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

Post by rakoo » Mon, May 02, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #60

gtirloni wrote: post #47

This has nothing to do with massive surveillance, dragnets, etc. It's a simple and very specific criminal investigation where people have been found to be using WhatsApp to coordinate drug trafficking activities. The judge is just following the law and asking Facebook/WhatsApp to cooperate in identifying these people (and is being met with resistance). Tech giants in this area are just facing their own karma for havi…

Umm, but the issue is that WhatsApp CAN'T comply with the order, because they do not have access to the communications (because they are using end to end encryption). I have no idea what you mean by "come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders"... they aren't being asked to identify anyone, they are being asked to hand over unencrypted communication, which they do not have access to.

Post by gtirloni » Mon, May 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #60

gtirloni wrote: post #47

This has nothing to do with massive surveillance, dragnets, etc. It's a simple and very specific criminal investigation where people have been found to be using WhatsApp to coordinate drug trafficking activities. The judge is just following the law and asking Facebook/WhatsApp to cooperate in identifying these people (and is being met with resistance). Tech giants in this area are just facing their own karma for havi…

Umm, but the issue is that WhatsApp CAN'T comply with the order, because they do not have access to the communications (because they are using end to end encryption). I have no idea what you mean by "come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders"... they aren't being asked to identify anyone, they are being asked to hand over unencrypted communication, which they do not have access to.

Post by surye » Mon, May 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #49

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…

No, it won't have disastrous consequences. It happened last year as well Typical authoritarian act by a lower court judge that will be reversed in 1 or 2 days Nothing to see here

Post by rlander » Mon, May 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

soapdog wrote: post #34

samstave wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like Brazil is the most technologically advanced poor-3rd-world-nation I know from my brief time at Facebook, they use Brazil user-searches in their intro classes to tableau reporting on users' graphs - "show me everyone in Brazil who is 18 years old and posted about subject-X"

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…

Post by grenoire » Mon, May 02, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

hughes wrote: post #69

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…

How was the justice system able to communicate the shutdown order, but not able to communicate the request for user data?