to someone in brazil, does it mean the original artist operates in Brazil?

I think the difference is that you /knowingly/ (to an extent) sell your app to Brazil. If you sell your art depicting, say, women in power to Saudia Arabia to someone here and they move to Saudia Arabia and sell it, it's not your fault. But if you told him it's ok to sell that painting in Saudia Arabia, I would assume you can be held liable.

(Not that I agree with that, but that's what it looks like)

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

#400

Post by coliveira »

necessity wrote: post #344
coliveira wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By force of law, judges are not allowed to pre-judge, i.e., to express to the public what they will decide on the bench. Suggesting the opposite is the exact definition of propaganda. This impeachment will only be legal if the supreme decides so, and that can only happen when they sit to judge this issue. Until then, the whole process is proceeding in judicial limbo. It can quite rightfully be termed as a coup.

No, it's not a political limbo. It got voted in the congress just as the law requires and is awaiting the voting in the senate just as the law requires it. The president of the STF presides the hearing on the senate where testimonies are gathered, and the STF votes for the impeachment. It's not "a coup" just because it hasn't reached that state yet. Stop spreading misinformation.

You are the one not well informed. The STF allowed the process to continue because it doesn't want to interfere with the prerogatives of the congress. But in the STF hearing of 4/14, they decided that the accusations need to be analyzed by the judges for the process to be valid. This means that the supreme court can stop this process to decide on the criminal charges that have been made against president Rousseff when they see fit, and this will certainly happen before the end of the process. Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.
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