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.

Comments

Re:This is fantastic

[mlw4428]

By shutting down companies who don't provide user data to the government whenever it's just requested?

Connection is obscure

[Geoffrey.landis]

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.

Re:Connection is obscure

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with "Marco Civil"...

A judge (one single judge) ordered the shutdown of Whatsapp because Facebook wasn't complying with a court order for providing information on an account owned by a criminal already convicted at a lower level court.

Re:Connection is obscure

[martyros]

Actually, according to that article, the reason WhatsApp was shut down was because they didn't even bother to respond, not because they refused:

Because WhatsApp did not respond to a court order of July 23, 2015, on August 7, 2015, the company was again notified, with there being a fixed penalty in case of non-compliance. As yet the company did not attend the court order, the prosecution requested the blocking of services for a period of 48 hours, based on the law [], which was granted by Judge Sandra Regina Nostre Marques

It sounds like what my old DI's used to say: "Yes sir? No sir? F*** you sir? Say something!"

Re:This is fantastic

[roman_mir]

Pavel Durov, the guy who ran away from Putin's Russia after being forced to give or sell away his former company - vkontakte, a Russian Facebook like social network. He has 4 or 5 developers working on Telegram, they move around the world, not staying in any one country for too long, trying to escape government regulations.

Misleading

[shigutso]

> 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.

Re:If not a judge, then who?

[vbraga]

So, if he can not force a company to comply, who can?

WhatsApp doesn't have an official presence in Brazil. The warrant is served to the local Facebook subsidiary. WhatsApp ignores the Brazilian court order. The Brazilian court retaliates, first with a fine, once again ignored by WhatsApp and now with a 48 hours ban. So, the judge is trying to force WhatsApp to comply.

Where are the standards??

[Kludge]

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?

Re:If not a judge, then who?

[mi]

So you really are outraged, that a company disobeying a legal order is being punished. Ok, can you answer the question in the very title of this thread? If a judge shall not be able to compel a company to comply with his legal orders, who can? "No one" would be a valid answer too, BTW — we can explore that venue...

Yes, the law notwithstanding, we shouldn't allow the authorities to shut down communications

Well, the judge's target was not communications, but a particular company. Communications between people remain perfectly possible — even if they are more expensive now.

Consider the example of AT&T instead of WhatsApp — or Comcast or what have you — should they be above the law, simply because they are providing communications?

it's over

[sociocapitalist]

That didn't last long -

"Brazil judge lifts WhatsApp suspension"
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

Re:What is the real reason for the shutdown?

[SvnLyrBrto]

Simple. Follow the money.

Brazil's government is fairly notorious for using onerous regulation, taxes, and tarrifs to prop up their local corporations, at the expense of international competition. This isn't even the first time they've gone after WhatsApp. Over the years, they've also tried to double-tax out-of-country internet services such as Netflix, Google, and Facebook, or to extort them into opening local subsidiaries; with varying degrees of success. Amazon eventually wound up having to give them their own AWS region because they were going after international data transfer. And it's bad enough that Foxconn, even, eventually set up a local factory to do manufacturing in Brazil instead of Asia because they'd jacked up tariffs on iPhones, iPads, and the like, to astronomical levels (higher than 30%, in come cases).

No doubt this is more of the same: Just another shake-down for cold, hard, cash. TFA even mentions that the local telecoms are upset that competition from WhatsApp is eating into their profits.

Re:If not a judge, then who?

[mi]

It's a bullshit order...

Yes, I remember you having problems maintaining coherent conversations, but this is a new low. Whatever ails you, it is progressing... Sad, really sad...

Re:This is fantastic

[dafradu]

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.