Hacker News Reader

Comment by morsch | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the correction. Most (recent) articles annoyingly only go about the blocking and unblocking, and don't actually say what the Brazilian authorities want.

Do you know what "tracking" entails? That could mean anything from revealing message contents to revealing social networks or tracking a user's geoposition or reporting all the IMSI/IMEIs associated with any given WhatsApp user.

View on HN

The last case involved a judge asking Whatsapp to implement a backdoor in its services.

Kudos to facebook for resisting the government of brazil but why would they help the U.S. government nail media pirates and not help another government nail terrorists? This does not add up.

The method of assistance involved is different between these two cases.

One case wants them to introduce a deliberate backdoor into their software. Negating the entire point of their recent move to end-to-end encryption and a major reason they're such a big player in the communication service market.

The other case was a warrant for, "What IP addresses accessed this account?".

The second one is trivial to comply with and to compile. The first is going to require them to alienate most of their customers, destroy their business, and spend a few man-weeks (minimum) to put together.

Bullshit. The first makes them have less power and profit less, the second do the opposite. It's a "fair" choice, don't you think? At least if you are the billionare owner that don't care with anyone and pretends that he is pursuing an open world.

Sure. Let's go with that then.

EDIT: That was just straight snark. Sorry.

Want a better response? I've seen your other comments regarding WhatsApp/Facebook on past related discussions. If you really think Brazil is being held back by these companies (WhatsApp in particular) make a competitor. Win over the Brazilian market. And deliberately make it insecure so your government can eavesdrop on any conversation. Good luck at keeping that market.

Yeah, I'm developing a competitor. Guess what? We don't have zillions of dollars and if we don't answer the justice right, we bankrupt. Facebook don't. So yeah, it's part of the development of my product to stop the unfair benefits foreign technology companies have in my country.

EDIT: FB eavesdrop to US gov didn't stopped their growth. Actually, I would bet that it helped.

WhatsApp, before it was owned by Facebook, didn't have zillions of dollars, which was also when it exploded in Latin America.

I think "implement" is misleading. The brazillian justice asked to use the same mechanism the US gov already use ;)

Source? What kind of backdoor are we talking about here?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com