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

theintercept.com

401–410 of 629 posts

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

#401
post #373

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

Se voce gosta tanto assim da Dilma, por que nao volta a morar la? Deve ser muito comodo para voce defender o governo do PT sentadinho ai em Nova York, ne? Queria ver se voce fosse um dos mais de 11 milhoes de desempregados! Quando eu morava la e trabalhava para uma grande empresa de telecom, antes mesmo do escandalo do mensalao, eu vi o Lula roubando bem na minha frente, recebendo 150 mil reais por mes de propina dis…

Tinha que ser golpista mesmo pra entrar em baixaria... procura tua turma.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marco Civil da Internet. Brazilian federal Law nº 12965. http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL_03/_Ato2011-2014/2014/Lei/...

It doesn't matter it's not a Brazilian company, there are no servers in Brazil, only the users exist in Brazil. They could mandate Mark Zuckerberg run around naked and it would make no difference. Maybe Brazil should create a great wall of Brazil and cut itself off of the internet. Then it could enact whatever laws it wants to affect companies in other countries.

Facebook has at least one company in Brazil, and they are providing a service in Brazil that this judge ordered to interrupt.

It's perfectly reasonable to forbid access to Brazil for some service that does not follow a Brazilian law. This is bad because of the specific terms of this law, not because of some broad issue.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marco Civil da Internet. Brazilian federal Law nº 12965. http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL_03/_Ato2011-2014/2014/Lei/...

All that law orders them to do is to record the access logs (Registros de Acesso), not the actual messages or any other metadata. Soneca's post above said the judge "ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation", which that law doesn't oblige them to record.

This investigation is under seal. Soneca is speculating just as much as I am.

That is the law Watsapp broke the last two times it was interrupted (when the news was almost a verbatim copy of what it is now). I imagine it is the same it is breaking now.

Yes, I should have made it clearer.

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

#404
post #143

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I agree with you. And I think all this should be framed "is the law right? should we change it?"; instead is always presented as "an authoritarian, out of his league, small town judge who is arrogant and clueless about tech". He is just following the law, so fight the law, no diminish the judge. Remembering that a "single judge" following the law with authonomy launched the biggest attack on corruption of brazilian h…

The ruling punishes Brazilians on order(s) of magnitude more than it'll Facebook(WhatsApp). This heavy-handed approach is a power grab.

This is the "too big to fail" that the GP described. Do you really want a world where a company can evade the law just by getting enough people to depend on it? An important idea of rule of law is that it applies equally to everyone, no matter how important they are. Once you make exceptions for powerful people or powerful companies, it can become corrupt and abused. No small local messaging app will have this protection that people demand should be given to Whatsapp. Why should the dominant player in a market be exempt from complying with laws that their competitors must follow?

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

#405

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.

They have every right to pull your app, arrest you and prosecute you if you ever do go to their country, and apply to have your extradited under relevant treaties.

They have every right to do something ridiculous like that, in the same sense Hitler had every right to kill the Jews. I.e. only in their minds.

Harmful lays laws should not be considered lawful just because somebody wrote them down.

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

#406
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Se voce gosta tanto assim da Dilma, por que nao volta a morar la? Deve ser muito comodo para voce defender o governo do PT sentadinho ai em Nova York, ne? Queria ver se voce fosse um dos mais de 11 milhoes de desempregados! Quando eu morava la e trabalhava para uma grande empresa de telecom, antes mesmo do escandalo do mensalao, eu vi o Lula roubando bem na minha frente, recebendo 150 mil reais por mes de propina dis…

Tinha que ser golpista mesmo pra entrar em baixaria... procura tua turma.

Defensor de bandido. Continue assistindo tudo de longe sem se importar com as pessoas que sofrem nas maos do governo mais corrupto da historia do Brasil.

Falta uma semana so para acabar a farsa petista, para sempre.

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

#407
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you get recompensation for that. Also one might argue if they don't like the laws they shouldn't access the market.

Not that I am a big fan of this particular law/result, but I want to highlight the second half of your sentence: "if they don't like the laws they shouldn't access the market" That is something the HN crowd does not seem to understand/respect. Most of us enjoy the personal protection of the law yet we want to whip up a webapp and have no laws apply to us.

Bad laws are bad laws, it's idiotic to support them.

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

#408
post #352

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I am sorry, but your argument is idiotic. It boils down to "WhatsApp wasn't there to produce something they didn't have, so a district court judge managed to order a bunch of nonparties to the lawsuit to take down WhatsApp." That's like a district judge in NY ordering all the telcos to block all iPhones because Apple refuses to hack a phone for him. What kind of judicial system are you running there in Brazil? I am g…

Please take a look at the HN guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I don't really like seeing what is very very close to a personal attack ("your argument is idiotic", "I am glad you are in the minority...") in what should be a civilized place.

With all respect, how is that "very very close" to a personal attack? Sure, they're passionate, and frankly I disagree with other sides of what they've said in their comment, but it's not a personal attack in the slightest: it's a strongly worded indictment of the parent comment and the opinions expressed therein. There's nothing wrong with that, that's exactly how arguing works, at least in my opinion :)

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

#409
post #158

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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)…

If WhatsApp is unable to comply with Brazilian law, should it be allowed to operate in Brazil? I think this is a bad law by the way. Hopefully the clearly negative impact it is having will lead to it's reform.

Who cares what the law says? The laws should serve the citizens. And in this case, a huge majority of the citizens prefer to use WhatsApp.

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

#410
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have said that it is impossible for them to provide the information requested. They have said this to the press or to the court? Because it seems to me like Fb/Whatsapp have been pointedly ignoring the courts for months. The least they could do is fly down a lackey to Brazil and say it in person and/or alternatively hire a Brazilian law firm to represent them.

Brazil already arrested a Facebook executive and detained them for 24hrs this year over the fact they said there is nothing that can do regarding the information request. I'm not sure what you're proposing Facebook to do here? Hand over useless encrypted data? Hold a cryptography seminar for Brazillian law enforcement to explain what end-to-end encryption means? Have more of their employees risk arrest?

They should say it like it is, and FB having a high visibility platform is a plus. Just put a banner there saying those guys are idiots in an authoritarian power trip, and fuck them. After that you'll probably be found dead or something. So YMMV
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