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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

#551

Post by Freak_NL »

ryanlol wrote: post #68
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…

> division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today > Its akin to saying the N-word I'm sorry, what? How can you even compare these two things, I can't imagine anyone finding "3rd world" offensive (After all, you don't use it to refer to people... do you?) . Especially when it's objectively true.

'Third world country' is an ambiguous term and a bit of a misnomer, because it originally meant 'a country aligned with neither West or East' (during the Cold War). Its use has become conflated with that of 'developing country', because the two meanings overlapped in practice. It is also considered derogatory due to its ambiguity and general connotation of colonial superiority.

It helps to be aware of those connotations if you choose to use a term like that (which can be a conscious choice to express your position). Although I agree that comparing it with racial slurs like 'nigger' is not really appropriate, there is some similarity in that these are words that are slowly moving out of the modern vocabulary appropriate for civilised discourse.

Just use 'developing country'.

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

#552

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

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 literally unable to comply with the order. It's like the judge ordered a submarine to invade Lesotho - it's not something the submarine can do, it's not within their technical capabilities.

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

#553

Post by rmc »

ycombinatorMan wrote: post #498
rmc wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe WhatsApp could comply with the law?

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

Well sounds like they basically ignored the court[1]. If you don't bother turning up to defend yourself in court, you'll almost certainly lose.

WhatsApp should decide how much they care about Brazil. If they care, they could have bothered to send a lawyer. If they don't care, then they shouldn't complain about their service being cut off.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615056

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

#554

Post by Freak_NL »

educar wrote: post #151

Makes me wonder why people aren't making a self-hostable IM system that govt can host and ask it's citizens to use. There can be a setting to switch end to end enable/disable encryption. I am not being entirely facetious. It's after all how Cisco made a lot of money by selling IDS equipment.

I suspect that most (neoliberalist) governments do not feel that it is their job if the market is handling it. Also, people seem to trust megacorporations like Facebook more than their own government for private communication, although I am profoundly troubled by this naive majority view on privacy — I'd rather have my communications end-to-end encrypted without some huge corporation or any government harvesting my (meta)data; it's just too easy to abuse.

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

#555

Post by Fargren »

odbol wrote: post #409
Fargren wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The judge cares. Because the basic tenet of a Republic is the separation of powers, a Judge is not allowed to decide whether or not a law is fair or good for the people; that decision falls on the legislative branch.

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

#556

Post by mirimir »

ricksplat wrote: post #536
mirimir wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For everyone to act as they see fit, I believe.

You mean as a Freeman of the Land? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land As an ideological position it has some interesting points to make, but in a contemporary legal setting it's difficult to find footing. My personal position is informed by Hobbes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book) ) in that we have to make compromise with our individual liberty to bring about a greater good. > "No arts;…

Well, that's the Internet, isn't it?

I mean this: https://anarplex.net/hosted/files/declarationseparation.html

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

#557

Post by Freak_NL »

int0x80 wrote: post #269
shkkmo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you are being down voted for your tone, not for the accuracy of your comment.

Yeah ... Personally, I don't find a bit of emotion in the discussion bad as long as you provide arguments.

True, but emotion can be expressed in a civil manner, which in my opinion is more effective as well.

A lot of people simply stop reading when confronted by rudeness or profanity and just downvote and move on, because experience has proven that such comments usuaully lack proper arguments. Use civil language to prevent being classified as noise.

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

#558

Post by LXBWtEodYi2G »

banach wrote: post #478
LXBWtEodYi2G wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should that be any different? Signal and WhatsApp are functionally equivalent from this perspective. Both are end-to-end encrypted and therefore targets, and both are dependent on centralized, blockable servers and therefore vulnerable.

1) If people were to switch, it would bring more people onto a platform that is not tied to Facebook, a company that loathes privacy. 2) Signal is free software, including the messaging server ( https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server ). This makes it less sensitive to take-downs (anyone could set up an alternate server), and makes third-party security code audits possible.

Those are nice to have, but neither would change anything about this current situation.

Servers are nice but questionably useful when each one would be living in its own universe, in need of its own app, given Signal architecture.

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

#559

Post by cm3 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #427
bsder wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comfort seems to trump reliability. Everything is centralized because of one simple reason: you can't monetize distributed. So, as a developer, if I want paid, I'm going to make a centralized system. The fact that the centralized system is way easier to develop/debug is just a bonus. As a user, I'm going to use the system that has the easiest installability/usability cross section. That app is likely to be the one…

Distributed means spam. That's not a solved issue. Email sorta gets around it with tons of filtering. On IM, spam is much more annoying (it's assumed you'll get lots of junk email even if not spam).

In what way does a centralized server prevent spam? You'll only receive messages after you've accepted the contact request, so the worst that can happen is contact request spam.

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

#560

Post by ricksplat »

mirimir wrote: post #556
ricksplat wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean as a Freeman of the Land? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land As an ideological position it has some interesting points to make, but in a contemporary legal setting it's difficult to find footing. My personal position is informed by Hobbes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book) ) in that we have to make compromise with our individual liberty to bring about a greater good. > "No arts;…

Well, that's the Internet, isn't it? I mean this: https://anarplex.net/hosted/files/declarationseparation.html

Interesting. I think it boils down to a freeman argument though - you're basically issuing refutation of your implicit social contract. While the sentiment therein is laudable it is somewhat premature. Though one has a great deal of independence in the cyber realm one is can still run afoul of limitations of the real world and her laws (as demonstrated today in Brazil).

I think cyberspace currently is best categorized as a distinct estate rather than realm in a similar vein to the press and the judiciary. Each functions with more or less autonomy but can occasionally be subjugated to the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Estate

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