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Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

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Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#111
post #107

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I don't see how that context helps. To quote:

> The company told the police that the groups had been deleted and that it could not recover the data.

The judge's order to suspend telegram is because they did not comply, which apparently saying "that data does not exist" is not complying.

If "No, we cannot give you that data" is grounds for this sort of action, that sounds an awful lot like "companies cannot delete or end-to-end encrypt user's data", since those operations would similarly result in a "no, it is not technically possible to give you user's data".

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#112
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time the DNS block was ordered directly by a supreme court judge. No one can overturn that. Also, the political scenario was different. Brazil used to at least pretend to be a democracy with a constitution and rule of law. Since then, these supreme court judges have done far worse than block some messaging service. This is literally nothing to people like them.

> Brazil used to at least pretend to be a democracy with a constitution and rule of law What do you mean? Didn't they have an election that the incumbent lost (for very good reasons I might add, anyone who bungles the Covid response that bad doesn't deserve to remain in power regardless of anything else (and there was a lot of "else")) recently, implying democracy and all that?

[flagged]

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#113
post #107

[flagged]

Yes, here in Germany it's also one of the favorite platforms for extremists and not taking literal incitement to terrorism down is crazy.

Also Telegram's tactic of non-compliance and operating out of Dubai and being borderline unreachable just isn't acceptable for a company with 700 million users. Companies are still subject to the law and they can go to a court if they have an objection. But this cat and mouse game with authorities needs to be shut down much more aggressively.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#115
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Its sole purpose is to attack certain institutions and/or governments, while excluding other institutions and governments from criticism even though they share most or all of the same characteristics. Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?", "are they respecting universal human rights?", a…

You make many good points but this is absurd: The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.

> Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian

Really? How?

I mean of course without resorting to what amounts to political opinions.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#116
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who defined nazi propaganda spreader groups? Who draws the line? First Nazi propaganda spreaders, then gay rights activists? Sounds extremely dangerous to have this kind of centralized control.

Ah, the great slippery slope argument. Assuming good faith, most developed countries have hate (and similar) speech laws, with Nazism being explicitly banned in most (all? maybe Spain/Portugal/Switzerland are exceptions) of Europe. Same goes for antisemitism, or in general racial/religious hatred/discrimination to various extents. It's not a slippery slope "oh what will they ban next", it's "this kind of thing has pr…

> You might also want to look up the paradox of tolerance, it's a fun read..

I often see 'paradox of tolerance' cited as meaning something like: "if you're intolerant, I don't have to tolerate you".

But, as Popper put it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

"""In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."""

The threshold can be as high as 'would society collapse if these people are tolerated', and not as low as 'they're intolerant, so I don't have to tolerate them'.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#119
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make many good points but this is absurd: The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.

> Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian Really? How? I mean of course without resorting to what amounts to political opinions.

Measure legislative independence, frequency of regime changes, election margins, concentrations of executive authority and so on. Sure, it's a 'political opinion' that nobody is so cool they are naturally re-elected over and over with 97%+ majorities, but you can certainly measure the number of standard deviations in election results.

This book is readable and essays a rigorous approach to the topic, albeit within an existing political science/international relations framework whose axioms are not universally agreed upon.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262524407/the-logic-of-politica...

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#120
post #107

[flagged]

I don't see how that context helps. To quote: > The company told the police that the groups had been deleted and that it could not recover the data. The judge's order to suspend telegram is because they did not comply, which apparently saying "that data does not exist" is not complying. If "No, we cannot give you that data" is grounds for this sort of action, that sounds an awful lot like "companies cannot delete or…

> "no, it is not technically possible to give you user's data".

That's essentially contempt of court here in Brazil. They've blocked WhatsApp nationwide here before multiple times for that. WhatsApp, a messaging service pretty much every person here depends on.

Judges are basically gods here by the way. It's a common saying. "Doctors think they're gods, judges know it". Lawyers tell me that there's no need to comply with court orders when it is literally impossible to comply. The judges order your imprisonment anyway.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/05/03/whatsapp-...

I remember watching this shit in the news. They interviewed a judge, she was basically foaming at the mouth with rage. "Who do they think they are? Refusing to give us the data? Answering to us in english?" I loved it, I thought things were on the right track. I was wrong.

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