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WhatsApp Blocked in Brazil for 72 Hours Over Data Dispute (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on TechCrunch: WhatsApp, Facebook's messaging service that recently rolled out end-to-end encryption to its users, will be blocked in Brazil for 72 hours, starting this afternoon. A Brazilian judge ordered telecom providers in the country to block WhatsApp today in a dispute over access to encrypted data. Judge Marcel Montalvao has ordered WhatsApp to turn over chat records related to a drug investigation, but WhatsApp has argued that it cannot access the chats in an unencrypted form and therefore cannot provide the required records to the court. [...] This isn't Montalvao's first clash with WhatsApp, which boasts more than 100 million Brazilian users. The judge ordered the arrest of Facebook's vice president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, in March. Facebook has said that WhatsApp operates with relative independence and that Dzodan has no control over WhatsApp data.American lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald said: "WhatsApp shut down again in Brazil as of 1 pm ET today: used by 100m people, 91% of those online: all from 1 judge."
people trust facebook for privacy?!!
... there are international laws against all kinds of crap, so why the fuck is there none agains stupid judges who feel their world-view is relevant outside their own country...
The trouble with most stories of government attempts at grabbing data and hindering those who try to protect the individual is that it is generally seen as "someone else's problem". This means that politicians can ignore those who it affects and continue eroding freedoms. If it affects a large proportion of the population then some aspiring politicos will see it as one way of getting up the electoral greasy pole; if (and a big "if") they keep their promises when elected we could see legislation to curtail the likes of Judge Marcel Montalvao. I certainly hope that this happens, it might make politicians in the USA and Europe think twice before they grab more privacy from us.
"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." Supposedly Thomas Jefferson
If a country wants there to be no encryption, then it should declare encryption to be illegal, block any service that allows it, and that should be the end of it.
But letting them continue their business and try to press charges against them for violating the law is just STUPID.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Someone just needs to post the Judge's home address and let those users show up at his door.
Internet Tough Guy likes the idea of mob justice when he's comfortably behind his computer and only has to imagine the scenarios where this plays out in his favour.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's just a new enrollment of this case: http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/...
this is why they say "not feed the trolls" (here, on Slashdot, this means: "don't reply ACs" :P)
Last time this happened a higher court judge quickly reestablished the service, i'm sure the block will not last that long...
[hands over the (encrypted) chat logs]
'Here you go, your honor, these are all the requested records that we have access to'
But in all seriousness, what kind of court thinks it can compel companies or individuals to produce something they have never had access to? The United States, Brazil, what is this world coming to??
From looking at a friend's phone when this first rolled out, it seems to me like the tech world is being badly deceived by a false premise: this stuff is opt-in. Headlines advertise falsely as if all your chats were suddenly secure, and this is just a big PR move to fool a few managers and investors when their geek underlings will know better.
Obviously this block is a political move on Brazil to put pressure on a foreign company. We see numbers in the summary, but none on what percentage already opted in, out of that cool 100 million total. It would shine a spotlight on blocking a whole service for what I feel will only be a few thousand *actual* end to end pairings. Too low an estimate, you think? This is like using Tor.
You must have one-on-one contact to read your friend's barcode, or apparently do some other stuff with hashes. Average Joe is NOT going to do that with his long contact list, and neither is grandma. I'd also like to see how far proper geeks get when they DO TRY to get everyone on their long contact list to create the end to end setup. It's harder and harder to get 100% "security" when your list is long enough, given that it will include lazy average Joes who get more worried when you try to have them poke around their "trusted" app to do something they may perceive to be an actual hack against their security.
Corruption is endemic in Brazil. This is a classic red herring to conceal the fact that every aspect of Brazilian life is permeated by corruption. This case lets the judge posture at being a brave social justice crusader, when really, Facebook probably failed to pay the right bribe. The third world is a terrible place and if you are not there, be thankful for your fortune.
The lapdog media tells us that Brazil is a multicultural paradise, but in reality, it's a third world abyss.
Too bad, because they have some great metal bands: Sarcofago, Sepultura, Vulcano...
Nothing a quick B-52 strike couldn't fix.
Can insist on data from Facebook and Whatsapp and threaten and put people in jail, but can't even impeach their own corrupt President.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm an insensitive clod, you... er, wait.
this is why they say "not feed the trolls" (here, on Slashdot, this means: "don't reply ACs" :P)
Most trolls are ACs, but most ACs aren't trolls; I've been around here long enough to know that. (#) It's not even clear that the AC replying was the same one who made the original comment anyway. Who cares?
:-)
Believe me when I say that I've seen enough people posting cod-macho drivel like the original comment where it's clear that at least some of them believe it.
(#) Talking of which, the second AC must be a relative newcomer. I couldn't see it even occurring to an established user to call something in the half-millions a "low ID", regardless of whether that's being used as part of an over-obvious trolling.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Not the blocking per se, but the lack of active circumvention. On the other hand, maybe the press isn't covering that. I would hope that word gets around that there are various other services besides WhatsApp.
And by the way, Brazil is under a coup right now with this phony "impeachment" thing going on. Just look at the accusers' own yellow sheets. This is what the block is about. They make our politicians look saintly by comparison. Anyway, somebody is trying to sabotage BRIC. Who could it possibly be?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Those users can contact their representatives and change the law.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well cock used for fucking is better than one that just gets rubbed by its owners hands.
The problem is that this is not about the law, it's about judiciary doing whatever they want (and maybe not understanding the meaning of the law).
The law is pretty clear for us:
CHAPTER III PROVISION OF CONNECTION AND INTERNET APPLICATIONS
Section I
Of the Network Neutrality
Art. 9 - The party responsible for the transmission, switching ou routing has the duty to process, on an isonomic basis, any data packages, regardless of content, origin and destination, service, terminal or application.
(...)
Paragraph 3 - When providing Internet connectivity, free or at a cost, as well as, in the transmission, switching or routing, it is prohibited to block, monitor, filter or analyze the content of data packets, in compliance with this article.
The judge ordered the internet providers to block Whatsapp, witch is only possible through violation of the law (and not for Whatsapp to stop working, that order would actually be legal).
The other time this illegal order was given, a higher court overruled it based on public interest, not on net neutrality grounds. I bet the same will happen again. Judges are routinely stepping over the law in Brazil, they like to have that power.
I cannot sue the judge for violating my rights, I can sue the government. If I sue, a judge will evaluate my damages (and he/she will say it was nothing if there were no lost businesses), and order the state to compensate me with our tax money, carefully so that I don't have "illicit enrichment".
I work in the judiciary, and I talked to my judge about the subject the other time this shit happened. Legally that's our situation down here. He clearly though the order was abusive the other time, but also based on public interest. It was a little hard to explain to him the meaning of net neutrality and the above article in our law.
Let's face it people, there is a global civil war coming. The statists and globalists who are trying to wrest ultimate power to control everything will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of total dominion over everything and everyone. The more we incrementally cede our rights to them, the easier their job will be. They have already disarmed 95% of the world population. They already control 99% of the information, and 99.9% of the education.
Wake up, people.
So... A judge blocked the use of a service because they can't do the impossible and reverse overwhelmingly complex math algorithms? Sounds like a brilliant judge. When I read this article I don't see a problem with stupid judges though (that's to be assumed), I see a problem with a population using a centralized communication source. Why the world keeps choosing this model for communication I don't understand. We have decentralised open standards like xmpp and pgp encryption. I suppose that stuff is hard to monetize though, and armchair activists find real solutions to simple problems too boring to get behind. Ah fuck it, where's my guy fawkes mask?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
What if this whole Whatsapp blocking story was not about a judge in Brazil, blocking Brazilians access to the Internet?
What if a criminal in NY was using Whatsapp to plan an attack? US governament comes and asks for the messages he's sent over Whatsapp; Facebook refuses to give them alleging that it does not have access to the messages' contents as they're encrypted. I wonder how the world public opinion would react to that.
It seems to me the story can be seen as a naive decision by some crazy judge (or a judge who wasn't greased enough by Facebook, as some guy said here) as long as we're talking about a faraway, third-world country.
Allow using tor. Get users to connect via tor. Good luck blocking this. the tor project is expert in being unblockable.