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Comment by guhcampos | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

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