WhatsApp is back online in Brazil | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp is back online in Brazil

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209 pointsnatthub166 comments

> the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy

Says the person (in name of the company, I assume) whose company blocks things they don't "like", such as messages containing telegram.org or telegram.me[1].

Now Facebook is not a democracy and they can block and censor pretty much any message they like, but now they go on to tell Brazil how it should run its judicial system. That's like giving people free beer and then asking them to take up pitchforks and come along to put some pressure on a third party you don't like very much.

[1] https://i.snag.gy/9KBPGR.jpg

Maybe this is obvious, or that I'm wrong, but the issue in Brazil is that most Brazilians are left-wing conservatives AND within in recent past put the current government in power. Long term this is the issue, not these "cyber attacks" - which are to me very problematic, but only a symptom of the issue.

I'm not sure which "cyber attacks" you are talking about. It's about a judge ordering Whatsapp to be taken offline for 72 hours for not complying with a court order, or am I missing something?

Quotes infer that it's a hyperbolic metaphor - and is used to express the degree of my disgust for a country "legally" attacking itself without good cause.

* Hyperbolic metaphor: https://sesquiotic.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/can-a-metaphor-b...

What does "left-wing conservatives" mean?

maybe the same as right-wing liberals, that is, complete nonsense.

If you try to think out of the U.S. politics box where labels are strictly enforced, it make a lot of sense. The communist party in italy during the 60s and 70s was pretty much the epitome of left-wing conservatism.

I interpret it as socially conservative, but preferring strong state involvement in economy.

Personal liberty is not very important. There can be rich people, but they are to be humbled by a powerful government. A very extreme example of such a regime is the National Socialist Germany.

That description, and your example, are in no way "left-wing."

I think that "preferring strong state involvement in economy" is a very traditional "left-wing" policy.

Regarding social conservatism, even extreme left-wing governments have often been socially conservative in many issues, even if they wanted to shake power structures. Consider, for instance, how stalinist Soviet Union related to homosexuals.

> Facebook is not a democracy and they can block and censor pretty much any message they like, but now they go on to tell Brazil how it should run its judicial system

Yeah, Facebook is a company - not a country. You can't compare apples to oranges.

Facebook can do whatever it want and people are free to chose to use it service or not. Brazilians had no choice on this case.

Brazilians can use other apps if they want them too. I don't see your point of freedom to communicate being blocked. You're complaining as tcp/ip would've been blocked and it's not. The point here is Whatsapp is not cooperating with authorities, and surely that's not remotely plausible in a state government. I'm not saying they have to weak encryption or putting backdoors, but a reasonable way to help any government with investigations which hurt society in general.

> Brazilians can use other apps if they want them too.

Having a country change like that does not do good for people. People using dumb phones might have WhatsApp, but not alternatives.

Other apps with proper user-controlled encryption would also be blocked.

It is impossible to help the investigations in the way they were asked to while also having proper user-controlled encryption. You are asking for weaknesses or backdoors if you don't recognize that Whatsapp gave up all the information they had, which was nothing.

'I'm not saying they have to weak encryption or putting backdoors, but a reasonable way to help any government with investigations which hurt society in general.'

What is it with the "I'm not saying they should have a backdoor, but there should really be [some rhetorically obfuscated equivalent to a backdoor]"?

This is cryptography, not politics. There's no middle ground here. You either have secure communications or you don't. If the data can be provided to the government, that also means it can be leaked, stolen, purchased, spied upon, etc.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

> Facebook is a company - not a country. You can't compare apples to oranges.

That is what I meant, Facebook is not a country and thus they can censor anything. Now, however, they are meddling with a country's government. I am not a big fan of an almighty government in general, but here I am going to take their side and argue Facebook has it too easy with the free beer and rallying people in their favor.

> Facebook can do whatever it want

As long as what they want to do is legal.

> Facebook can do whatever it want and people are free to chose to use it service or not. Brazilians had no choice on this case.

Fair enough. In which case Zuck should stop all the talk about "[denying] the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy", and just talk about share holder value and market share.

Sure they can.

If they don't mind to yell: WE ARE TOTAL AND UTTER HYPOCRITES! to the entire world.

That's fucking dodgy/unacceptable. I know they did this for another site that gave money to people for spamming their connections with links to their website, which I guess is borderline acceptable. In the case of telegram though, there is no redeeming circumstance of any kind, they're just censoring for a business advantage [without it being directly visible to the user, which is even worse], and that's just really unacceptable for me

> censoring

Classifying a recipient receiving a message containing exactly what the sender sent as 'censorship' just because they don't auto-link it is taking the word to new heights of rhetorical meaninglessness. Dodgy and scummy, sure. Mildly inconvenient for the recipient, definitely. Censorship, no.

> just because they don't auto-link it is taking the word to new heights of rhetorical meaninglessness

Whatsapp not only blocks auto-linking, but they also prevent the link from being copied to the clipboard. "Censorship" sounds about right.

There is a huge difference between "the government of Brazil denying everyone the freedom to communicate the way they want" and "facebook not auto-linking to a competitor's site in a chat program." You're comparing a government making communication through a specific (and popular) channel illegal, and a company not providing a link to a website as they send your message to your recipient.

I know Hacker News enjoys getting riled up at Facebook, but come on. You're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing food to food, it's like saying this rock isn't like this sandwich.

I think it is a fair comparison. Facebook isn't for free expression, they are for their business. The Brazilian Gov can be questioned in the Justice System, but doing so against "Freedom". Facebook dubious position about the right to be informed and the desire to control the information we access is a greater menace to freedom of expression than any ignorant Brazilian lower judge.

Every business is there for themselves. But laws or rulings blocking access to any business are anti-freedom. It's pretty simple.

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons that overcome that. But not with a simple communication channel.

I don't know in which country you live, but I am very happy we have rulings here in Germany blocking access to businesses if those businesses are not following the law. WhatsApp, even if a US based company, is defacto providing a service in Brazil, it means they have to follow Brazilian laws. Dura Lex Sed Lex. You have more context on the other submission[0] showing that WhatsApp had way enough time to take the requests of the judge into account and act on them. They preferred to go the "we are too big to be shut down" way, which is not the way the law works and then complain about freedom and democracy.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614116

This may work well in Germany, but here in Brazil everything government does we feel it's due to corruption or incompetence - and most of the time, it is.

Blocking access should be a last resort, for businesses that are doing something extremely harmful. It's a consumer protection measure, not a punishment. If a business is breaking the law, you punish them with fines and the police, not by redirecting the mail/phone/packets directed at them.

The citizens are the ones initiating contact with WhatsApp servers. They're the ones really being blocked here. Even though they've done nothing wrong.

> WhatsApp had way enough time to take the requests of the judge into account and act on them.

Sure they had time, but the request was physically impossible. What is supposed to happen if a judge demands a picture of you eating breakfast 8 days ago?

>Sure they had time, but the request was physically impossible. What is supposed to happen if a judge demands a picture of you eating breakfast 8 days ago?

You go to court and explain it's impossible. Sticking your fingers in your ears and singing is a poor strategy and deserves to be punished.

If you've never been to the country, ignoring a court summons sounds like a sane idea to me.

Here in Brazil, if you have a store, you can't refuse to sell to me because I'm gay, black, woman or any other motive. Business aren't entitled to do everything that are better for their business.

> Facebook isn't for free expression

That is literally the opposite of what Zuck, the founder and CEO of Facebook said in this article: "the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy"

Facebook does much more then that... they also hide information by using their "smart" sorting algo of stories/posts, for example.

Why can't you sort news by "newest first" then?

Either this options has become very well hidden, either it has totally disapeared. Either way, I cannot find it.

Also, don't forget that this didn't actually show all of the news. Just the news that passed the timeline algorithms in the chronological order (instead of just putting them all over the place). That's why nobody complained when it got removed, it just wasn't doing what it was supposed to do when it was there.

The API is open for everyone. If you want a feed with each and every post from your friends and the pages you follow, you can build one yourself.

Different different but same.

Countries generally can ban certain forms of communication. To contrieve a couple of examples you can have freedom of speak and still not be allowed to shout outdoors at night in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Or send smoke signals there.

And Facebook don't have to prioritise ads from competitors (I think).

That said, banning certain, non-harmful links in user-to-user communication or a whole class of non-disturbing communication comes off as extremely bad form to be.

So, IMO pointing out Facebooks hypocrisy is well justified and doesn't mean we agree with Brazil.

  That said, banning certain, non-harmful links in user-to-user communication or a whole class of non-disturbing communication comes off as extremely bad form to be.

For me it's one of the main reasons, why I refuse to use Facebook

For an apple to apple comparison, how about last year when Facebook promised to help Germany censor any criticism of their immigration policy under the guise of 'stopping Hate Speech'?

Facebook aren't taking a stance against censorship here. They are taking the same stance they always did: Pro-Facebook.

Hate speech has always been a violation of Facebook's ToS. The "deal" with Germany was simply that Facebook agreed to be better at actually enforcing their own terms.

You ignored the actual argument, that political policy was being falsely labeled as hate speech.

I have no idea if it's true or not, but that's what you need to address if you want to discuss the nature of the deal.

> I have no idea if it's true or not

Of course it's not, it's an absurd claim. There's a very clear distinction between political argument and, well, this:

http://www.dw.com/en/pegida-founder-lutz-bachmann-found-guil...

That article doesn't say anything about Facebook deleting posts of his. And the only thing he's specifically listed as doing, calling specific groups cattle/scum/trash, well, Facebook sure doesn't seem to delete similar language in general. "It's against the rules" does not imply that enforcement is fair if enforcement is highly biased and ignores 99% of cases.

It is in large part speculation and conjecture. The evidence I thought I had doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

All the same, if you don't support the right of horrble people to say horrible things, you don't actually support free speech.

Facebook/WhatsApp is trying to have it both ways. Either it's a for profit private company (and it can do things like that), or it's an important communication medium for a democracy (and access should be open).

When it comes to blocking telegram, Facebook/WhatsApp wants to be the provate for profit company. When some judge blocks WhatsApp, suddenly they're an important service for a democracy.

> Either it's a for profit private company (and it can do things like that), or it's an important communication medium for a democracy (and access should be open).

Blocking telegram is classic bone-headed stupidity. It's like an invitation for government lawyers to burrow under your skin and lay their eggs.

But inconsistency only shows that one of their positions is wrong, and it's that one.

Paying an appropriate amount of tax in the countries in which it operates might be another. All that democracy stuff costs money and has to be paid for somehow.

It isn't a company's job to pay more taxes than it owes, it's a country's job to set sensible taxes.

Stop trying to tax "corporate income" for multinational entities that can trivially shift profits into other countries, and instead tax the thing they actually do in your country.

And if they don't actually do anything in your country, what makes them owe you anything?

But Facebook can't have it both ways. They can't pay almost no tax and then call themselves defenders of democracy.

Facebook refuses to cooperate with German authorities when it comes to investigating and prosecuting death threats through their platform, while at the same time, they want to do advertising business in Germany. They'd simply like to have all the money and none of the responsibility and accountability.

Facebook is openly supporting government censorship, too. The only reason WhatsApp didn't comply is that they couldn't, because they really don't have the data, as others pointed out. Facebook/WhatApp aren't the good guys here.

Am I missing something? Just tried it on my phone and it works fine in on my end, is this something that just doesn't get converted to a link on the other side? Not converting something to a link is a far cry from outright censorship, still pretty shady in a mostly meaningless way, though.

It doesn't convert to link and it doesn't allow you to copy the message.

Now, that's advanced instant messaging.

Mark Zuckerberg "urged" Brazilians to tell Congress to "ban bans of online services" in the name of democracy.

Am I an irrational nationalist for believing he shouldn't get into the politics of any country (especially outside of the US)?

Last time someone tried to help us (Brazilians), we got a military dictatorship.

Oh but this isn't even the first time.

See this: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/5/9099897/facebook-india-inte...

Facebook put up a banner for Indian users to try to influence the passing of a law to allow Facebook to break net neutrality in India.

Acts like these aren't limited to communications companies though. American multinationals have a tendency to exploit poor underdeveloped countries, like Papua New Guinea, and countless African countries.

It's part of the reason why China takes a highly protectionist stance especially with regards to foreign internet companies.

It's not just Indian users neither. Once an Indian user saw that banner and signed it, every single one of his friends got a notification about it. In fact, that chained reaction somehow ended up in my notifications too by one of my friends signing it. I was furious!

See: https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/679093130080161792 (notice the checkmark that's checked by default).

In my opinion, they managed to accomplish exactly what they wanted to with this campaign: make the whole online call for discussion by the India's regulatory authority meaningless.

I think that this is your congress not the US Congress but I get your point and I'd be offended and irritated if someone special interests driven like Zuckerberg stuck his nose in our politics and internal affairs like this.

Also, I wouldn't rule out that Zuckerberg could resort to astro-turfing tactics and fund those "internet freedom" groups in Brazil to do his bidding. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg turned his tech empire into a big political machine and started to influence or subvert (However you choose to view his actions) politics in foreign countries and should be treated as such not just some harmless business.

Well, last time it was US's CIA. Facebook isn't comparable neither on resources, nor on competence.

They'd better not relate themselves with our Congress, but it's for their own good, not our :)

But wait, if WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, that failure to URL convert must be a local operation. And if it's a local operation, maybe there's a workaround. But maybe apps are locked down too tightly. In any case, going from telegram.org as text to https://telegram.org/ is not exactly rocket science, no?

Last i checked Facebook does not have the authority to arrest, kill, put people in cages.. these are all things a governments do to citizen their violate their laws.

So no facebook censoring telegram is aboslutely nothing like a government doing anything.

It is extremely ignorant to ever compare a companies action to a government actions. A person can stop using (or never start like me) facebook, a person can not quit their government, or refuse their government ...

Linking to telegram works just fine.

http://imgur.com/FOnR6ls

Just tried it with a couple of guys at the office, seems it is only blocked on Android. It works on WhatsApp web, Windows phone and on the iPhone.

I can't reproduce the censorship of telegram.org.

http://imgur.com/qUjmS2n

We dodged this bullet but here in Brazil but RIGHT NOW there is a much more dangerous risk: with the Parliamentary Commission on Cybercrimes (CPI dos Crimes Cibernéticos / CPICIBER) report a "combo" of bills will get "fast track" on Congress and, to list some things, expand data retention, allow access to IP addresses without warrant and allow judges to block "illegal" content, including copyright violations much like DMCA does (they use the "notice-and-staydown" terminology).

More details here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/battery-dangerous-cybe...

https://www.accessnow.org/access-now-delivers-petition-brazi...

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/brazilian-cybercrime-bil...

The final voting will happen TOMORROW, 9 a.m. Brasilia time (GMT-3), 5am in California I guess. If you can help raise awareness and use EFF's Action Center to message the parliamentaries through Twitter and Facebook around that time, it would help a lot.

https://act.eff.org/action/fight-back-against-brazil-s-draco...

In portuguese, this is the best starting point on the debate (disclaimer: I work on antivigilancia.org):

https://antivigilancia.org/pt/cpiciber/

Your page isn't clear, what exactly happens tomorrow? Is it the final voting on the CPI? Or is there some law project under vote right now?

I'll work on a quick article today to explain this and adapt the page to reflect that. Thanks for the tips. Answering you quickly (I'm preparing dinner :-)):

- Tomorrow, the CPI decides their final report (after three drafts and a couple separate patches) on all the inquiries the commission made the last months. This report includes "recommendations" to some existing draft bills and proposes a number of other bills.

- Parliamentaries presented "destaques" that will be voted separately and may supress the "IP blocking for illegal content" and "notification-based removal of illegal content" bills.

- The final report as of now is the first link with a small patch on the Projeto de Lei 1.6 made by the second link.

http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?...

http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...

EDIT TO APPEND:

TL;DR: The two bills that we may realistically remove through the help of friendly parliamentaries tomorrow are the ones about illegal website blocking (ISP blacklisting) and content removal through notification; both open the door for criminalizing remixes and using copyright infringement for censorship.

Here's my article summarizing the status and what can happen today (no time to translate unfortunately):

https://antivigilancia.org/pt/2016/05/cpiciber-o-que-pode-sa...

It's happening live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LNhAWbdrZA

This is hardly the first or the last time this kind of things happens in Brazil.

Long story short, this is exactly the same standoff that happened recently in the US between the FBI and Apple: the authorities want information from a suspect phone, and assume they can get it from a company, in this case WhatsApp. A warrant is issued, and the company refuses to comply.

The big difference is: WhatsApp has been a major headache for telecom companies in Brazil, especially since the arrival of voice calls. With Wifi everywhere, people have been avoiding expensive traditional calls and just using WhatsApp to call for free.

For that reason, the telcos in Brazil are more than happy to comply with court when it comes to WhatsApp blocks, so they do it right away, no questions asked.

The thing is, WhatsApp is not just refusing to comply - they can't comply, since they don't retain message data. In addition, now that all messages are encrypted end to end, it will be impossible for them to comply in the future.

Well, if they just had responded to the judge order explain that or explaining anything, maybe the judge would consider it.

We came to this point because whatsapp do not exist as a company in Brazil and simply ignored the court order.

Know they probably considered such orders may happen again and decided to respond to the order.

I guarantee you that there is a good reason WhatsApp doesn't have a presence in Brazil and doesn't show its face in their courts. I have no inside knowledge, but I'm assuming it's because legal presence will give the Brazilian government even more leverage to coerce them to dubious ends, expose them to more liability, etc. I do know that Brazil has a history of corruption and tragically stupid foreign trade policies.

It's not the government, it's the justice. We are a republic. And we have laws. Ignoring a court order is illegal here (and I think it's illegal on most civilized countries).

The problem is the company ignoring the orders. All they have to do is explain to the judge why they can't follow that order. And they refuse to do so.

Sounds a lot like the people who said "All Apple has to do is unlock one phone". Again, I'm no expert in Brazil, but I suspect that creating a legal presence in the country (e.g., by answering/defending the claim) gives the government too much leverage.

Then don’t operate in the country.

They quite literally don't. They operate a service on a global network that can be contacted from Brazil.

Then they shouldn’t be surprised if they’re blocked.

If I operated a company in Liberland that had an onlineshop selling Crystal meth to customers in the US, my packages would also be intercepted.

OK. If you look again at my comments, I don't disagree with you. I only speculated that WhatsApp has a sound reason for not turning up to answer the claims and for not keeping a presence in Brazil. If Brazil wants to shut them down, then it should (and did) do it. However, the service has apparently been turned back on. Maybe you should run for President of Brazil if it's important to you.

I am sure the judge has been explained, by newspapers at least. If he knew what he was ruling about, he wouldn't even need an explanation.

With such absurd court rulings, it is clearly a wise decision to not have employees in the country.

I'm reasonably certain that the point of a court is for one side to argue against the other - not for one side to argue against what the judge thinks based on what a newspaper says.

If you don't turn up to court in the US, expect a ruling against you too.

WhatsApp have testified about this before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes. There's no chance the judge isn't aware of it.

So if they're willing to send people to Brazil once, why not again?

It did not work the first time.

You are right, they did. But this is not how judiciary system works.

You cannot respond to a judge order by giving interviews on newspapers or by a blog post or even with a testimony in a legislative hearing.

You need to ask your lawyer to answer the judge request, on paper.

I'm not sure that's true. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook now, and Facebook has a presence in Brazil alright.

Sounds similar to the position that Skype was in a decade ago. Telcos in Europe hated Skype and tried everything to block it or making it slow (deep packet inspection) but when the iPhone came out they couldn't stop the mobile web revolution.

> the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy

If companies like Facebook were not funneling everybody onto centralized platforms, it would be harder for an ISP to deny that freedom.

The centralization of communication platforms is a bigger problem than any ISP censorship. That they have a target to shutdown at all is the real issue.

Agreed. Zuckerberg's little victory speech in this post reminds me of the kind of talk he used in defending his free basics plan. I get a little tired of people with heavy business interests weighing in on "democracy" and "freedom."

I'm Brazilian, my phone got bombarded with "<user> just joined Telegram" notifications today.

Hopefully it's the user that you expect: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/72646884513381171...

Facebook once banned me for 24h just for sending my friend a link (via messenger) to animgif containing female boobs. (together with ban FB expired all API access tokens of my apps) Zuckerberg positioning himself as champion of democracy and unrestricted communication is ridiculous.

"Brazilian appellate judge rescinds WhatsApp block"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/brazilian-judge-b...

Now Facebook appointed Matt Steinfeld (Facebook's Head of Communications) to discuss the matter. The judge must be pleased.

Out of curiosity, what did Brazil use before WhatsApp existed?

It seems strange to me that 1 app can capture such an overwhelming majority, because it's just a client, of which there have always been dozens if not hundreds.

SMS. It was a big focus for a lot of telcos until recently.

WhatsApp usage seem to have gone hand in hand with increased availability of smartphones (Android, mostly).

I don't remember any other mobile messaging app that had widespread usage before that.

exactly. remember, the US was not the reason FB shelled out to buy 'em

Orkut

(SCNR)

I'm not even sure. I remember giving Kik a go in the early days of smartphones, but all of a sudden everyone was using WhatsApp. My own social circle used to prefer Kik since it had features like Location sharing way before WhatsApp did.

It could be that WhatsApp was the first to get translated to Brazilian Portuguese, and since I've always used the English version I never noticed. Even if English is taught as a second language in all schools, most Brazilians can't read or write English, so this is a big deal.

SMS. It is VERY expensive in Brazil

IMHO, the biggest selling point of WhatsApp for brazilians is that it works as offline as it is possible. All received data is stored locally.

Even if you're offline and send a message, it stores it locally and send it when connection becomes available.

Since the majority of WhatsApp users in Brazil have access only to low quality internet connection, this becomes a major issue.

So it's not at all about privacy?

That's interesting. But it makes sense, I suppose.

It's just the vocal minority that push privacy in WhatsApp. But it is good to see Facebook supporting private communication. Apple and Facebook, who would have thought?

In the case of Apple it's much more obvious, when most of your revenue comes from hardware (and now also 'services') you don't have to mine your user's data for ads.

WhatsApp introducing Signal-based end-to-end encryption after it was acquired by Facebook was definitely surprising. I guess they can always switch to on-device profile creation :p. I trusted Whatsapp as a separate entity (low costs, yearly fee). Facebook, not so much.

And free messages and phone calls. Here one dollar would give you less than 10 SMS messages.

"Since the majority of WhatsApp users in Brazil have access only to low quality internet connection"... Not unlike the shitty situation in the US.

It's not surprising to me that there is only one app used by the majority of people. That is called the network effect.

But why is it WhatsApp? It's very frictionless. WhatsApp is a drop-in replacement for SMS. You don't make an account. You just download the app, import your phonebook and start messaging people who are also on WhatsApp. It's SMS except it's free, not more not less. My parents (not from Brazil) are on WhatsApp. They don't use any other social network or messaging app (except Skype).

Similar situation here in Germany. Everyone and their mother uses Whatsapp. Most tech people underestimate the importance of not having to create an account or manage friends/contacts. Your phone number and your existing contacts is all it takes to set you up on Whatsapp, which is a low enough barrier to welcome users that usually avoid scary things like creating an account.

And they had extremely wide platform support in times when not everyone had a smartphone. So, like SMS and in contrast to many other apps you were not confined to just Blackberry, iOS, xor Android.

whatsapp thrived in part due to the fact that it works on a lot of devices and in a lot of cases supported devices no one else did before their competitors.

I am from Brazil

I used MSN Messenger (until MS killed and managed to kill their IM dominance), and pulled shady stunts with my phone (for example calling, saying a word, and immediately cutting connection, calling again... doing this is free for some reason).

If it was REALLY needed, I would use SMS, it was easy to make mistakes there though (a couple times I ended spending 150 USD in a month in SMS, usually in extremely stressful months where communication was essential).

The need to replace SMS was obvious, and I even had a company where I worked ask me to start researching into how to do it (this was in early 2011, I think some similar stuff already existed in US?), but this project never went anywhere.

And a technical note: doing the phone shenanigans I used to, can get you literally banned from the phone line, I was banned about 3 times (you keep your phone line, and can receive calls, but can't make any except to emergency services), but the only reason I had the phone was to do that stuff anyway (this was when I was still in school, and was the only way to communicate with my then SO, since I couldn't afford spending with real calls or SMS, because of how absurdly expensive they were... mind you, they STILL are absurdly expensive).

Brasilians are social-network junkies... Whatsapp was 'the messaging app' around the time where just about everybody got a smartphone so it just caught on, and there are groups for everything(and there's a lot of porn) and a lot of stuff goes viral through it(I've received Lula's lawyer wiretapped call through groups, for example) and then businesses started using it too, putting their "zaps" on billboards and etc. Before Whatsapp it was Facebook, Orkut, MSN..

How do businesses manage to communicate with clients through their zaps when there isn't an official API nor a CRM oriented Whatsapp client. Also, aren't they breaking the SLA? Just curious...

Well, it would be simple/small businessess mostly, and mostly taking the place of phone calling, for example asking for information, ordering something, "signing up" to receive offers/the daily menu... And that would be just a guy with a list and a phone forwarding and repplying messages and etc. Radio shows also use it to communicate with listeners(although it's kinda ridiculous that then they have to warn all the time not to text while driving)... So.. Yeah, mostly about communication, not about process.

Mostly small business literally typing on their phones. Really bizarre.

I guess if this happens on a market where Whatsapp serves 10% of its entire user base, FB sees an opportunity to make back the billions it paid for it by offering a paid API to businesses.

There is something called web.whatsapp.com, if you don't know. Also, there are custom programs that will automatically answer whatsapp messages, like dealing with pizza orders, for instance, without any human intervention.

Yes, I know, use it everyday. Most small business in Brazil don't. And definitively no automated software. Also, all automated software for WhatsApp must rely on terrible hacks on the interface, as there's no supported API and WA is really aggressive against third-party clients.

It's funny to watch it, actually.

A company gives you their card information and there are a few things on it: the website URL, maybe an email, the address and a phone number, with the WhatsApp icon on the side!

When there are two numbers, they put the WhatsApp icon in one of them. They literally put another company's logo in their own contact info, because of how WhatsApp is so widespread!

SMS was expensive in Brazil before Whatsapp. Furthermore, it took more than half an hour to a SMS arrive in most of the time, sometime more than a day. A lot of people don't pay cellular data plan and use whatsapp on wifi.

Whatsapp arrived as a free service on android. The app was really fast even in slow smartphone. And uses your cellphone number as id, so it was really easy to know whom was using. I made a lot of people to use whatapp, because it show if you had send the message and if the other person has read. A problem I had with SMS.

And others messengers? (IMHO) * iMessage is restrict on iPhone and Android dominate market share in Brazil. * Facebook Message was only put in a different app latter in the game. And Facebook App is a bloatware, so it is practically unused on slow smartphones. * Skype app was slow and it didn't use your cellphone number, so I had to ask personally. * Gtalk didn't synchronized messages correctly and I never saw someone outside tech people using it. (Hangout fix the first problem).

A few others tried: Kik, WeChat, zapzap (Brazilian messenger). But none has the mass use. Now days, even my gramma is using Whatapp, so it will be difficult to change.

Telegram is increasing the number of people. I had a lot of friends sign up during this blockage.

WhatsApp (or ZapZap as it is informally called here) used to work even in old Nokia phones (non android).

The Telcos cartel created a lot of "innovations" in Brazil. It is so expensive to call between different telcos, that people have multiple phones with multiple chips each.

This follows a nation wide uproar. Definitely not a popular decision in a country that relies on this service, however the decision was made. My wife is Brazilian and you should see her Facebook news feed...they're blaming the same government they want to throw out of office - not a great timing on their part.

On whose part? This wasn't a decision by the government.

"Brazilians have been leaders in connecting the world and creating an open internet for many years. I hope you make your voice heard now and demand change"

I think he didn't word this right.

What does the USA do about WhatsApp? Do they really tolerate end to end encryption they cant subpoena the company for...or does the NSA have a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center?

I think that one way or another, WhatsApp isn't foiling the NSA if the NSA doesn't feel like being foiled. Then again, they may realize what most of us do, which is that WhatsApp is not exactly a terrorist hotbed.

NSA will simply pwn the endpoint devices of whoever they're really interested in.

I want to believe that. I want to believe that the NSA, while having no respect for the law, does at least care about results. It would make a lot more sense to tap devices of interesting people, than this idea of bulk collection (which leads to just a lot more noise).

And that would be fine. If they have reasonable proof that someone is bad enough to allow this, by all means pwn the targeted hell out of their devices.

It is not foiling targeted attacks, of course. But it might be making a dent on cheap/effortless mass surveillance, which is the main point.

If the end-to-end encryption is working as designed then "a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center" would be of no help.

For high enough value targets the NSA is probably happy to compromise the endpoints.

True, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

I guess the recent case with the FBI and the iPhone shows what will happen if they want messages badly enough.

Can't it be e2e encryption with WhatsApp keeping a copy of the private keys? or does e2e enc implicitly means the private keys are never exchanged?

WhatsApp wouldn't keep the private keys. That being said, this system could still be hacked - when the clients exchange public keys, you insert yourself in the middle, provide your own public keys to each client, and mediate between the two clients, which gives you access to the unencrypted messages.

That only works in transport if the connection is not pinned. I don't know if they do pin, but they should.

If they pin then the NSA would have to actually have access to the data center and doing that much without getting noticed is quite hard.

True, but I bet that the NSA could force WhatsApp to issue certificates for fake keys. Obviously can't do that without being noticed, but they could still use it to spy on specific users if they wanted.

With end to end encryption the private keys are generated on the endpoint, there's no need for them to ever leave it.

Once again the bigger problem we really have to face is the corporatization of the defense of civil rights

Public service announcement: if you install Orbot, you can route traffic for any Android app through Tor.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en

I hope the govt sees the reliance on this service and does something positive about it (for example, build their own or tie up with some company). Such massive dependence on a company with no contracts is going to end up in a mess later.

On the other hand, using a government issued instant messenger seems even more dangerous. I think Brazilians have more to fear from their own government than foreign governments.

Well, fear of government and police seems to be some hip thing amongst some HN commenters. This doesn't make sense and shakes the whole foundation of democracy.

Do we really have democratic nations that would rather rely on some corporation than the government? Is brazil such a nation. That is semi-alarming to me.

I do not understand this approach. A market solution works and is popular, so the government should step in and try to develop something better with "contracts"?

It's just a form of standardization by the government in terms of the technical protocol. Just like EU has some with OOXML and ODF. This ensures that other players can come in and build alternative clients. Without regulations, it's going to be a nation relying on a company. I don't think that is good.

Many people in fact rely on WhatsApp. But that's not like they own the only road available.

If for some reason WhatsApp suddenly vanished, people would switch to the competitors, like Telegram, Messenger, Viber, etc.

There would be chaos during the change, but that's just because the change happens suddenly. If it happens slowly (if the government continues to block WhatsApp, people will rely on an alternative), then I see no harm.

The EU has been trying to enforce open formats for their own use; it doesn't try to force private individuals or companies to use them among themselves.

(It also failed; as of 2014, .doc was still used more than .odt by orders of magnitude in the major institutions - Commission, Council and Parliament)

And now Facebook is down for me entirely.

gggggggooooooaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllll

I'm fairly certain Brazil didn't just wake up one day and decide to reactivate WhatsApp's service...

So my first reaction to this news is what did Facebook/WhatsApp/Zuckerberg do, or possibly even give up, in order to change Brazil's mind.

Nothing, their judicial system functioned as it should, only a day too slow. A district judge in the middle of the country has no right to do stuff like that, and the appellate judge fixed the overstep. Now, step 2, disbar the original district judge.

Step 2 seldom happens. Judges have an extreme amount of power.

Actually judges generally have very little power. For example, they can't enforce any decision they make, they can only make decisions.

In a functioning democracy the branches are balanced. In this case it looks like it took too long.

In Brazil a lower judge just illegally wired trap the president talking to an ex-president and released it to the media. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/release-tapped-...

There is only one specific judge that has ordered the block both times it has occurred. Both times it has been overturned when appealed to other judges in Brazil. It's not "Brazil" that made this decision. It's one extremist judge.

The December 2015 block was ordered by a judge in São Paulo (edit: São Bernardo do Campo city, in São Paulo state), while the most recent block was ordered by a judge in Sergipe.

What you might be thinking of was the February arrest of a Facebook executive, which was ordered by the same judge in Sergipe as the current WhatsApp block.

I think he or she just meant that in each case it was a single Judge's decision - that in neither case was the decision reviewed by a second court or committee before taking effect.

I've heard of groups of people in the Southeast talk about how the mentality of the people in the Northeast is different, and that is how you get the extremist judge.

Recall that a similar order was issued by a judge in São Bernardo do Campo just five months ago (causing Brazilian ISPs to block access to WhatsApp servers).

If you are Brazilian (as your username suggests), you should be ashamed for making this comment.

I am not Brazilian, but currently in Brazil. I also heard comments along those lines. Nothing to be ashamed of when making a statement like that. It's worse when you let nationalistic pride stop you from making negative comments.

When you make assumptions on someone else's mentality based on the geographic region they live in, it's called prejudice.

> I've heard of groups of people in the Southeast talk about how the mentality of the people in the Northeast is different

Being born in the capital and lived in the Northeast for 3 decades, I can attest that the mentality is indeed different.

For instance: the biggest A-holes usually come from the Southeast. See what I did there? I have many examples to back this up, but they prove nothing. Generalizations are harmful.

This is just a stupid judge overstepping his authority. If anything, that's judge mentality for you.

Instead of "hearing from groups of people", catch a plane and see for yourself. I bet some of your beliefs are going to change.

Caption for non Brazilians: there's this prejudice from people from the Southeast against people from the Northeast. Some of it is historical, as the Northeast suffered for centuries with severe drought (California's current situation is better than their best case, no mountains storing ice). So, people would migrate to the Southeast, in search of jobs. Usually poor, uneducated people.

Since then, the Northeast has developed and, while the drought is still a problem, most people are in cities now. Still, the stereotype persists, specially among the elitist in the South/Southeast.

>Being born in the capital and lived in the Northeast for 3 decades, I can attest that the mentality is indeed different.

>For instance: the biggest A-holes usually come from the Southeast. See what I did there? I have many examples to back this up, but they prove nothing. Generalizations are harmful.

The person you're replying to didn't say that either mentality was better or worse, just that they were different enough to lead to 'extremes'. Don't mock that as an us-vs-them slapfight.

The parallels with the US in this regard are striking (though of course it's just North/South in the US).

I'm curious if it is the inverse in Brazil of what it is in the United States?

Also, given the downvote(s) and another's chastising reply to the comment to which I'm replying, what exactly is being implied?

[Edit: I just read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11624980 , so I guess that my first point is confirmed, my second answered in the affirmative, and my third obviated]

[Edit 2: not agreeing with prejudice of any sort in either example, simply pointing out that similarities exist]

It's not the only factor, but Brazil's south and southeast are dramatically richer than the rest of the country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_federative_u...

Northeast is historically prejudiced against, it's where people used to die of hunger every day because of drought, poverty and hunger, like 10 years ago an image that's probably imprinted in every brasilian memory(from TV) is of the "sertão" with really dry land that's basically just red dirt, skeletal cattle, bones of dead cattle(because they also died of hunger), poor people with skin that looked like the eroded soil itself from living and toiling under the sun entire lifes. So because of this there was also a lot of migration, with the Southeast(São Paulo) being one of the central destinations because it's an economic center and etc so you can probably guess where the bad talk comes from..

The Northeast has improved a lot today, but it still has a lot of poverty and violence in big cities. Also it has a very rich culture.

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