Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 629 posts

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

#491

Post by mirimir »

nitrogen wrote: post #441
devishard wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) process it and serve it on the US company. This is…

As a digital native, I feel like an international Internet is more important than national sovereignty. That is, I don't think the interesting question is whether US or Brazilian law should apply, the question is how to ensure international access to international digital resources.

Internet sovereignty, for sure.

It's really the only way to go. Otherwise, you get pissing matches. Brazil blocks WhatsApp. China blocks Facebook, GitHub, etc. Iran blocks so much stuff that people need to get data dumps via satellite TV. The US blocks a lot too, but mostly about gambling, "piracy", etc.

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

#492

Post by mirimir »

kawera wrote: post #484
millak wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a flaw in the service? The ISP/mobile operator is essentially the gatekeeper to the Internet; having them block WhatsApp (or anything else) is just a case of them adding a block rule to their DNS. What would interest me is knowing whether or not access is still blocked if you change your default DNS server to something like 8.8.8.8?

Changing the DNS server has no effect; I use Google's and it's still blocked.

What if you hit it via some VPN service?

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

#493

Post by piyush_soni »

joshvm wrote: post #166
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)…

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…

Digressing from the actual discussion, Whatsapp now allows you to keep a backup of your chats and related media on your Google Drive and then recover it when you move to a new device. Probably applicable only for newer versions of Android (not sure about iOS).

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

#494

Post by hrktb »

marklgr wrote: post #474
Retra wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In fact, it's kind of insensitive for foreigners to suggest that a judge of a sovereign nation must consider US law in his rulings. It's just as insensitive for a judge of a foreign nation to suggest that all foreigners must consider his rulings when making decisions under their own sovereign laws.

If a business wants to operate in a foreign country, it seems natural to me to follow the rules of that country; the fact that the business did not open an office in that country looks irrelevant--otherwise, do not open any office abroad and do what you want. Incidentally, I wonder how the situation would be handled and what the opinion would be if some big foreign company operating in the US were shut down in the sa…

> otherwise, do not open any office abroad and do what you want.

Isn't this a fair position ? Imagine you are a lone dev creating a service that has no specific limitations. You are subject to your countries law, but should also be liable under each single law of every country where your users might happen to be ?

It seems to me that countries should have the right to do what they want within their borders (including shutting down access to some services) but go the diplomatic route if they have to interact with people out of their borders.

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

#495

Post by rmc »

envy2 wrote: post #158
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…

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)…

> WhatsApp is a US company and...

I always feel like many large US tech companies want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be a global company, they want to have 2 billion users, and are valued at having that many users. But when it comes to laws, suddenly they operate under US law alone.

I wouldn't mind if they ignored all national laws, and acted like a true global company. But I'm not from the USA (or Brazil), and don't want to be under US law. If you want to operate only user US law, then why not constrain yourself to the US market? Only operate there?

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

#496

Post by rmc »

notliketherest wrote: post #4

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…

Or maybe WhatsApp could comply with the law?

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

#497

Post by mirimir »

beedogs wrote: post #353
kuschku wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except that you clicked "publish" somewhere on Google or Apple uploading interfaces. At which point you agree to adhere to their laws and regulations. A famous example of someone operating legally under local law, but who got prosecuted for having merely a website accessible in another country, was Kim Dotcom. That’s the current state of international law, either lobby to change it, or accept it, but don't ignore i…

> A famous example of someone operating legally under local law, but who got prosecuted for having merely a website accessible in another country, was Kim Dotcom. That's a pretty shit example, given everything that happened around that case.

Lesson there is not to piss off the US IP industry ;)

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

#498

Post by ycombinatorMan »

rmc wrote: post #496
notliketherest wrote: post #4

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…

Or maybe WhatsApp could comply with the law?

Others have said they don't have the data. How can they comply, then?

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

#499

Post by dang »

int0x80 wrote: post #97

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…

> You are full of crap.

Comments like this break HN's civility rule. Please (re-)read the site guidelines and eliminate this kind of thing from your posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614911 and marked it off-topic.

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

#500

Post by ycombinatorMan »

necessity wrote: post #451
maus42 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does one thing have to do with another? If I want to communicate with you on HN I need a HN account. How is that dystopian or what does it have to do with protocols? If you want to communicate with another person you can use Telegram or whatever you want.

Some people will never be happy with proprietary software
Post reply on HN