251–260 of 629 posts
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Do they operate in Brazil? They apparently have no offices there and are only available over the internet (as is true of all websites throughout most of the world.) How can anyone expect to hold what amounts to a random IP address on the internet responsible for anything?
Their apps are in the Brazilian app stores
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Companies can be punished for failure to obey laws. If a company didn't bother to retain records on who bought something they are now required to recall due to safety failures I can't imagine any country would say that is ok. They would be punished. I don't happen to think the law mentioned is a good one. And I have no idea how the law is actually worded. Depending on how it is worded maybe it is ok to just not keep…
So if a judge demanded a telco hand over an audio recording of any specific conversation, they must comply -- even though calls are not recorded and stored? If a judge demanded the postal service hand over an image of every envelope processed, it must comply -- even though no such images exist? Where does it end?
The problem with the attitude of the Brazilian courts in regards to Whatsapp is that they are not a telco. The abomination that is the Marco Civil, which is being used as a justification to enforce the court request and says data should be retained by companies for one year, does not help.
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GDP per capita is the relevant metric here, as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has. Using that metric, Brazil ranks 76th [0]. Ranking countries by nominal GDP [1] gives a lopsided view of the world's economy as you can have countries with very large populations of poor people that rank highly, such as China (#2) or India (#9). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...…
> as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has You've got to be kidding me. The US has a massive GDP per capita but there are 30 million people struggling to survive without even healthcare. GDP per capita tells you nothing about how much each person has, it just tells you how much there is and how many people. How's it's split among them is another story.
Relatively few people personally need healthcare at any given time.
In comparison to, say, clean water, food, shelter, education, and physical security, which actual third world countries seem to still have serious problems with.
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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…
Edit: yes, the chat backup functionality still works. I have never tried to restore it though.
Go to settings > chats >> Chat backup to start backing up your messages to Google Drive. (Make sure you have 2FA on your Google account)
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…
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Then let me be more clear; you can't get around laws with technology. You have to change the laws. Proposing to make something peer to peer doesn't address the actual problem, the law.
As there are countries where laws cannot be changed, technological solutions can fix the problems once and for all. Even in "democratic" country, you would still have to fight the lobbyists, corporate controlled media and so on.
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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.
Do they operate in Brazil? They apparently have no offices there and are only available over the internet (as is true of all websites throughout most of the world.) How can anyone expect to hold what amounts to a random IP address on the internet responsible for anything?
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…
My favorite answer to justice requests from American companies (Google, Facebook etc) is that their servers are in other country so they don't have to obey Brazilian laws. BTW, it is easy prove wrong issuing a "ping" and knowing the speed of light.
It's not a flip answer. I operate a business on the App Store in part knowing that I'm bound by US law, not the laws of random countries. My app is available in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and so on. They are more than welcome to block the traffic from our servers based on their local laws, but I am not bound by the laws of Saudi Arabia - and neither should you be.
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…
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 that Brazilian telcos have already tried to shut down whatsapp before[0].
Whatsapp makes sms and mobile phone calls a pricey redundancy to anyone with access to wifi, no wonder they're desperate.
Do I have any evidence the two cases are related? no. But the flow of events is certainly interesting.
It just doesn't seem justifiable to restrict communication for millions of people due to a single case. As in, sure, arresting a drug dealer may be a good thing to society overall, but is that worth the limitation shutting down whatsapp imposes on Brazilian citizens?
The decision may be in agreement with the law, but is it in harmony with the law's ultimate purpose? which is to protect the interest of the society as a whole?
[0]http://www.zdnet.com/article/mobile-operators-unite-against-...