WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
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 murderer - edit: drug dealer). But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil. The order was sent to Facebook, who ignore as Whatsapp is another company. So, without any executives in Brazil that could be held responsible for disobeying the law, the judge fine the company. They continue to disobey the order (for months). The judge suspends Whatsapp activity (for 24h a few months ago, but that order was suspended itself after a few hours). Now Whatsapp continue to disobey the judge's order until this day. The judge suspend the company again.
All arguments I hear against the judge is in the line that Whatsapp is "too big to fail". That's not a valid point in my opinion. If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are. If they had operations and executives in Brazil this would never had happened at the first place. They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended). But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.
It is very unfortunate that it came to this point, but it is not like a judge decided yesterday that Whatsapp should sufer for whatever reason. They got a lot of months of warning for this. And he is acting completely according to the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.
Anyway, maybe they are just using it for PR support on their position against the court decision, betting that all of that Telegram new users will come back to Whatsapp after the suspension (that's what happened before).
If the communication was made a long time ago, Whatsapp may no longer have it, encrypted or not.
[1] http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...
[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/
The merits of the case are one thing, however not appearing to address those merits (or lack thereof) seems to be the failure point.
But I could be wrong.
What is in there that can not be punished?
I don't think this specific law is a good one, but it is not in clear violation of our Constitution, and was brought up by People's representatives... We should fight for improving it, and we should stop relying on infrastructure owned by private companies. But I can't think this judge is wrong.
Which law orders them to collect the data?
Brazilian federal Law nº 12965.
http://www.planalto.gov.br/CCIVIL_03/_Ato2011-2014/2014/Lei/...
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.
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 to make a law to stop them, if it doesn't like that. Saying that connecting to the internet is "providing service" to every country in the world is a way to simply break the entire internet.
No, but if she buys via mail order and the package gets confiscated at the border, don't whine about losing business.
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.
That is the law Watsapp broke the last two times it was interrupted (when the news was almost a verbatim copy of what it is now). I imagine it is the same it is breaking now.
Yes, I should have made it clearer.
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 records so you don't have to provide them. But it is certainly within the power of governments to demand companies operate in a manner that requires them to do certain things and you can't avoid that by for example not keeping the records you are required to.
I sure hope the USA stops the leadership of authoritarian overreaching on laws relating to technology. But it is not at all surprising that others are following the lead of the USA into horrible authoritarian and Orwellian laws given the USA's behavior. Few countries seem willing to put liberty ahead of authoritarianism. The USA is far from perfect but it is a country that has above average potential for promoting liberty.
But the last Bush and Obama administrations have been horrible and both political parties are pushing for horrible laws. A few decent advocates (such as Senator Ron Wyden) for fighting this trend exist but they are not common yet.
This promotion of authoritarian state power is a very dangerous trend that may well have incredibly bad consequences for us. Our history shows authoritarian governments abuse power and I am worried about the last two administrations strong support for increasingly powerful spying abilities of government.
I would hope countries like Brazil lead away from the path the USA is pushing the world down. Unfortunately I don't see much good happening in that way. I hope I am just not aware of good things other countries are doing but I worry that isn't the reason I don't hear about good moves to thwart the dreams of authoritarian regimes.
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?
It's illegal to open the envelope, but hey - who knows?
But the basic idea is yes, you must comply with all laws. If you can prove it violates the constitution you can have a court invalidate the law (but before that it would be illegal to violate it). There are often laws that you could argue conflict with this law and get out of it that way.
Often if you have lots of money you can influence the enforcement of laws. That doesn't exempt you from a law but often it isn't really an issue of what the law allows but what the regulator or prosecutors decide to enforce. And if you can't do that you can fight the attempts by the regulators and prosecutors (and law enforcement officials) and argue they have not legal right to do what they are seeking to do. See Apple, for a recent example.
Your rights are often not just a matter of the law but of to what extent the government and law enforcement are bound by laws. In the recent experience in the USA we have examples of the Bush and Obama administrations seeking to avoid accountability for authoritarian overreaching. They often seem to get away with it. The recent attempt to push around Apple was stopped mainly due to Apple's lawyers and leaders refusing to be pushed around.
I do not know if the Brazilian example is one where the government and/or judge are attempting to compel behavior not legal in Brazil (either not what the law requires, using a non-legal punishment or neglecting another legal requirement that would override the law being used to compel the behavior). But I do think it would be possible to have such a law and have the judges actions be legal.
Certainly laws can compel companies to do things that they are not now capable of doing. Normally if some new law were to be created the regulatory framework and notice would be publicized and companies would be aware of the requirement (say to keep records or whatever sort). And then if they failed to do so that isn't a justification to fail to comply since they failed to do what was required in order to be able to comply with a further requirement. Their lawyers may also be able to argue the law was unrealistic in expecting compliance because even though we wanted to comply it just wasn't possible to do so. And making a case that they are doing everything they can may be taken into account to say that while they are not fully compliant yet, they are taking all reasonable action and therefore to the extent the judge has leeway they could make adjustments to the consequences.
While it is sometimes annoying the reality is there are so many complications it is often a matter of judgement for whether something is or is not ok and even if it isn't ok, what is a reasonable consequence. When the legal system is working well it makes these judgement in a sensible manner even if it leaves many people unhappy. And then you have things like the Eastern district of Texas making a mockery of abuse of society by patent trolls.
I certainly do believe the legal system can be systemically broken. And those failures can be left unaddressed by our representatives for decades. Could that be similar to what is happening in this Brazil case? Yes. Could it also be that this Brazil case is just a matter of a bad law and the legal system is properly carrying out the consequences of that law? Yes.
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.
This was passed in 2014, so the main allegation from the Brazilian courts is that Whatsapp should have this data, anyway. There is nothing "retroactive" there.
I am not aware of any law in the US ( talk on US laws because you discuss it later in your comment) that requires by business to keep sales records for the purposes of recalls, the only businesses required to do that are business that sell regulated goods, (firearms, explosives, Drugs, certain chemicals, etc)
Normal Consumer Goods are recalled all of the time with out the Manufacturers, or Retailers having a master list of every person that bought that item.
that's how the legislative and judiciary branches think here in Brazil, write the problems away with a law. it called 'canetada'.
It's wonderful to have a succinct word for a concept like that; I wish there were such a word in English. Do you have any background information about the origins and meaning of this word?
Whacking someone with a wooden stick ("pau") is a "paulada". Kicking a ball ("bola") on someone is a "bolada". Poking someone with a pin ("alfinete") is a "alfinetada".
Therefore, using a pen ("caneta") indiscriminately becomes a "canetada".
The same word would be used if you threw the pen at someone's head, so there's that.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/29/fbi-hacki...
"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.
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 doesn't want its people to be able to see?
Ultimately that's a problem for Brazilian domestic politics, and also a greater issue of human rights. After all, that's how we describe it when discussing the Great Firewall of China.
A company cannot provide data that it does not have and has no way of acquiring.
They have said this to the press or to the court? Because it seems to me like Fb/Whatsapp have been pointedly ignoring the courts for months. The least they could do is fly down a lackey to Brazil and say it in person and/or alternatively hire a Brazilian law firm to represent them.
What lackey is going to want to fly to a hostile country where the government is battling your employer?
I don't want to spend any time in a foreign prison. Who would?
I'm not sure what you're proposing Facebook to do here? Hand over useless encrypted data? Hold a cryptography seminar for Brazillian law enforcement to explain what end-to-end encryption means? Have more of their employees risk arrest?
Some more subtle hints may work better, but generally, what Facebook says, "it can't be done" is the correct strategy.
Whether or not they have a presence, operate there, are required to comply or whatsoever is not an issue.
They simply can't comply. If they could initially they can't anymore. End-to-end encryption made sure of that.
Again, unless they're lying to us.
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.
There is something called Civil disobedience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience) and surely if you analyze every law system it contradicts itself.
Also, following your reasoning, if Facebook was a participant in PRISM, does it mean they don't have any right to fight? Privacy is at stake here, Facebook is only one problem instance.
Are you arguing against the use of warrants in police investigations?
What proportional recourse do you suggest when Whatsapp are effectively in contempt of court (in absentia)? In most jurisdictions, obstructing the course of justice usually has heavy penalties.
End to end encrypting doesn't magically cause metadata to disappear. IP addresses, the times messages were sent and received are still useful to law enforcement. In this instance, the court want the IP address of the accused so they can follow up with the ISP.
I prefer warrants written out for specific individuals to dragnet surveillance.
https://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/
I think it's safe to assume that all companies involved in PRISM aren't happy with it and tried their hardest to fight it.
To hide behind "it's legal" to me is harmful to humanity as ofttimes the law is behind the curve, we can and should be better.
> To hide behind "it's legal" to me is harmful to humanity as ofttimes the law is behind the curve, we can and should be better.
I'm with you - but acting on your convictions and doing what's right should also mean accepting the consequences of the current laws. I for one am freaked out by a future where Multinationals get to pick and choose which laws they would like to follow because "the law is behind the curve". Uber's actions and general attitude suggest this future is actually now.
He is just following the law, so fight the law, no diminish the judge.
Remembering that a "single judge" following the law with authonomy launched the biggest attack on corruption of brazilian history, and the fact that he is not a supreme court justice acted in favor of an independent investigation (search "sergio moro" and "lava-jato" police investiagiont).
Which is not to say they shouldn't point out that it's ridiculous when they make their ruling, and suggest that the legislature fixes it quickly.
The Big Company (like WhatsApp, Google, Apple) is always the easy target for subpoenas, judicial orders, and National Security Letters when it comes to encrypted transmissions.
Here's an idea for a legal maneuver to take Big Company out of the picture: Suppose crypto was handled by an open source 3rd-party program that was outside of the hands of Big Company. This 3rd-party program would encrypt/decrypt all incoming and outgoing messages, and the program would be mandatory.
If you want to use WhatsApp or other Big Company apps, you must install this open source and fully vetted program. Then if Big Company gets a subpoena, they can legitimately answer that they have absolutely no control over the encryption.
I'm going light on technical details because there are many ways that this could be implemented. The main idea is to insulate Big Companies from renegade legal attacks.
> They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended).
So what would happen? Like you said that law, if you paraphrased it correctly, is very clear - how would lawyers shouting about it actually help? Would they change the law the first time WhatsApp fight back? Presumably not - otherwise the law would be pointless wouldn't it? So how would that stop their activity being suspended?
I'm trying to avoid jumping to conclusions, but to give you a chance to just tell me I'm wrong - is this protectionism?
Of course, knowing Brazil as I do (I am Brazilian) I am not surprised that this is happening. In fact, judges these days feel that they have power to block even actions of the president of the Republic.
I, for one, am glad this is happening because this administration has practiced an incredible variety of crimes, and deeply hurt the country in their hubris.
> judges can use this power to attack any government
A government isn't perpetually in power once it is elected. A government is always legitimizing itself, and it can lose its legitimacy as time passes. (In particular, it can lose its legitimacy if it sets up the largest corruption scheme in known history; uses dirty money to finance its campaigns; and secretly maneuvers to hide fiscal problems to support their reelection). Once the legitimacy is gone, a government can and should be attacked.
It is funny how PT government supporters are pragmatic when the judiciary doesn't suit them, and suddenly become strict legalists when they become its target.
What you said just proves my point. You're happy because you perceive this to your advantage. But this judicial power works both ways. In the future they can use this power to do whatever they want.
> A government isn't perpetually in power once it is elected.
True, that's why it is called a democracy. The government will be legitimate only until the next election. It's not a group of judges that can determine the legitimacy of a government.
> It is funny how PT government supporters
The fact that you consider me a PT supporter shows that you just care about your political position, not about the larger point around this issue. There are people pro and anti-goverment who see the big problem that is being created by the Brazilian judicial system. It doesn't matter what government is in power for this to be a problem.
No, I'm happy because our institutions are working. What I said doesn't support your point at all.
> But this judicial power works both ways. In the future they can use this power to do whatever they want.
If, in the future, another government does something remotely similar to what the current government did, I sure hope they (the judiciary) do.
> True, that's why it is called a democracy. The government will be legitimate only until the next election.
It will be legitimate until when it is no longer legitimate, which can happen - and did happen - before the next election.
> It's not a group of judges that can determine the legitimacy of a government.
I agree. Thankfully, it is not "a group of judges" that are leading the impeachment. It our Parliament and our civil society, including the Bar Association of Brazil.
> The fact that you consider me a PT supporter shows that you just care about your political position
No, it shows that I know how to read. How does the obvious, undeniable fact that you support the current government prove that I only care about my political position?
> not about the larger point around this issue. There are people pro and anti-goverment who see the big problem that is being created by the Brazilian judicial system. It doesn't matter what government is in power for this to be a problem.
I'm sorry, but I do not believe you. There are way more similarities than differences between this impeachment process and Collor's impeachment process. Were you as concerned back then? Nothing has happened now that wasn't scrutinized by multiple layers of the judiciary. Nothing has happened that wasn't discussed for hours, days, weeks on end by both our chambers. Everything against the government is strongly supported by evidence in a variety of formats. I don't think you are honestly concerned about our political system. You are concerned about the survival of this particular administration. Well, our democracy is maturing, our judiciary is maturing, and thankfully, though sadly, our President - who has committed "crimes de responsabilidade" - is going down.
Edit: removed harsh language.
Please avoid this kind of hubris here to keep discourse civil.
Irrelevant.
> judges these days feel that they have power to block even actions of the president of the Republic.
Thankfully so. Presidents are not above the law.
The case of the president is even scandalous. Many Brazilians are happy with these arbitrary decisions because the government is unpopular. But the same thing can happen now to any government, making Brazil practically impossible to govern properly.
if that's the case, as hinted by other people, and whatsapp has been found in violation of that requirement, then blocking it seems the correct course of action (given the judge cannot change nor ignore the law)
the big IF is what the Brazilian communication law mandates to companies providing a service on their territory.
From what I can tell (I can read Portuguese, but I'm not versed in Brazilian law), that's only for ISPs.
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/... (subsection III, article 15).
Whatsapp deletes its messages from its servers after delivery. So it can't even provide the messages even if it wanted to.
Also, since end-to-end encryption, the as-yet-undelivered messages sitting on Whatsapp servers are encrypted. Whatsapp has no way to actually read them.
That's not a valid excuse for any law I'm aware of. It's your responsibility to be aware of, and to comply with, laws in places you do business in. To be clear, this is a terrible law, and I think Whatsapp should absolutely not concede to it. But just so we're clear, "I didn't know any better" isn't an excuse for breaking the law.
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 one of the reasons why MLAT reform, such as the proposed UK-US agreement[1], is so important because it would allow US companies to directly respond to foreign law enforcement requests.
Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court's request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/29203/british-searches-america-...
[2] http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...
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 reason that they wouldn't expose it to users too.
(This may also explain how they survived as a company for so long with so many users and so little revenue. All they're doing is running a few fast servers to shuttle messages back and forth, no storage requirements at all).
On the other hand Telegram does seem to store conversations - if you log in using a desktop app, it will pull down your recent chats.
It's a "feature" of the normal chats/channels/groups/supergroups of Telegram that you are able to download them to other devices, or to restore them on a freshly wiped device, because (and I'm over-simplifying here, but the end result is the same) they are encrypted with a key known to the server, and which other devices signed into your account can then be authorized to use.
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 beacon of privacy and on the cutting edge of encryption and security.
[1] Details: Clicking on Preferences -> Privacy -> Delete history (OS X) or Options -> Privacy Settings -> Clear history (Windows) pretends to delete the voice/video messages but it merely hides them from your view. If you re-install Skype on the same computer or run Skype on a different computer, all those "deleted" voice mails and video messages re-appear. The delete and clear buttons are basically lies; there's no polite way to put it.
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)
Very old voice messages are also accessible even if "deleted".
Text chats do seem to disappear, but at this point I don't believe anything Skype says. I figure they keep the chats forever as well.
But, the NSA approach to data collection is basically to vacuum it all up and, if possible, decrypt it later. This has two implications:
1. Metadata. "We kill people based on metadata" isn't a joke, it's a quote from Michael Hayden, ex-executive in both the NSA and CIA. End-to-end encryption doesn't hide who you're talking to or when.
2. It seems unlikely that it will be computationally possible for them to decrypt all traffic, but it would only surprise me a little if AES128 is breakable for high-value targets in the next 20 years: increased computing power, better multi-threading, better cryptanalysis algorithms, maybe quantum computing or some completely unexpected technology; it's hard to say what will come along.
In short: mining encrypted data still matters.
I think this is a bad law by the way. Hopefully the clearly negative impact it is having will lead to it's reform.
I never been there, I don't read or write danish, I never interacted with danish government, or met any danish person.
If the dane government wanted something from me, and sent a letter to some random person, written in danish, even if it reaches me, I wouldn't understand it anyway.
Thus, having app in some other country store doesn't prove much, except that you clicked "publish" somewhere on Google or Apple uploading interfaces.
At which point you agree to adhere to their laws and regulations.
A famous example of someone operating legally under local law, but who got prosecuted for having merely a website accessible in another country, was Kim Dotcom.
That’s the current state of international law, either lobby to change it, or accept it, but don't ignore it.
Uhm nope. If my app(published on Apple Store/Google Play) violated a law in Saudi Arabia and they sent me a letter requesting me to appear and subject myself to 100 lashes for violating their law, I would very promptly disregard said letter, to put it politely.
It's a bit like saying "You should hang yourself, because if you don't, I'll hang you." The proper response is "get on with it then."
Just because you can take their money doesn't mean they have to accept that.
I can’t sell medical marihuana in most states of the US – and I don’t go and try, and then complain about getting arrested.
Instead, if I wanted to start a business doing that, I’d check out where it would be legal, and in which ways, and sell my product in those markets.
Why do you assume you can sell your product in markets without having checked the legality, and then complain when they ban your product because it violates the local law?
My point was - is there any reason why I, as a developer, should not check "all countries" when publishing an app? If Saudi Arabia wants to ban my app later - let them, I literally don't care.
And yes, consumer protection laws absolutely still apply. The laws of my country - if my country says that I have to give him 2 years warranty - of course he gets 2 years warranty. If his country says a seller can be subject to 100 lashes for selling prohibited materials - they can go and try executing this, I wish them all best luck.
And that is the problem. You can't actually expect people to hire lawyers from 108 different countries to see if their app is legal in each of them just because they're going to distribute it on the internet, to say nothing of what happens when two countries have mutually contradictory laws (e.g. privacy vs. data retention). And a person who goes to see the Great Pyramids shouldn't have to worry about being hauled off to Saudi Arabia and then stoned to death because their app doesn't prohibit blasphemy.
> Also Saudi Arabia will propably ban your App, which is what is happening in Brasil.
Which only increases the proliferation of tools to bypass the restriction.
You could expect facebook, with their almost infinite resources to so.
I never thought I'd say this, but: Good on Facebook for not complying.
If you purchased a VW car in Germany and had it shipped over to the US it would be on YOU to make sure it complies with all requirements of your country, not Volkswagen's.
Harmful lays laws should not be considered lawful just because somebody wrote them down.
That's a pretty shit example, given everything that happened around that case.
If an art dealer sells a painting to someone in brazil, does it mean the original artist operates in Brazil?
(Not that I agree with that, but that's what it looks like)
Apple has a corporate office in Brazil (google too) and they're the ones who distribute and approve the application for sale there. They're legally required (I assume) to respond to legal notice they're served with. WhatsApp is not legally required to do so, and others have pointed out that it might not even be legally feasible for them to do so.
Of course this situation is more complex because obviously Apple doesn't have the data and I doubt Brazil wants to get into a legal battle with Apple. And although Brazil doesn't have the ability to force WhatsApp to comply with anything, they do have the leverage of being able to shut down their service. Should make for an interesting story to follow.
At the very minimum, if they had served Apple/Google instead, they would have had a legal requirement to actually respond. I don't know much about the actual case so these are mostly assumptions.
This kind of thing can't even be enforced, being so easy to bypass.
every country treats certain content as criminal as they wish. Where the servers are is just a minor detail.
All laws are easy to bypass, what's your point? Ever tried to go 60 in a 30km/h zone? Lack of 100% enforcement does not make a law useless.
they have bank accounts and deals with many tel co to operate as they do in each country they are.
you do not get pre-installed on the three biggest mobile operators phones (99.9% of market) and get deals where data to your service do not count as part of the limited data-plan on two of them, by just "being an IP address on the web".
you can't do that in brazil without having the papers to do business there. in fact, you can't even sell anything without the right documents. Just like everywhere else.
I don't know portuguese so I didn't actually read what the deal is.
Is this a service where subscribers pay the carrier a fee for 30 days of unlimited data traffic to whatsapp servers (VoIP excluded) + 50M of data ?
If yes, does that constitute a transaction the consumer makes directy to whatsapp via the operator? I understand that likely whatsapp and TIM (an Italian company btw) might have made some deal and exchanged some money for the use of whatsapp logo etc, but I guess that transaction could have been done anywhere.
the app has in app purchase. that page describes both what you described plus paying for in app purchases via operator
> TIM is an Italian brand owned by Telecom Italia. Originally founded as a mobile telephony company in 1995
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIM_Brasil
> Parent Telecom Italia Mobile, Telecom Italia
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 on this premise.
Source: Experience
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" hell will freeze over. They rely on regional monopoly, just like in the US.
People constantly switch network providers here since we have number portability. My wife, me and many of our friends switched to Vodafone cos they were offering a really great Internet package. Free Whatsapp, Facbook, Twitter, Instagram,and Snapchat plus 3.5 GB for what's essentially $9 a month. Here that's unbeatable and unheard of. http://support.vodafone.com.gh/customer/portal/articles/1813...
I doubt all these services are paying for for Vodafone to do this.
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.
This does not make a lot of sense.
If they don't retain any message content, then how am I able to browse all my message threads on https://web.whatsapp.com?
EDIT: I'm wrong.
If you delete a message on the phone the message disappears in the web interface too.
"WhatsApp Web connects to your phone to sync messages."
I.. did not know that.
"oh sorry, breaking local laws? Oh well, we're in america! Too bad!"
Doesn't work like that.
If you want to do business in a country then you should follow its laws.
i know nothing about law, but where are you getting this from? does not seems to be the case with any company in china (yahoo gave in, google decided to leave) for example.
If they have no presence in Brazil, how did they get shut down in Brazil? I don't mean to be glib, but I don't see how the two concepts jive with each other.
On a purely practical level, if they were interesting in maintaining their service in Brazil, why didn't they establish a presence in Brazil when all these previous orders and shutdowns were going on? This is like ignoring notices in the mail and then wondering why you're getting collections calls.
Blocked at the ISP level.
What would interest me is knowing whether or not access is still blocked if you change your default DNS server to something like 8.8.8.8?
OT: Intrigued and tempted by ivpn.net but the about page don't give me enough info to decide (no team, no physical address...) Where can I read more?
> VPN was founded in 2009 by a group of information security professionals who met whilst doing their Msc in Information Security at Royal Holloway, University Of London.
I've never researched that, but I've worked with them for years, and it's consistent with my experience. They're good people, I believe.
I certainly disagree with this ruling, but "no presence in Brazil" is wrong and contradicted by Facebook itself:
https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/saopaulo/
> São Paulo, Brazil 23 open positions
> One of the most talented and diverse cities in the world, Sao Paulo is a hub for our operations throughout Latin America. Our teams make an impact by providing support to our communities, small and medium businesses and brands in the region.
And of course their Latin America VP is located in this office:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-hires-new-latin-americ...
So I don't know where the bizarre idea that Facebook has "no presence" in Brazil comes from.
It would be an apt comparison, if you imagine that Comcast had a Latin American headquarters in Brazil, where Telemundo's Portuguese telenovelas have millions of viewers; it would be weak tea for NBCUniversal to then argue that Brazil had no jurisdiction over it and the programming it distributes there because the shows are produced in Florida and NBCUniversal has no employees there.
This is all WhatsApp's and the US's problem, not Brazil's. In fact, it's kind of insensitive for foreigners to suggest that a judge of a sovereign nation must consider US law in his rulings. If anything, I think this would justify ruling against WhatsApp more harshly, as it sends the message to the US that policies which don't respect the sovereignty of Brazil will hurt US economic interests in Brazil.
That said:
> Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court's request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.
If this is true, that's a solid argument and stands on its own.
It's just as insensitive for a judge of a foreign nation to suggest that all foreigners must consider his rulings when making decisions under their own sovereign laws.
Incidentally, I wonder how the situation would be handled and what the opinion would be if some big foreign company operating in the US were shut down in the same way.
Isn't this a fair position ? Imagine you are a lone dev creating a service that has no specific limitations. You are subject to your countries law, but should also be liable under each single law of every country where your users might happen to be ?
It seems to me that countries should have the right to do what they want within their borders (including shutting down access to some services) but go the diplomatic route if they have to interact with people out of their borders.
So, in this case, "all foreigners must consider his rulings", applies only for the those who wish to keep their service working in Brazil.
If you are operating in Brazil you have to follow Brazilian laws, including judges' orders. Just because I decide to do something in the US doesn't mean it's automatically legal when I do it in Brazil.
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.
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.
If you don't know what "internet sovereignty" means, then how can you possibly claim that something had nothing to do with it?
Bad laws are bad laws. If you can avoid complying with them, you absolutely should.
I wonder if you'd say the same to Gandhi. "The law is for everyone so you can't evade taxes by making your own salt." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March
My apologies, but I think that if you re-read what was written, you will find that this was not suggested. The comment was written in response to one that came to the conclusion that this "was all [WhatsApp's] fault." It is suggesting that WhatsApp is not at fault, is probably strictly complying with US law, and cannot share the information in any case. At no point does it even come close to suggesting that the judge in the case should have "considered US law" in his rulings.
Moreover, I feel that your claim does not clearly differentiate between 'considering US law' as a material fact and 'considering US law' as a judicial precedent. You seem to be suggesting that someone arguing that US law ought to be held material to the case is somehow demanding that the Brazilian judiciary hold itself subservient to the US courts. You also seem to be suggesting that a Brazilian state judge has any business interpreting the law so as to "send a message" to the government of another nation, which is simply and patently untrue.
It's worse that most local judges simple don't know that there's even a problem, and even if that'a clear to them, the judge most likely has 0 experience in making a successful request to the foreign state. And since all bureaucrats if the request isn't perfect it falls through the cracks. So often (at least if you're locally present) your laywers will need to help the judge to draft and push such a request through.
Long story short: These jurisdictional issues are not at all US specific, it's everywhere. Sovereign states just don't like it all over if their citizens and companies do stuff within their borders under orders of a foreign state.
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 ways to intervene.
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 law.
More accurately, US companies processing personal data of EU citizens must comply with EU data protection laws. It just so happens that locating the servers in the EU is among the easiest ways to comply with that.
The Brazilian case isn't about data transmission though. WhatsApp isn't in breach of any rules about that. It's about court ordered access to records stored on an server in a specific geographic location - The USA. Now if the Brazilian government passed a law requiring WhatsApp to record all data on servers in Brazil that would at least be possible to comply with.
Allowing a company to break Brazilian law because US law demands that the company break Brazilian law would absolutely put the Brazilian judiciary in a subservient position to US law.
> You also seem to be suggesting that a Brazilian state judge has any business interpreting the law so as to "send a message" to the government of another nation, which is simply and patently untrue.
Brazil decides what is and is not the business of Brazilian state judges.
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.
No.
> The judge's order has no validity outside his jurisdiction; just like a US judge's order has no validity in Brazil.
Which is why the judge only banned WhatsApp from operating in Brazil.
I always feel like many large US tech companies want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be a global company, they want to have 2 billion users, and are valued at having that many users. But when it comes to laws, suddenly they operate under US law alone.
I wouldn't mind if they ignored all national laws, and acted like a true global company. But I'm not from the USA (or Brazil), and don't want to be under US law. If you want to operate only user US law, then why not constrain yourself to the US market? Only operate there?
And when it comes to taxes...
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; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
I mean this: https://anarplex.net/hosted/files/declarationseparation.html
I think cyberspace currently is best categorized as a distinct estate rather than realm in a similar vein to the press and the judiciary. Each functions with more or less autonomy but can occasionally be subjugated to the other.
But in meatspace, one blends in, doesn't attract attention. As in Vinge's True Names. Ultimately, authoritarian states may wither. Or not. But in the meantime, one can manage, under occupation.
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.
National law cannot enforce anything on organizations not within the national jurisdiction, without international cooperation. However, they can (attempt to) stop their own citizens from accessing the international service.
I don't think it makes a difference whether what you are offering is physical or not, your service is bound by the laws in whichever country the exchange takes place. Of course enforcement might be an issue, which is exactly why the Brazilian judge did what he did, when Whatsapp failed to abide by Brazilian law.
Even with the laptop warranty case, if some small retailer from Country A shipped a laptop to Scandinavia, but didn't uphold a 2 year warranty, the Scandinavian governments would not be able to force the warranty to be upheld. They can make whatever local judgments they want, but none of them would touch Country A without international agreements in place.
The fact that WhatsApp's info is stored on servers rather than paper records is irrelevant. The jurisdiction in which the records reside applies. Although the fact that their servers don't even store the information requested anyway should be.
Fair point. But to continue that analogy, the US judge is quite free to ban the commercial operation of that Brazilian company in the USA. Which is exactly what happens, and is happening here.
It's an irrational, unreasonable request, which makes it highly questionable as a legal ruling.
Your position is very unpopular for several, very important reasons. Not the least of it is the shutdown of a communication service that is used by most of the population, on the grounds of a single case.
There are other ways to go about this issue. Starting by the Itamaraty(Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Don't forget that this was a single judge, from a single state. By all means block whatsapp in that state if you must. But Brazil was supposed to be a federation.
Now I know the law's position is basically "do what we say or we'll punish you until you comply - and we'll simply ignore you until you figure out a way to do so".
Obviously that's literally impossible for data that doesn't exist anymore, but of course it's technically possible to comply with these laws in the future. And I think that's a bigger problem here - that governments want to turn companies into surveillance tools. It's like telling the postal service to open and scan every single letter - which would have sounded pretty bad in the past, but nowadays that's somehow okay. Not because morals have changed but because it's feasible now.
Following/enforcing laws is generally a good thing, but since we live in a human society and not a robot one, things like that get fuzzy around the edges. Let's imagine an extreme, outlandish case where some odd and unforeseen circumstances in poorly written laws lead to a judge being able to order nuclear attacks on several cities of their own country. I'd want the judge to hold off on that and maybe wait for the legislature to catch up with the will of the people - which is not to die in millions.
Whatsapp isn't exactly a matter of life and death (at least I hope it isn't), but maybe this is a case where values like common sense, the common good and the interests of hundreds of millions of people weigh more than maybe locking up some stupid drug dealer.
I completely disagree with "If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are.". That's the kind of idiocy that emerges right when society ends up working for the benefit of its government instead of the other way around.
If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect.
Totally agree. This is unfortunately a very authoritarian world of view that is not uncommon.
The Brazilian people have a clear option, vote for officials who have no problem with communication encryption. The solution is not to circumvent the parliamentary democratic process.
Sir/Ma'am: you get my gratitude for voicing this. People do forget why we have laws in the first place.
I am shocked so many of you agree with this. If it is forbidden to kill people, you have done something very bad and everyone else wants to kill you, they are still not allowed. (They may change the law and kill you then but for now, they are not allowed.) This is called justice.
A service like WhatsApp is an over the top service, very much like any other communication service that you can use in the internets (like email), that does not need to comply to the telecom services regulations.
The truth is that the judge does not understand the matter being ruled and a single Judge closing a service used by 100m citizens is another proof of a very authoritarian and arrogant judiciary system.
This almost sounds like fundamentalist religion, to say the law is that sacrosanct. Some bad laws have historically been overcome precisely by people ignoring them, rendering them effectively unenforceable.
On the other hand, some good laws have also been overcome by people ignoring them. For example laws governing limitation of police power (search, detention etc.), traffic laws (speeding, jaywalking, aggressive driving against cyclists, a relevent example in Brazil is ignoring of traffic lights). If it gets to the stage where everyone is doing it, then the authorities no longer care.
I don't know whether WhatsApp has the requested data or not, but I think overall this action is a good thing: it shows that even important (in Brazilian society) companies are not above Brazilian law and if there is a problem with what this judge did, or the power he's wielding, then it should, hopefully, lead to that being fixed.
The alternative is ignoring and not enforcing the law, and ending up with bad laws, which can then be selectively enforced (see Böhmermann affair for example). This may appeal to some, but it's clearly not for everyone.
This is horrible reasoning.
What a terrible analogy.
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.
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-...
I don't doubt the telecom companies are trying to control their market, but I doubt they are behind some huge conspiracy. It is more likely that the govt/courts are trying to control the flow and availability of user's data and are in cahoots with the telecoms companies who have close ties to govt.
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 (:
Curious if you have an explanation of why given it appears the majority of your friends do not support this, why do you and they do not?
But to punish ONLY the company, not it's users.
He could impose heavy financial penalties, for instance. But affecting the life of 200 mm users? No way ...
I don't really like seeing what is very very close to a personal attack ("your argument is idiotic", "I am glad you are in the minority...") in what should be a civilized place.
You can be civil while disagreeing strongly. For instance, instead of calling something "idiotic" you could say "I disagree in the strongest possible terms. I do not believe your facts have a basis in reality." This is still somewhat rude, but a lot better as it avoids entangling their personage.
I also find it ironic that in a post about censorship someone pulled out the HN censorship guidelines. I totally understand the context is completely different, but it's funny.
So? Like Jim Crow laws, merely "being there" is too little justification for a law.
Unless they've been lying to us all along.
Ignoring and evading broken justice systems and immoral laws is exactly what people who believe in freedom should do, whether it's in Brazil, the US, or any other fucked up political system.
At 100 million, somebody will likely due because they couldn't get a ride and end up with a stranger.
Any messaging app that actively stores conversations, and then turns them over to anyone when requested will simply not be used by the public (or if it is, it won't be for very long).
Also, there also has to be a consideration for the 100 MILLION users that might depend on this service. Imagine companies that depend on this to communicate efficiently and businesses that rely on this platform to take orders etc.
If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, but not at the cost of hurting your own people.
Taking it to an extreme, would they also take down a bank website if they didn't comply with a similar request and stop people from withdrawing money? I don't think so.
This takedown will not help in the investigation in any ways. So it seems the justice system isn't working for their main customer: the people.
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!
Unless whatsapp did something to wreck their competition in Brazil, any effective monopoly they possess is by virtue of people choosing to use their system over other systems.
This sort of effective monopoly cannot and ought not be stopped unless the monopoly power is abusing their position. And how would you when it's a choice people have made? Mandate that every 5th person mustn't use WhatsApp?
And that's where, as you point out, WhatsApp hasn't done anything wrong. Even if they have a de facto monopoly in Brazil, unless they've done something other than what I've seen in the US, it's almost certainly the result of network effects and nothing to do with illicit practices.
[1] http://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/telecommunications/claro-b...
This judicial ruling is a political power grab. Ask yourself this, who does banning WhatsApp actually punish more? Facebook or the people of Brazil? It's the latter by a mile. Standing behind the "law is the law" is a cop out when the law was clearly written by and for the domestic telecom industry. WhatsApp will set a dangerous precedent if they change their internal operations at the demand of any regulation.
Try as I might but can't understand why we do not break free from centralized communications, given that we already have both the hardware and software technology to do so.
I like an old saying: when banging your head against a stonewall, you will always break the head and never the wall. So, what do we gain from discusing politics? What do we gain with laws written on paper but bent for the best bidder? Let's be pragmatic, in particular on a site like HN. We shouldn't be talking about the law, whether it is right or wrong, we should be discusing how many nodes do we need on a mesh network to solve communications for a city like Sao Paulo. Is the tech there yet? Can it get there? Who's advancing on these subjects? How can we help? (like really help not writting useless letters to congressmen)
Don't bang your head on the stonewall...
If all of these 100m users were on FireChat, this headline wouldn't exist.
The Internet needs to start acting like a series of dumb pipes again: so dumb that you have no idea where information really is, and so huge so as to be impractical for anyone to control.
Consider highway systems. For roads, the only way to “shut down” somebody’s access without controlling every road, everywhere is to have some idea where your target is. And even then, you probably have to control several access points to really keep that target from moving. And unless they live at the end of a single country road that you control, being draconian about road control is usually going to be very hard and probably impossible. And that is a good thing, because if shutting down highways made any sense then a hell of a lot of people would be inconvenienced on a regular basis (or worse than inconvenienced, if they were in an ambulance or something).
Blocking Internet tools is arguably far worse than blocking highways because networks transport an almost incomprehensibly-large amount of information and the effects are vast. By the same token, seizure of a device is arguably far worse than seizure of something like a truck because a device can effectively provide access to someone’s entire life and not just the little bit of information that an authority is seeking.
Enough paranoid blocking and seizure, let’s try to focus on world progress.
And since laying fiber is expensive, and putting up sats is even more expensive, and running a mesh through the continent is pretty unfeasible, we're stuck with these economically optimal big targets (the ISPs/telcos).
As long as there is a network operator with access to core and edge routers, blocking is easy. And by the nature of BGP and the Internet you'll always know who to ask next to filter something.
Or you can use Tor and-or a VPN. Multi-homing for times like this should be set up by default in operating systems.
As long as you can connect to an ISP implementing the protocol, which is outside of the targeted jurisdiction, you should be able to access the destination site.
Yet, if I suggest that I prefer Mumble over closed source voice chat or centrally provided WebRTC service like appear.in, people downvote me or treat me a like a luddite.
But I do understand that given the comfort of a centrally managed WhatsApp, it's hard to resist.
The only reason there are no fancy mobile clients is that those who would build them are doing it for the silo'd Vibers, Skypes, and WhatsApps.
Comfort seems to trump reliability.
The technical details of the court orders has nothing to do with shutting down WhatsApp servers or coercing them into doing a MITM on their own customers...
Not that I disagree that decentralization helps add resiliency against state intervention but this particular threat model requires a different solution. Such as preventing ISPs from being able to block your traffic.
But, that might of course require disobedience until the laws are declared invalid in front of the supreme court. I'm no activist, but the way politics has been meddling with the Internet convinced me that we have to fight to keep existing freedoms.
Everything is centralized because of one simple reason: you can't monetize distributed.
So, as a developer, if I want paid, I'm going to make a centralized system. The fact that the centralized system is way easier to develop/debug is just a bonus.
As a user, I'm going to use the system that has the easiest installability/usability cross section. That app is likely to be the one that gets the most developer time. The one that gets the most developer time is likely to be the one that lets the developers get paid.
And thus, the circle is closed, and the feedback loop begins.
You can monetize hosting Mumble servers.
Decentralized services are much harder, but at some point we have to prefer them and use federation as a means to have something like a global network of continents of servers (or realms in MMO lingo).
My point is that as long as we don't pursue decentralized services, we won't get them. There are efforts for people to host everything privately, and with ipv6 I like to think it's only a matter of time until all IoT devices can be repurposed as servers.
Try rationalizing this headline. All communication services, whether they are "apps", "networks", "utilities", etc... should fall in some category of protection where such things cannot happen.
[1]: https://twitter.com/telegram_br/status/727201106166689792
But decentralized communication networks that work mobile first are hard, we all know it, so there's room for improvement, randomizing server addresses on a daily rotation, or whatever may render pointless these blockades.
Maybe only activated once they detect a threat or something.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...
Maybe technically, but probably not legally, although I understand very little of the issues at play.
Imagine if Brazil tried to ban Bitcoin. How successful do you think they would be?
People said The Great Firewall would never work. They were wrong about that, too.
The real world CAN infringe on the networked world--quite strongly.
I imagine if some third-world countries with capital controls banned Bitcoin, it would look similar (having to call your Bitcoin dealer and pay a markup to move money out of the country but otherwise easily accessible to those in-the-know).
And yet most people don't. Knowing you can do something illegal, and doing it, are vastly different things.
If people's life savings depended on circumventing capital controls, they would find a way. It's already a reality in China [1] and (until recently) Argentina [2].
Hell, where I'm from (Canada) 43% of people admit to having smoked marijuana in their lifetimes. And that's just breaking the law for fun, not serious practical reasons like saving $xx,xxx when your crappy central bank decides to inflate away your bank account.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-02/china-s-sm...
[2] http://www.buenostours.com/getting-the-best-exchange-rate-fo...
Most people break drug laws at some point in their lives just for fun, still not relevant to the fact that most don't most of the time.
Most people obey most laws most of the time, especially ones that can get them into serious trouble. No amount of anecdotes of some people this or some people that changes that fact. Laws matter.
I think you're inverting the causation. Of course things that most people do most of the time would not be illegal, those laws would be very difficult to introduce and sustain politically.
> especially ones that can get them into serious trouble
It's not enough for a law to carry a heavy penalty, people have to believe they can/will get caught and the penalty will apply to them. Which is true for robbery and capital murder but not so with drug use, capital controls, porn bans (click here if you're 18), copyright, etc.
> Laws matter.
Only if someone has the ability, will, and the resources to consistently enforce them. Which is to say, they would not matter in third-world countries with mismanaged economies where people need to break the law to buy BTC/USD.
I don't really know how to parse "you can't fix social problems with technology," but I have much more confidence in the growing power of, for example, uncensorable media than I do in any fantasy of change in the nature of government.
My sense is that government will be co-opted by the rich to excuse violence against the poor, and that this rule will apply in proportion to the size of the government and the size of the landmass over which it claims dominion. Technology seems to be the cultural foil to this trend.
I think that "you can't fix social problems with technology" is too oversimple and too absolute to have real meaning in the current techno-political environment.
Even in "democratic" country, you would still have to fight the lobbyists, corporate controlled media and so on.
But what's Brazil's excuse?
No, there aren't.
> technological solutions can fix the problems once and for all
No, they can't. Oppression can't be fixed by circumventing the law as it just leaves the government more power to enable selective enforcement which is the ideal way to scare people into compliance.
edit: Actually here is a REALLY easy answer. What about Pirating and Torrenting. Do you really believe that this peer to peer technology hasn't massively helped people get around copyright laws?
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 technically impossible to block, and government will not make itself look foolish attempting to block it. Even the US government, who dearly wanted to kill encryption for the masses before it got off the ground in the 90s, was forced to back off after the tide of encryption technology proved un-stemmable.
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.
The judge – which has experience with E2E encryption – says he knows he can’t get the messages.
So it is very unlikely they have any plaintext data for the users in question. Especially if the investigation happened recently since the roll-out of E2E on all devices.
Additionally, it's possible WhatsApp did not even store old messages for non-encrypted devices beyond a certain timeframe.
Also any such records would be stored on servers in the US, not Brazil, so would be subject to US law. The Brazillian judge should be entering a request with the US DOJ but is either too much of an idiot or too busy doing political grandstanding with stupid futile gestures like this.
I don't think being a messenger should come with obligations to divulge private persons' conversations or, more generally, bits to anyone. Local laws can force local companies to do so but it has nothing much to do with internet: a letter remailing company (or, the post office, as we used to say in the 1900's) could provide similar service.
To generalise, all private communications reduce down to talking in private. If you really had to, you could talk to your friend in private and there's nothing any government could do to retrieve those conversations back after the fact. Technological means just make the communication more flexible but it should not mean the conversation should become less private just because it happens on the internet instead of the local backwoods.
In fact, when governments (across the globe) do that it will only motivate creating solutions which make it impossible for the company to hand over their customer's data, with end-to-end and client-side encryption. Yet all governments do see that it's their right to make demands because it's always the easy thing to do.
Tech giants in this area are just facing their own karma for having allowed dragnets schemes to be used in their networks. If they had denounced those activities and continued to only allow targeted surveillance with a court order, we wouldn't have this trust crisis that prompts them to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It's technically possible for these companies to come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders so criminals can be identified and punished by their respective country's laws. They simply won't because it will be their word against the vast evidence that they have allowed dragnet activities in the past, which will cause a backslash everywhere.
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.
"The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we'll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We'll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed."
This was in 18 Nov 2014. The latest announcement from last month was:
"Over the past year, we've been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.
As of today, the integration is fully complete. "
I think the term "in contempt of court" is what is happening here, although my vocabulary for law terms is limited.
Brazil has no law ordering companies to collect communication contents (and it would be against our Constitution). Instead, there is a law requiring them to collect IP addresses of sender and receiver of messages, and storing them for 6 months in case a court requests them.
This is information Facebook has, and this is the law they broke last time the service was blocked.
I've always used Telegram for privacy purposes.
It was amazing to watch the flood of friends "just signing up".
https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...
Yes, the signal protocol and signal's implementation are both open source, but you have no way to actually verify that WA has actually implemented the protocol correctly and securely. Sure you could do some basic packet analysis but this wouldn't tell you about the presence of any remotely triggered backdoors.
The only way for you as a user to actually verify the security is by reading the source and compiling the software yourself, or reading the source and verifying the signature via reproducible builds.
I really don't understand the business decision process here. If they just copied Signal with OSS/FOSS code and reproducible builds they would just win outright and tech people wouldn't have anything to complain about. The value of the service is the network anyway -- why care so much about the client?
I mean, it's not blocked so I guess it's better than nothing but it's not a plus for privacy: it's a net negative.
As someone professionally involved in cyber security, I fully understand and agree with the criticism that the protocol is non-standard and does not follow several best practices. On the other hand, it cannot be ignored that it hasn't been cracked yet, despite Telegram being one of the bigger messaging services in the world (especially one attracting a tech-savvy audience) and receiving a lot of attention.
The very least Telegram-haters could do is acknowledge Whatsapp's equally big problem: we cannot verify a thing. Facebok could have either open sourced the clients or published the outer shell of the wire protocol so we can verify the E2E encryption. They chose to do neither.
> A BRAZILIAN STATE JUDGE ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours...
2) Signal is free software, including the messaging server (https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server). This makes it less sensitive to take-downs (anyone could set up an alternate server), and makes third-party security code audits possible.
Servers are nice but questionably useful when each one would be living in its own universe, in need of its own app, given Signal architecture.
If this becomes the "new normal", I'd expect to see criminals launching more burglaries and terrorists launching more attacks during the service shut-downs. If you know your target is in a weakened state, you're going to take advantage of it.
Disclaimer: CEO of Actor and Ex-Telegram employee.
I was looking at the Actor Developer Hub, there is a guide explaining how to install an Actor Server. Does that mean that Actor is decentralized? How does that work?
Telegram is a terrible alternative. Messages aren't even end to end encrypted by default and they're kept accessible on Telegrams servers. See the recent news on how a russian activists Telegram account got hacked giving them access to all stored messages: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...
Also this:
Thomas H. Ptacek: By default Telegram stores the PLAINTEXT of EVERY MESSAGE every user has ever sent or received on THEIR SERVER.
Edward Snowden: I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram's defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it's unsafe.
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/678065993587945472
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678271881242374144
https://twitter.com/moxie/status/678219238394298372
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678274362609426432
And the response from Pavel where he admits that security isn't a priority
But wouldn't Signal be vulnerable to this type of block too, as they are centralized?
Instal Orbot (tor proxy), run it, setup Settings->Select apps->What's up and give the finger to your censors.
I am not being entirely facetious. It's after all how Cisco made a lot of money by selling IDS equipment.
[0]http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap... [1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-brazilians-use...
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"
And for the median household income, they aren't in the top 35, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
25 Israel $1,804 26 Russia $1,800
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)...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Yeah, I was going to make a similar comment. Listing the wealth of nations based on nominal GDP will result in a list that's similar to ordering them by population size.
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.
If you're comparing the US to actual third world countries, you've already lost.
It's true that it's not doing the best in the world, or that it has no problems -- especially when you compare it to a narrowly cherry-picked set of countries in Western and Northern Europe[1], or island/pseudo-island megalopolises in East Asia like Japan and South Korea. But its massive GDP per capita lines up well with other measures of development, like its HDI.
[1]: As an aside, it's probably more fair to compare Europe as a whole to the US as a whole, and places like Norway and England to places like California and Washington.
I was not having the information I needed to make a fully informed comment, and thus I offended people, apologies.
Significant parts of Brazil lag behind in terms of development, but this is true in the US as well.
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.
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 BRICS or the world emerging countries. Right now it is in a huge political crisis and on the verge of a coup but it is not a poor-3rd-world-nation, it is a the world seventh economy and also dictating tendency for many emerging countries and a continental power in the south.
That being said, you are completely correct that Brazilians love technology. Our smartphone revolution and expansion is awesome and we're keen to adopt new tech. Still more than half of the country doesn't have access to net infrastructure at their home and depends on cybercafes.
If you want some real data on the technology adoption and usage in the country you can use the metrics and indicators from CETIC[0] which is the Brazilian Institute for the study of information technology usage and adoption. Their reports are awesome and will give you a much greater insight on internet usage in the country.
[0]: http://cetic.br/
PS: Sorry for the long rant, I work with digital inclusion and web literacy programs here in Brazil, unlocking new digital skills in low-income neighborhoods so I've been immersed in this type of thing for too long.
It is englightening to note that a false insult is usually shrugged off, and a true insult usually taken to heart.
The trick is to notice when the insult is true and modify your behaviour so that the insult is no longer applicable.
Things are getting better, we've managed to get ourselves out of the U.N. Hunger and Misery map. This is a victory, and not a small one. The past 12 years it has been the very first time in 500 years where there are no people starving to death.
Still, the problem of Brazil is not that "it is a poor country" or "it has poor areas" like others portray in a simplistic view. As you said, it brews out of a self-perpetuating wealth inequality where the gap keeps enlarging as rich get richer.
We'll always find things to criticize and still advances are made by focusing efforts on solving the very problems we surface with our criticisms.
Saying "there's a coup!" is cheap government propaganda. The impeachment is proceeding according to the law and the charges are serious.
This is the case for EVERY IMPEACHMENT proceeding. It's called separation of powers.
>Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.
Except there are criminal charges, in this request and in the dozen other requests that are awaiting. Stop spreading misinformation.
Quando eu morava la e trabalhava para uma grande empresa de telecom, antes mesmo do escandalo do mensalao, eu vi o Lula roubando bem na minha frente, recebendo 150 mil reais por mes de propina disfarcados de "prestacao de servicos de consultoria" (a forma preferida de agir da quadrilha do PT) atraves da empresa do filho dele. Servicos que obviamente nunca foram prestados: a epoca, a G4 sequer tinha funcionarios!
Sinceramente, eu nao ligo se a Dilma vai ser impichada porque jogou papel de bala no chao. Ela fraudou as eleicoes, jogando a economia no lixo no processo. O PT esta transformando o Brasil na nova Venezuela. Independentemente de qual argumento formal pelo qual efetivamente consiga justificar-se, ela merece ser deposta.
Quem deveria se informar sobre tudo o que realmente esta acontecendo por la e voce. Voce fica so nas superficialidades.
Trouxa.
Falta uma semana so para acabar a farsa petista, para sempre.
GDP per capita is what matters here. And GDP per capita in Brazil is a joke. I think a country full of poor people can be called a poor country.
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 the G20, which would clearly make it a developed nation), and I was unaware of the Cold War era designation that commenters have pointed out to me.
I was always confused why SK would be considered a 3rd world country when my own impression from its industrial strength was that it should be a 1st world country, so I'm glad that I've been corrected.
Not only is that wrong (the Republic of Korea was and is about as closely aligned with the U.S. as a country can possibly be), but it's confusing, since what was clearly meant in the context of this thread was the different, colloquial meaning of "1st world" meaning "developed" and "3rd world" meaning poor.
Regardless, SK is unambiguously 1st world according to either definition.
Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.
No, you didn't. Angola was never both a country and part of the First World (Portugal was part of the First World when the term was coined, and Angola was part of Portugal then; when Angola became independent, the regime was Cuban-backed and Soviet-allied, and thus it was part of the Second World.)
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.
> Its akin to saying the N-word
I'm sorry, what?
How can you even compare these two things, I can't imagine anyone finding "3rd world" offensive (After all, you don't use it to refer to people... do you?) . Especially when it's objectively true.
It helps to be aware of those connotations if you choose to use a term like that (which can be a conscious choice to express your position). Although I agree that comparing it with racial slurs like 'nigger' is not really appropriate, there is some similarity in that these are words that are slowly moving out of the modern vocabulary appropriate for civilised discourse.
Just use 'developing country'.
I was with you up until this line.
I will stand by my comment that Brazil is rather technologically advanced with respect to how net-savvy their population is. I wrongly stated that Brazil is 3rd-world... And as another user points out, Brazil "meerly" suffers from deep corruption.
However, in my defense, I shall contend that the simple existence of "favelas" in Brazil is perceived to be a very 3rd world to me, an isolated, white American.
Check out recent documentaries on Favelas, it will probably surprise you in both positive notes and also on horrible notes as well. Favelas are a cultural part of Rio in a way that most slums elsewhere are not. Favelas are intertwined with higher-income classes in the urban areas where they occupy the many hill areas of Rio. They dictate music and trends for millions of people and are a huge part of what makes Rio into Rio.
Still our corrupt governments, crimelords, militias, and consumerist culture makes those places prone to crime and violence.
Talking to you and taking you as an "isolated white american", pick some violence-prone neighborhood in your state and imagine if you could break it up into small areas and sprinkle that on top of your most prized real state area. This is Rio, where poor and rich live couple streets away from each other. In many places in the U.S. such neighborhoods occur away from higher-income regions in suburbs or far away districts, here, it is all mixed and that leads to a lot of confusion for foreigners.
Favelas are also a sympton of the lack of infrastructure. Mass transit in Rio is a joke and living/real state is very expensive. Favelas are the only solution for millions that need to work in the city but can't afford to live anywhere better. It is a self-perpetuating problem where people are born to these neighborhood and lack the access to education and opportunities that would enable life changing events that would move them and their families into better conditions.
Long story short: our governments (federal, state and city) sucks. People keep electing corrupt people. No one knows a way out of this mess.
Create and promote news outlets that represent the interests of the people. This also gives a platform for non-corrupt people to run for office. That's one potential solution I've found for the problems in my own country. Do you think it would help in Brazil?
This is a weird attitude.
China is the #2 world economy but indisputably has a top 5 ranking for most impoverished people with hundreds of millions of impoverished people.
Brazil in the past decade made huge advances in that. We are a recent democracy, we've been a military dictatorship for a long time. In our couple decades as a democratic country we've managed to get lots of good things done but of course there are millions impoverished and we're not even close to solving anything. Still the new social programs, the fact that millions moved our of the misery level, this is great.
If we could solve wealth distribution and opportunity, this could be a really great place. Our problem is not the lack of money but the concentration of it and the concentration of access to infrastructure and opportunities as well.
Ok, we are not terribly poor people are starving around the streets, but salaries are very low, prices are very hard, wealth is very concentrated, and a huge share of the people live from government handouts.
That is not being rich.
It's like us saying, no, there is no racism in the US (or practically any place).
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)...
The GDP comment I made is that this is not a "poor country", it is instead a country full of wealth inequality and self-perpetuating bad distribution of opportunities where poor people are being kept poor due to having no access to infrastructure and opportunities.
It is a very complex situation and all expressions such as "poor-3rd-world" or "seventh gdp economy" are all reductionist and shallow compared to what is really happening.
However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.
Thank you.
In terms of GDP per capita Brazil is 76th, bellow the world average.
Also bellow places like Uruguay, Argentina and say Botswana.
It's a poor country.
Not only is Brazil not a poor-3rd-world-nation, but other similar developing nations are by far more "technologically advanced" (e.g. China, India).
Typical authoritarian act by a lower court judge that will be reversed in 1 or 2 days
Nothing to see here
I feel like this is an overly dismissive attitude to have, even, or especially if, everything you said is true and this is some common behavior.
Yes, the owner of the biggest construction company in Brazil, that had a sector dedicated for paying bribes, was "supposedly" arrested for corruption.
What a joke
Even blocking for a few hours causes several man-hours to be spent in setting up alternatives. And lots of telephone costs, as well, since many companies - including those with technicians on the field, sometimes in another state - use that to communicate instead.
I mean, if your doctor is using it, you know you are screwed the day Facebook does anything you disagree with, because you are wholly dependent on them at that point. That was why we even developed interoperable federated messaging protocols over 15 years ago, apparently the world forgot about how bad the 90s were.
Yes but still better than orkut, I guess...
In fact, a lot of people prefer Telegram, and a lot use neither, preferring good old cellphone conversations. Oh wait, isn't that a closed protocol that dominates all offline communications? How dystopian...
If I want to communicate to some another WhatsApp user, I need to use WhatsApp.
If you want to communicate with another person you can use Telegram or whatever you want.
What is dystopian is the amount of control corporations have on our day to day lives, as well as the freedom to study and follow our every moves and thoughts and do so for profit or other ends. That is dystopian, not the technology itself, the usage that they make of it and the obliviousness of the vast majority of its users as to what they are up to with it.
I, for one, think that this kind of thing is a very good example on why we should NEVER rely on closed services. Whatsapp may be doing all of the right things (creating new features, improving privacy, keeping the product free and separate from FB), but it is still closed.
WhatsApp should decide how much they care about Brazil. If they care, they could have bothered to send a lawyer. If they don't care, then they shouldn't complain about their service being cut off.
Telcos and App providers can contribute to make a democracy strong. And so do all citizens. But they aren't what is referred to by "institutions".
There is no widespread fragility in Brazilian institutions today. Recent events have shown they are strong as ever. Telcos and App providers have all their rights within the legal system to appeal the recent decision against WhatsApp and get their arguments heard. WhatsApp has already appealed to this judge's decision and this will be heard by an appeals court. This is business as usual in a legal system that is working.
Check the US for example, Apple was able to fight the government's request and prevail _before_ the government did anything about it, not after. In Brazil, Tim Cook would have been arrested right away.
Why are not the other messengers doing the same?
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.
GDP proves to us that the "country is rich", HDI tells us that "this richness is not distributed" which means that we have an endemic and self-perpetuating problem with wealth distribution and access to infrastructure, which I believe you'd agree.
I completely agree with your statement that we have a rampant and systemic corruption scheme in place here and that makes solving all of this mess an extremely complex problem.
Being the seventh world economy is not meaningless, it proves that with the correct measures in place, we have the economic power to move economy/jobs and wealth forward. If we could pair that with proper access to education and opportunities then we'd have a really marvelous place.
All the criticisms you made there are true and still, we're in a better place than 20 or 25 years ago, specially when we're talking about the low-income classes and impoverished. Lots of advancements there but nowhere close to solving the problem...
I agree with you, but I found the first comment misleading, thus my heated response. By meaningless I meant regarding the "feel" that you get as a citizen, or as a turist, or even as an outsider watching the news, which is that the country and its people are in trouble (also relative, compared to UE or US, not to central Africa for example). I completely agree that the country has a lot of potencial, resources, and great people. It has vast amounts of petroleum, the Amazonas etc etc. And I also agree that one of the problems is the distribution of the wealth. And sure, you are improving the situation.
I think a somehow similar "rich" country in a bad situation is Argentina, with lots of resources and also oil reserves. So is Russia. Bad management, corruption, education etc are some causes of it. It is indeed a very complex problem.
A lot of people simply stop reading when confronted by rudeness or profanity and just downvote and move on, because experience has proven that such comments usuaully lack proper arguments. Use civil language to prevent being classified as noise.
But saying "you are full of crap" on HN is a reason to be downvoted.
Comments like this break HN's civility rule. Please (re-)read the site guidelines and eliminate this kind of thing from your posts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614911 and marked it off-topic.