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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

#91

Post by marvel_boy »

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…

"If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are."

Well, law does not work this way. Execution of law MUST comply with some rules, e.g. proportionally. Lack of proportionally (execution will harm 100 m people, no less) is the sound reason to suspend the order. Note I dont agree o disagree with the law.

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

#92

Post by gnaritas »

dTal wrote: post #38
gnaritas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.

>You can't fix social problems with technology This is an increasingly popular meme, and I have some sympathy for the sentiment that we shouldn't ignore the political process, but ultimately it's twaddle - a backlash against the staggering impact that technology has had and will continue to have. Exhibit A: the printing press. In this case it's even pragmatically untrue. Make a communications platform that's technica…

> Make a communications platform that's technically impossible to block, and government will not make itself look foolish attempting to block it.

Actually that's exactly what they'll do just as they continue to try with DRM. Governments don't care about looking foolish, they care about maintaining power and they will do so even if it requires outlawing said technology.

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

#93

Post by samstave »

bouk wrote: post #32
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"

Calling Brazil a "poor-3rd-world-nation" is really ignorant, as it has a development index similar to Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Cuba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

Sure but all the countries you mentioned are rife with corruption. Fuck those countries. I stand by my statement then: they are 3Rd world with respect to how they treat humans.

Turkey is a corruption horror show. Mexicos death rate due to cartels is astronomical compared to every other country on earth. Cuba is still driving cars from the fifties and doesn't even have Internet, yet it houses our worst torture center that we know of (yes, all that is the fault of the US CIA) and Iran was an overthrown democracy (CIA again, thanks George) - but you cannot argue that they are not "3rd world" - we fucking kept them that way to exploit them.

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

#94

Post by kuschku »

gnaritas wrote: post #10
vezycash wrote: post #5

Would a p2p architecture thwart this kinda blocking?

You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.

The court doesn’t care about encryption – they only want the IP address of the user, so they can identify them.

The judge – which has experience with E2E encryption – says he knows he can’t get the messages.

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

#95

Post by grecy »

fnbr wrote: post #37
motoboi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brasil is the 8th economy in the world.

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.

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

#96

Post by School-Cotton »

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…

Total GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not.

HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GDP. Brazil's HDI is 0.755, just below Mexico (0.756)[1]. That's good by global standards, but still "poor" by U.S. standards. Its GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, so being kind to Brazil) is $15,615. The U.S.'s is $55,805[2]

[1]: http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

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

#97

Post by int0x80 »

You are full of crap. The seventh world economy in the terms you are refering to is meaningless. By your logic, is Brazil welthier than Switzerland or Netherlands? NOT even close. GDP is MEANINGLESS if you really want to know how the average citizen lives in a country. The fact is that in Brazil the prices/inflation are through the roof, housing and goods are extremly expensive and their salaries are ridicusly low. Let alone the rampant and systemic corruption. So no, maybe Brazil as a whole concept is not poor. But the Brazilians? Yes, most of them are.

EDIT: BTW, this is a forum to discuss. If you think I'm wrong say why, don't just downvote. And no, saying "crap" in the internet is not a reason to be wrong.

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

#98

Post by FroshKiller »

venomsnake wrote: post #26

Skype back in the day went to great lengths to be unblockable (mostly for commercial reason, there was a time before smartphones that people actually payed lots of money for international and domestic calls). It was pre MS. Why are not the other messengers doing the same?

I was never a big Skype user, but my understanding is that Skype relied on individual users serving as "supernodes" in a peer-to-peer distribution network for messages and calls. The Skype client's default configuration opted you into serving as a supernode, and this was a supremely unpopular move.

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

#99

Post by free2rhyme214 »

twoarray wrote: post #85
jaflo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it has to be said that Telegram does not offer true end-to-end encryption by default. For general-purpose usage, WhatsApp may actually be considered more secure than Telegram.

Indeed Telegram is not more secure than WhatsApp, but I usually take into account the position of each company and how that affects my particular use case.

Telegram secure chats are more secure than Whatsapp's recent encryption because the code is open source.

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

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

hkmurakami wrote: post #63
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…

The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country, even though it has quite a global influence in industries such as consumer electronics, automotive, semiconductors, and steel. edit: Apologies, looks like I was completely wrong since the source online I looked at incorrectly defined SK as economically undeveloped (I looked further and SK is in t…

> The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country

By both the common current common informal usage (of relatively developed economies) and the original definition (nations allied with the US in the Cold War), South Korea is a first world country.

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