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

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

#411

Post by bikamonki »

MichaelGG wrote: post #173
soneca wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, judges need to notice when a law creates a contradiction or a stupid scenario and not make such rulings. Judges are supposed to have "wisdom". Pointing at a broken law, then breaking communications for everyone hardly seems wise. Unless he's secretly hoping this will force a big change in law and government.

Correct,that is the point of judging otherwise we could build software to do it automatically.

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

#412

Post by maus42 »

necessity wrote: post #329
zanny wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds incredibly dystopian. A proprietary communication protocol made by a foreign company dominating all communications without recourse sounds like something out of 1984. I mean, if your doctor is using it, you know you are screwed the day Facebook does anything you disagree with, because you are wholly dependent on them at that point. That was why we even developed interoperable federated messaging protocols…

Dystopian only in the mind of a sci-fi fan. In practice it's a free communication service that helped millions to connect. No one forced people to use WhatsApp like something from 1984, people chose it from the various alternatives. In fact, a lot of people prefer Telegram, and a lot use neither, preferring good old cellphone conversations. Oh wait, isn't that a closed protocol that dominates all offline communicatio…

GSM (assuming that's what is used in Brazil) isn't free of patents, but at least everyone could (in theory) start their own telecom company and compete with the another ones. And I assume in reality (even in Brazil) customer could switch from a telecom operator to another if they are not happy with the service provided by the first one.

If I want to communicate to some another WhatsApp user, I need to use WhatsApp.

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

#413

Post by odbol »

ww520 wrote: post #120
latj wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the problem with all these judicial orders. They think it's a flip of the switch to comply. Why don't the courts provide the money to build the services and infrastructure to comply with the order?

To give them some message that was deleted years ago? What is Facebook supposed to do, build a time machine?

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

#414

Post by Barrin92 »

fredguth wrote: post #242
Netcob wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To repeat what everyone else has said: The data doesn't exist on whatsapp's servers. Now I know the law's position is basically "do what we say or we'll punish you until you comply - and we'll simply ignore you until you figure out a way to do so". Obviously that's literally impossible for data that doesn't exist anymore, but of course it's technically possible to comply with these laws in the future. And I think tha…

> If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect. Totally agree. This is unfortunately a very authoritarian world of view that is not uncommon.

This has mothing to do with authoritarianism. Upholding the law itself is important. If everybody ignores the law all the time you'll have a pretty shitty society.

The Brazilian people have a clear option, vote for officials who have no problem with communication encryption. The solution is not to circumvent the parliamentary democratic process.

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

#415

Post by odbol »

icebraining wrote: post #287
kartan wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why Google doesn't operates in China at full scale. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China They decided that was agains the company values to comply with Chinese law, so they stopped offering some services. It's the law, and maybe I don't like it at all, but still I thing that companies should comply. I also thing that that laws should me changed.

Comply with what? What law is being broken here?

Censorship laws, mainly. China wants to block out huge portions of search results, and Google doesn't want to do that.

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

#416

Post by Zombieball »

lawpoop wrote: post #381
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)…

> has no presence in Brazil. If they have no presence in Brazil, how did they get shut down in Brazil? I don't mean to be glib, but I don't see how the two concepts jive with each other. On a purely practical level, if they were interesting in maintaining their service in Brazil, why didn't they establish a presence in Brazil when all these previous orders and shutdowns were going on? This is like ignoring notices in…

> If they have no presence in Brazil, how did they get shut down in Brazil?

Blocked at the ISP level.

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

#417

Post by mliker »

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…

storing data for 1 billion users and maintaining consistency is a pain the butt operationally. Whatsapp isn't storing the data. If they are, they're spending hundreds of millions on servers for data they can't monetize easily without alienating all of its users.

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

#418

Post by ultrasandwich »

cplease wrote: post #386
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)…

> First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. I certainly disagree with this ruling, but "no presence in Brazil" is wrong and contradicted by Facebook itself: https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/saopaulo/ > São Paulo, Brazil 23 open positions > One of the most talented and diverse cities in the world, Sao Paulo is a hub for our operations throughout Latin America. Our teams make an impact by…

WhatsApp and Facebook are in fact still separate companies. Just making this distinction.

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

#419

Post by habosa »

lerpa wrote: post #407
habosa wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think harder you will realize that is false. The rule of law itself has value, and we can only live in a lawful society if we respect all laws and change them via established processes. Otherwise someone may decide that your favorite law is "idiotic" and you will have no recourse.
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