WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by ricksplat » Tue, May 03, 2016, 12:41 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #567

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;…

> in a contemporary legal setting it's difficult to find footing. Freemnan-on-the-land is totaly quackery in a comptemporary legal setting. It's like homeopathy, but for laws. It's Creationism, it's snake oil. Fundamentally it presumes/assumes that laws work differently from how the organs of the state think they work.

Law ≠ Science. It's an interesting thought experiment. It's not like homoeopathy or creationism in that legal precedent emerges by evaluating any reasonable legal argument and their counterpoints and determining which among many is 'right'. It is not hard to conceive of a "freeman" society but what's important is to point out why isn't a realistic aspiration, rather than just shouting "you're wrong you're wrong you're wrong".

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

#572

Post by erik14th » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:03 PM UTC

kagamine wrote: post #479

erik14th wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to decisions this big, I always assume there's more than meets the eye. You're probably aware of the statement Brazilian telcos made on the intent of charging according to bandwidth usage and it's public reaction. Which to me indicates that telcos are kinda desperate on trying to find new sources of revenue. And this happened not long after one big telco company acquired a big competitor. Add the fact t…

There are lots of apps that let you send free sms over wi-fi, including Cacao (not sure of spelling, I don't use it but my partner does, seems popular in Korea?) and also why would the sale of iPhones with FaceTime and Messages not be an even greater threat than WhatsApp to telecom revenue? I don't doubt the telecom companies are trying to control their market, but I doubt they are behind some huge conspiracy. It is…

"why would the sale of iPhones with FaceTime and Messages not be an even greater threat than WhatsApp to telecom revenue?"

There's no "would", whatsapp is a bigger threat. Simple math: number of whatsapp users > number of iphone owners.

As I said I don't know if the cases are related, I just laid down some well known and interesting facts. Your conclusion sounds perfectly reasonable to me (:

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

#573

Post by pluma » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:08 PM UTC

f3llowtraveler wrote: post #455

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.

As far as I understand, WhatsApp is not conducting any activities in Brazil. There are people in Brazil who have downloaded the application, and those people are connecting OUT to WhatsApp, which is operating in America. So all the Brazilian government can do, is BLOCK its own people from accessing WhatsApp through the Internet. The question is, should the Brazilian government have the right to block websites that it…

Brazil can apply whatever laws they want wherever they want. They just might not be able to enforce them and therefore non-residents might decide to ignore them. The same is true for everyone else.

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

#574

Post by nathan_f77 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:09 PM UTC

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…

Do you understand that the judge is requesting something that is impossible? The data simply doesn't exist on WhatsApp's servers. Facebook cannot provide this data, because they don't have it. The chat is fully encrypted from one phone to another, and the unencrypted text doesn't ever touch their servers. Sure, the judge might order Facebook to install a backdoor and be able to grab unencrypted messages off a user's phone in the future. But apparently this is about a case that happened in the past. There is literally nothing they can do. Does the judge not understand this?

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

#575

Post by discardorama » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

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…

> But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil.

No, the problems is that with encryption, whatsapp cannot satisfy the judge's order anyways! Instead of showing such colossal ignorance, the judge needs to ask some CS/crypto experts if it's possible or not.

This is like the judge handing a company a 2048-bit number and ordering it to factor it! Now!

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

#576

Post by discardorama » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

devishard wrote: post #435

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. 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…

> This is all WhatsApp's and the US's problem, not Brazil's.

So you're saying it's OK for Brazil to send a SWAT team to raid a house in the US? The judge's order has no validity outside his jurisdiction; just like a US judge's order has no validity in Brazil.

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

#577

Post by frostymarvelous » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #398

frostymarvelous wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" hel…

Luckily, there is serious competition here.

MTN does it, Airtel does it and Vodafone I think does it as a package.

If you currently don't offer some sort of package or free service, you're out of the competition.

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

#578

Post by veidr » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:24 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #491

nitrogen wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That has nothing really to do with Internet sovereignty (whatever that means).

It has to do with some countries suck more, and some suck less.

Plenty of countries don't block anything. Like military aggression, child mortality, literacy rate, etc., that is one important data point about any country and its government.

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

#579

Post by pluma » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:25 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #433

marcosdumay wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> providing a service in Brazil I don't know if they have servers in brazil, but if they don't then it seems quite unreasonable to say that they are "providing a service in Brazil". If you run a bookstore in the US and a German comes and buys Nazi material, are you running a store in Germany? If Brazilians are effectively leaving their country to go get stuff from US servers then it's up to the Brazilian government t…

Under German law you are subject to German laws about commerce if you are "addressing the German market". Some indicators include offering your site in German, probably also support German phone numbers and addresses, etc. For some services/apps this is obvious (e.g. online shopping) for others it is more debatable.

The most important part however is that of course you don't have to give a damn about what German law thinks as long as you aren't in a position in which German jurisdiction can be enforced. Likewise, even if you are a German citizen living in Germany some German laws and regulations may not apply if you are decidedly not offering your services/apps to a German audience -- though of course that's a much less safe position. Either way, it's not as simple as "it exists on the Internet, therefore it falls under German jurisdiction" although the reasoning is quite similar to that in Brazil.

The point is moot, anyway. Brazil can't enforce their laws against a US company that doesn't have a presence in Brazil, but it can ban them from Brazil -- as apparently a Brazilian court is allowed to force Internet access providers to ban specific IPs. Whether courts should be allowed to do that is a legitimate question but right now in Brazil they apparently are, so everything is fine.

This isn't an action against WhatsApp. This is an action against Brazilian WhatsApp users. It's basically enforcing a sanction against WhatsApp by preventing Brazilians from accessing the service (which they can't get at otherwise). This is more like a German court forcing an IP ban (in Germany) against a Nazi website hosted outside of Germany -- which is a thing.

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

#580

Post by markokrajnc » Tue, May 03, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #563

Freak_NL wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge international US-based companies tend to comply with EU laws just fine (or at least participate in the judicial process) if they are doing business there. Whatsapp can choose to assign resources to this issue, or it can ignore it and let it solve itself. If Whatsapp thinks that Brazil is an interesting market for whatever it is selling (what are they selling?) or if it is good for PR then they may choose to seek…

> Huge international US-based companies tend to comply with EU laws just fine When they are operating their business within the EU, yes. For example US companies operating servers in the EU must comply with EU data protection laws regarding information on those servers. This situation is analogous. WhatsApp's servers are in the US so US law applies. If the servers were in the EU then EU law would apply, not Brazilian…

But by the US laws the US company has to share information information on those servers located in EU with US government if requested...