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Brazilian Judge Shuts Down WhatsApp In Brazil
New submitter rafaelj writes: Apparently, Tim Berners Lee was not aware of the real impact on internet freedom in Brazil when he supported the Marco Civil to pass in the Brazilian congress last year. Using the Brazilian Civil "Rights" Framework, a minor Brazilian court ordered WhatsApp service to be suspended in the whole country after WhatsApp refused to provide user's data. The order was happily accomplished by the Brazilian mobile phone companies as they have been lobbying to convince the government to regulate the service in Brazil since their profits are decreasing steadily after Brazilians started using WhastsApp instead of (tolled) SMS and phone calls. Brazil has the most expensive cell phone rates on the planet.
Adds readers André Costa: The ban is a result of WhatsApp failing to comply with two previous court orders, on July 23 and August 7. Even though [the ban] affects millions of users, the service of course remains accessible through Wi-Fi. The plaintiff's identity is being kept secret. The news has already spread worldwide). The ban on WhatsApp resulted in more than 1.5 million users joining its competitor Telegram.
I always love it when a government has a sudden outbreak of common sense. Hopefully the US will gain some common sense too.
A savagely backward third world country blocks service that doesn't bow to their invasive bullshit. Colour me surprised.
The connection between blocking the internet and the Marco Civil da Internet (in English: "Civil Rights Framework for the Internet") stated in the summary is not clear in the actual articles linked.
The gizmodo article linked in the summary states: Under the Marco Civil da Internet — Civil Rights Framework for the Internet — approved in April 2014, which includes full-blown net neutrality, this kind of denial of service is illegal. Even before the regulation took effect, it was not considered kosher, which is why previous block orders were overturned before taking effect.
That seems to state the opposite of what it stated in the summary.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Don't think for a moment that this will be something happening in Brazil alone. Now authorities in France are pointing the finger at both WhatsApp and Telegram as providing a means for the attackers there to communicate.
[sarcasm]If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.[/sarcasm]
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
WhatsApp has provided data in criminal cases elsewhere in the world. Why not now?
I'm in Brazil, thanks to this gaffe, I have found Telegram (and most of my friends have found it, too).
It does not carry the potential shadow of Facebook surveillance, works even better, is encrypted, has fully encrypted, self-destructing channels, is Open Source, and looks like WhatsApp, except it does not have the annoying sound that comes when app is open and new message arrives.
Thank you, Facebook, and good obsolescence!
It seems to me that Brazil is trying to follow China's example, but without a "great firewall"? How will they enforce this? Was this action sponsored by Cisco?
It makes me nervous too, but...
Whenever such cases appear in the US, our complaint usually is, police demands data from companies, without a judge-signed warrant.
In this case, a judge made the order — not the prosecution. So, if he can not force a company to comply, who can?
Or is the legal system in Brazil so different from ours, that our terminology and standards do not apply?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
> the service of course remains accessible through Wi-Fi.
Wrong. The service is only available in Brazil if you use VPN or if your multinational company's internet goes trough an overseas firewall.
Brazilian here. This country is a dump.
My cellphone ringtone is a ring tone.
The judge shut down a company that refused to obey a court order. And it isn't the first time either. Whatsapp did the same in February in order to protect pedophiles, with the same outcome.
Brazil is the new venezuela in latin america, congratulations to everyone who supported the marco civil, thats what you get
Not that I'd want to use WhatsApp anyway, but what's stopping the end-user from routing around the damaged portion of the network?
I use whatsapp only on tablets, with the help of a dozen empty simcards on a second-hand phone I bought for a buck on eBay.
I do it that way for all the sites sending SMS verifications for signing app.
Together with the VPN there's not much data any court can get that way.
This article shows the sad state of the internet. Why are most people not using standard internet protocols for communication? They talk about how people can't chat because WhatsApp is down. Why are people not using standard XMPP apps which could be switched among providers? Why are people not using standard VOIP services that can be switched among providers?
Why do people keep migrating to these crappy proprietary solutions?
Whatsapp is cutting into the profits of cronies. The government takes swift action!
Looks like Brazil's telecoms need to join the 21st century and stop charging to send tiny bits of data around.
If they can't survive without this particular revenue, surely they can find revenue elsewhere? The US telecoms have had no problem thriving after they stopped charging for SMS, minutes and long distance! They just ream us on data now, which, although it sucks, is a hell of a lot better than paying 10 cents per text message.
The articles mention that a judge ordered the shutdown because Whatsapp didn't provide customer data for a court case. Is Whatsapp refusing to provide the data for some reason or is Whatsapp not able to provide the data (i.e. doesn't have it or it is encrypted in a way that they cannot decrypt)?
"A Brazilian state judge ordered the suspension of Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp throughout Brazil for 48 hours early Thursday, disrupting the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians who use the messaging service."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/br...
I would guess that tens of millions of Brazilians are going to have something to say about this the next time they vote.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
If WhatsApp was a federated system the block would barely matter.
Already overruled.
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/m...
A higher level judge ordered the ban to be lifted, stating (google translate, just being lazy...):
"in light of constitutional principles, it does not seem reasonable that millions of users be affected as a result of the company's inertia in providing information for the justice"
also:
"You can always, respected the conviction of the authority identified as constraining, raise the amount of the fine to a sufficient level to inhibit any resistance"
It's a bad ruling from a single judge that pleases the ones executing the order and, therefore, wasn't questioned.
There's no way you can file enough court papers to appeal the decision of a Brazilian Judges. It's all a numbers game.
Internet freedom? Freedom for who? WhatApp is just another example of government punishing private enterprise because they do not get their way. Its not apps like WhatsApp that risk security, its agencies like the FBI that fail to properly investigate people entering the US for extremists views even though they are freely available on Facebook. Yet, the FBI demands that encryption be deciphered when needed because of a security need. Gee, how about using the obvious right in front of you before whining about not accessing the encrypted stuff? No matter how many agencies the government creates. It cannot protect us from everyone.
That's really going to help mobile phone users, dolt.
If you want to submit a story, submit a story. Otherwise, stop with the APK-style marketing and piss off.
Except that we don't get to vote for judges here in Brazil, even though they are all-powerful...they are some kind of Medieval aristocracy, can do everything, like shut down the internet...
I'd rather use SONIC Linux, to be honest. I gotta go fast.
because most of the internet providers are the same telecom companies who are blocking Whatzapp on the phone networks, and they are blocking Whatzapp servers completely from their networks. Telegram got more than 500'000 new users in just a few hours yesterday, but the backslash was so severe that I'm not sure if the ban will hold for the whole 48h. At least here in São Paulo, the app was dead since yesterday but resumed working on WiFi and 3G a few hours ago, still not sure why.
Sounds to me like the Brazilian telecom companies that were so happy to shut down the service may have had some part in constructing the ultimatum demand for user data that led to that action. I don't think we are looking at a judicial ruling on civil rights / privacy here so much as an orchestrated power move to maintain a monopoly.
Here in Brazil we call the "Marco Civil" as "Marx Civil".
That didn't last long -
"Brazil judge lifts WhatsApp suspension"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Well, old fashioned POTS is over a century old, and in very high demand, so it has received lots of special engineering, and infrastructure has been devoted to making it work. Internet access is quite nice, but it is not essential.
Reliability of POTS is paramount. Reliable internet is nice, but not essential.
Internet moves around lots of data, POTS, not so much. POTS moves, maybe 28 kilobits/sec? DSL moves at least a few megabits a second, potentially significantly more than that.
I think the issue here is human attention. POTS is always there, and it always works. I guess twitter works as an SMS service. Could probably also do some fancy stuff with standard email.
Now where have I heard that before and people claimed it was impossible?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Tim invented the World Wide Web(web pages) which is part of the internet not the whole thing.
https://www.publicknowledge.org/documents/marco-civil-english-version
Like many, I am violently opposed to warrant-less wiretapping. That is NOT what is happening in this case. This is the case of an arrogant internet company assuming that they are above the law. Smuckerbag may have a gazillion dollars but society has never granted upon him the honor and duty that is granted to judges. He should learn his place which is below the law like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, a lot of legislation nominally intended to "help the people" or "ensure civil rights" has other consequences, sometimes intended, sometimes not. Some of those consequences are part of the original drafting, others get added at the last minute, often subverting the stated intent of the legislation. It often only takes adding one sentence or changing a couple of words to completely derail or reverse legislation.
Passing new legislation for any purpose, however noble, is like a high wire act without a safety net: maybe you'll succeed without falling, but you really have to ask yourself whether it's worth the risk.
Yes, and a Skype to Skype call is no different than a Whatsapp to Whatsapp call, yet they have said nothing about Skype being illegal
There's a small but very critical difference:
- WhatsApp has been slowly incorporating TextSecure by OpenWhisper. ( it's a slightly different kind of end-to-end encryption than Off-The-Record, but it's basically the same idae).
Granted, you need to blindly trust them for this one (as WhatsApp isn't opensource, there's no (publicly available) opensource implementation of WhatApp, and WhatsApp is actively fighting against any 3rd party implementation).
But still, as long as they have actually implemented it as it should, it means that there's en end-to-end encryption that indeed *cannot* be decrypted and handed over like judge ordered. It's technically impossible for them to intercept any traffic.
If WhatsApp hasn't lied about implementing encryption correctly as it should, and hasn't left hidden backdoors, they really are completely unable to comply and provide the data.
- Skype, even before the acquisition by MicroSoft has always stated, burried somewhere in their EULA, that they will collaborate with authorities when asked, according to local laws.
Since the Microsoft acquisition, they've been slowly changing from the distributed network with super nodes structure, to a newer more classical client/server architecture.
(Which among other makes the servers a good candidate to make a wire-tapping point).
And, although the skype protocol is still secret (although there are lots of efforts to reverse engineer it), one can guess that skype has organised its traffic in a way that makes wiretapping possible (as they are openly ready to collaborate with law representatives).
That's one reason why some of the corrupt overlords hate WhatsApp more than Skype.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So you really are outraged, that a company disobeying a legal order is being punished.
Beside the jurisdiction problem as the company doesn't have presence within the jurisdiction of this court (The sexual practice I've done yesterday with my girlfriend is considered an "abomination onto the holybook" by the great spiritual leader of backwardistan. He has issued orders that anyone guilty of this should be beheaded. Everywhere in the world including here in my civilized western country. So are you outraged that I don't spontanously travel to backwardistan to turn myself in and get my head cut ?)
There's even a bigger problem:
THE JUDGE ORDER MIGHT NOT EVEN BE POSSIBLE TO OBEY.
You see WhatsApp has been rolling this technology called TextSecure by OpenWhisper, a form of End-to-end encryption (think of it as functionnally similar to Off-The-Record by Cypher Punks).
If WhatsApp/Facebook haven't been lying (that they have correctly implemented it and that there's no hidden backdoor) they simply can't hand over any messages. They have no access at all to the clear-texte.
No matter what the judge orders, it might be mathematically impossible for them to comply.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]