WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

theintercept.com

972 pointstshtf608 comments

I'm here to defend the judge's ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil.

Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.

Now, the judge ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation (a suspect murderer - edit: drug dealer). But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil. The order was sent to Facebook, who ignore as Whatsapp is another company. So, without any executives in Brazil that could be held responsible for disobeying the law, the judge fine the company. They continue to disobey the order (for months). The judge suspends Whatsapp activity (for 24h a few months ago, but that order was suspended itself after a few hours). Now Whatsapp continue to disobey the judge's order until this day. The judge suspend the company again.

All arguments I hear against the judge is in the line that Whatsapp is "too big to fail". That's not a valid point in my opinion. If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are. If they had operations and executives in Brazil this would never had happened at the first place. They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended). But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.

It is very unfortunate that it came to this point, but it is not like a judge decided yesterday that Whatsapp should sufer for whatever reason. They got a lot of months of warning for this. And he is acting completely according to the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.

There seem to be a few problems with this analysis.

First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact prohibited from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content, except in emergencies. Instead, foreign law enforcement must make a request for assistance to the US DoJ, which will then (eventually, and maybe) process it and serve it on the US company. This is one of the reasons why MLAT reform, such as the proposed UK-US agreement[1], is so important because it would allow US companies to directly respond to foreign law enforcement requests.

Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court's request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.

[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/29203/british-searches-america-...

[2] http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...

> First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact prohibited from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content, except in emergencies. Instead, foreign law enforcement must make a request for assistance to the US DoJ, which will then (eventually, and maybe) process it and serve it on the US company. This is one of the reasons why MLAT reform, such as the proposed UK-US agreement[1], is so important because it would allow US companies to directly respond to foreign law enforcement requests.

This is all WhatsApp's and the US's problem, not Brazil's. In fact, it's kind of insensitive for foreigners to suggest that a judge of a sovereign nation must consider US law in his rulings. If anything, I think this would justify ruling against WhatsApp more harshly, as it sends the message to the US that policies which don't respect the sovereignty of Brazil will hurt US economic interests in Brazil.

That said:

> Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court's request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.

If this is true, that's a solid argument and stands on its own.

> In fact, it's kind of insensitive for foreigners to suggest that a judge of a sovereign nation must consider US law in his rulings.

My apologies, but I think that if you re-read what was written, you will find that this was not suggested. The comment was written in response to one that came to the conclusion that this "was all [WhatsApp's] fault." It is suggesting that WhatsApp is not at fault, is probably strictly complying with US law, and cannot share the information in any case. At no point does it even come close to suggesting that the judge in the case should have "considered US law" in his rulings.

Moreover, I feel that your claim does not clearly differentiate between 'considering US law' as a material fact and 'considering US law' as a judicial precedent. You seem to be suggesting that someone arguing that US law ought to be held material to the case is somehow demanding that the Brazilian judiciary hold itself subservient to the US courts. You also seem to be suggesting that a Brazilian state judge has any business interpreting the law so as to "send a message" to the government of another nation, which is simply and patently untrue.

As a digital native, I feel like an international Internet is more important than national sovereignty. That is, I don't think the interesting question is whether US or Brazilian law should apply, the question is how to ensure international access to international digital resources.

>In fact, it's kind of insensitive for foreigners to suggest that a judge of a sovereign nation must consider US law in his rulings.

It's just as insensitive for a judge of a foreign nation to suggest that all foreigners must consider his rulings when making decisions under their own sovereign laws.

"The truth is like a lion. it needs not defense. it will defend itself" -- St. Augustine

> This is all WhatsApp's and the US's problem, not Brazil's.

So you're saying it's OK for Brazil to send a SWAT team to raid a house in the US? The judge's order has no validity outside his jurisdiction; just like a US judge's order has no validity in Brazil.

I can believe them when they say they don't keep data. When I got a new phone (the old one broke), I was expecting my conversations to be in the cloud somewhere so that I could recover them. Nope, I lost everything that I hadn't backed up.

I don't see what they can gain from storing masses of old chats and then not allowing users to download them onto new devices. If they kept chats to do analytics on, there's no reason that they wouldn't expose it to users too.

(This may also explain how they survived as a company for so long with so many users and so little revenue. All they're doing is running a few fast servers to shuttle messages back and forth, no storage requirements at all).

On the other hand Telegram does seem to store conversations - if you log in using a desktop app, it will pull down your recent chats.

> I can believe them [WhatsApp] when they say they don't keep data.

If that's true, I'm in awe of their integrity. Skype on the other hand now has complete disregard for user privacy. Skype stores your voice mails and video messages forever[1]. This is something that they started doing 2-3 years ago and few people seem to be aware of it. It's amazing how low Skype fallen from its early days when it was considered a beacon of privacy and on the cutting edge of encryption and security.

[1] Details: Clicking on Preferences -> Privacy -> Delete history (OS X) or Options -> Privacy Settings -> Clear history (Windows) pretends to delete the voice/video messages but it merely hides them from your view. If you re-install Skype on the same computer or run Skype on a different computer, all those "deleted" voice mails and video messages re-appear. The delete and clear buttons are basically lies; there's no polite way to put it.

Telegram isn't end-to-end encrypted unless you're in a "secret chat", and that chat exists only between two different devices and can't be used by multiple devices on one account.

It's a "feature" of the normal chats/channels/groups/supergroups of Telegram that you are able to download them to other devices, or to restore them on a freshly wiped device, because (and I'm over-simplifying here, but the end result is the same) they are encrypted with a key known to the server, and which other devices signed into your account can then be authorized to use.

Digressing from the actual discussion, Whatsapp now allows you to keep a backup of your chats and related media on your Google Drive and then recover it when you move to a new device. Probably applicable only for newer versions of Android (not sure about iOS).

I wonder if they record the necessary analytics data from mining the text, and then delete the actual text. Depending on what data you're trying to mine, you may be able to get what you need on transmission, and then dump the source data in favor of the output of the analytics event.

> WhatsApp is a US company and...

I always feel like many large US tech companies want to have their cake and eat it. They want to be a global company, they want to have 2 billion users, and are valued at having that many users. But when it comes to laws, suddenly they operate under US law alone.

I wouldn't mind if they ignored all national laws, and acted like a true global company. But I'm not from the USA (or Brazil), and don't want to be under US law. If you want to operate only user US law, then why not constrain yourself to the US market? Only operate there?

> when it comes to laws, suddenly they operate under US law alone

And when it comes to taxes...

There's absolutely nothing special in this case because WhatsApp happens to be operating on the internet. Suppose they were a mail order company based in Brazil but serving customers internationally by post. If a US judge issued a court order in the US requiring the company to hand over business records stored on paper in Barzil, he would have no jurisdiction whatsoever. Brazilian law protecting the privacy of information stored in Brazil would prevail. there would be no controversy about this.

The fact that WhatsApp's info is stored on servers rather than paper records is irrelevant. The jurisdiction in which the records reside applies. Although the fact that their servers don't even store the information requested anyway should be.

That makes sense to me. But there really is no international law that's coherent and enforceable. It's a hard problem.

If it was a small company based out of Iceland, or South Africa, or Singapore, it would still be in the same legal situation. The company (assuming just a single incorporation presence) is under the laws of the country it's from, and Joe Random user from across the internet is internationally accessing it.

National law cannot enforce anything on organizations not within the national jurisdiction, without international cooperation. However, they can (attempt to) stop their own citizens from accessing the international service.

completely agree.

If WhatsApp is unable to comply with Brazilian law, should it be allowed to operate in Brazil?

I think this is a bad law by the way. Hopefully the clearly negative impact it is having will lead to it's reform.

It seems to me that they did comply with Brazilian law. They handed over all the conversations they had — zero. Is there a law that says they have to record all the conversations?

Do they operate in Brazil? They apparently have no offices there and are only available over the internet (as is true of all websites throughout most of the world.) How can anyone expect to hold what amounts to a random IP address on the internet responsible for anything?

Who cares what the law says? The laws should serve the citizens. And in this case, a huge majority of the citizens prefer to use WhatsApp.

> has no presence in Brazil.

If they have no presence in Brazil, how did they get shut down in Brazil? I don't mean to be glib, but I don't see how the two concepts jive with each other.

On a purely practical level, if they were interesting in maintaining their service in Brazil, why didn't they establish a presence in Brazil when all these previous orders and shutdowns were going on? This is like ignoring notices in the mail and then wondering why you're getting collections calls.

> If they have no presence in Brazil, how did they get shut down in Brazil?

Blocked at the ISP level.

If a US law makes it impossible for a US company to comply with laws in another country in which they operate, that other country has the right to prohibit said company from operating there.

That doesn't mean it's wise for the said country to do so. In this case, doesn't seem like it is.

> WhatsApp publicly stated that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered

This does not make a lot of sense.

If they don't retain any message content, then how am I able to browse all my message threads on https://web.whatsapp.com?

EDIT: I'm wrong.

The messages come from your phone; that's why you need your phone to access the webapp.

I also use the web interface and I believe it tethers your phone to the browser - so the phone is sending the unencrypted messages to the browser window.

If you delete a message on the phone the message disappears in the web interface too.

It connects to your phone which stores the messages, I believe.

Foreign law enforcement may kindly request US DoJ OR operate under their (foreign) laws (and with 0 help, it's not hard to guess what route would be taken).

Your first point makes no sense whatsoever. Because an American company operates in a foreign country doesn't mean they don't have to follow the law.

"oh sorry, breaking local laws? Oh well, we're in america! Too bad!"

Doesn't work like that.

> Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact prohibited from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content

i know nothing about law, but where are you getting this from? does not seems to be the case with any company in china (yahoo gave in, google decided to leave) for example.

The difference is likely that these companies had the type of presence that causes Chinese law to come into effect ... such as physical presence (servers), buildings (owned property), human presence (employees, especially if they're Chinese citizens), financial presence (bank accounts, insurance), business/legal presence (i.e. local corp, subsidiary, company of some sort).

> First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil.

I certainly disagree with this ruling, but "no presence in Brazil" is wrong and contradicted by Facebook itself:

https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/saopaulo/

> São Paulo, Brazil 23 open positions

> One of the most talented and diverse cities in the world, Sao Paulo is a hub for our operations throughout Latin America. Our teams make an impact by providing support to our communities, small and medium businesses and brands in the region.

And of course their Latin America VP is located in this office:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-hires-new-latin-americ...

So I don't know where the bizarre idea that Facebook has "no presence" in Brazil comes from.

WhatsApp and Facebook are in fact still separate companies. Just making this distinction.

If you want to do business in a country then you should follow its laws.

You are missing the most important part of the story. Facebook and Whatsapp are not ignoring the request. They have said that it is impossible for them to provide the information requested.

That's the problem with all these judicial orders. They think it's a flip of the switch to comply. Why don't the courts provide the money to build the services and infrastructure to comply with the order?

Orders like these are normally written out by judges that are completely oblivious to how reality works. Adding to that the fact that people with power know they tend to get things their way in Brazil, and that the government is all-powerful, I'm quite sure this guy just assumed he could change the laws of the universe with a stroke of his pen.

In Germany you get recompensation for that. Also one might argue if they don't like the laws they shouldn't access the market.

That would require a backdoor that didn't exist at the time and that WhatsApp doesn't want to create.

And not just the money. They try to override the logic of the universe.

A company cannot provide data that it does not have and has no way of acquiring.

To give them some message that was deleted years ago? What is Facebook supposed to do, build a time machine?

It doesn't matter what 'they said', if it was not 'said' in formal legal response. If you are subpoenaed, you don't go ahead and publish in your blog 'hey judge, I've done nothing', you hire a lawyer and do it via legal channels. Facebook/WhatsApp haven't done the legal work, thus, their answer amounts to nothing.

Well finally.

Whether or not they have a presence, operate there, are required to comply or whatsoever is not an issue.

They simply can't comply. If they could initially they can't anymore. End-to-end encryption made sure of that.

Again, unless they're lying to us.

> They have said that it is impossible for them to provide the information requested.

They have said this to the press or to the court? Because it seems to me like Fb/Whatsapp have been pointedly ignoring the courts for months. The least they could do is fly down a lackey to Brazil and say it in person and/or alternatively hire a Brazilian law firm to represent them.

Brazil already arrested a Facebook executive and detained them for 24hrs this year over the fact they said there is nothing that can do regarding the information request.

I'm not sure what you're proposing Facebook to do here? Hand over useless encrypted data? Hold a cryptography seminar for Brazillian law enforcement to explain what end-to-end encryption means? Have more of their employees risk arrest?

This is going to sound flippant, but think about it, it isn't.

What lackey is going to want to fly to a hostile country where the government is battling your employer?

I don't want to spend any time in a foreign prison. Who would?

They dont have to fly anyone down to brazil. They had someone there. He was arrested a few months go for not fulfilling the request. Its all in the article we are commenting on.

"It's impossible for me to follow the law" is not a valid defense.

To repeat what everyone else has said: The data doesn't exist on whatsapp's servers.

Now I know the law's position is basically "do what we say or we'll punish you until you comply - and we'll simply ignore you until you figure out a way to do so".

Obviously that's literally impossible for data that doesn't exist anymore, but of course it's technically possible to comply with these laws in the future. And I think that's a bigger problem here - that governments want to turn companies into surveillance tools. It's like telling the postal service to open and scan every single letter - which would have sounded pretty bad in the past, but nowadays that's somehow okay. Not because morals have changed but because it's feasible now.

Following/enforcing laws is generally a good thing, but since we live in a human society and not a robot one, things like that get fuzzy around the edges. Let's imagine an extreme, outlandish case where some odd and unforeseen circumstances in poorly written laws lead to a judge being able to order nuclear attacks on several cities of their own country. I'd want the judge to hold off on that and maybe wait for the legislature to catch up with the will of the people - which is not to die in millions.

Whatsapp isn't exactly a matter of life and death (at least I hope it isn't), but maybe this is a case where values like common sense, the common good and the interests of hundreds of millions of people weigh more than maybe locking up some stupid drug dealer.

I completely disagree with "If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are.". That's the kind of idiocy that emerges right when society ends up working for the benefit of its government instead of the other way around.

If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect.

> If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect.

Totally agree. This is unfortunately a very authoritarian world of view that is not uncommon.

This has mothing to do with authoritarianism. Upholding the law itself is important. If everybody ignores the law all the time you'll have a pretty shitty society.

The Brazilian people have a clear option, vote for officials who have no problem with communication encryption. The solution is not to circumvent the parliamentary democratic process.

> If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect.

I am shocked so many of you agree with this. If it is forbidden to kill people, you have done something very bad and everyone else wants to kill you, they are still not allowed. (They may change the law and kill you then but for now, they are not allowed.) This is called justice.

> If your position is unpopular with your friends, then it's because you think the law is more important than the entire society it's supposed to protect.

Sir/Ma'am: you get my gratitude for voicing this. People do forget why we have laws in the first place.

But, as it says in the article, WhatsApp just doesn't have the data the judge wants it to turn over. How does it make sense to punish a company for not doing something that it physically cannot do?

Companies can be punished for failure to obey laws. If a company didn't bother to retain records on who bought something they are now required to recall due to safety failures I can't imagine any country would say that is ok. They would be punished.

I don't happen to think the law mentioned is a good one. And I have no idea how the law is actually worded. Depending on how it is worded maybe it is ok to just not keep records so you don't have to provide them. But it is certainly within the power of governments to demand companies operate in a manner that requires them to do certain things and you can't avoid that by for example not keeping the records you are required to.

I sure hope the USA stops the leadership of authoritarian overreaching on laws relating to technology. But it is not at all surprising that others are following the lead of the USA into horrible authoritarian and Orwellian laws given the USA's behavior. Few countries seem willing to put liberty ahead of authoritarianism. The USA is far from perfect but it is a country that has above average potential for promoting liberty.

But the last Bush and Obama administrations have been horrible and both political parties are pushing for horrible laws. A few decent advocates (such as Senator Ron Wyden) for fighting this trend exist but they are not common yet.

This promotion of authoritarian state power is a very dangerous trend that may well have incredibly bad consequences for us. Our history shows authoritarian governments abuse power and I am worried about the last two administrations strong support for increasingly powerful spying abilities of government.

I would hope countries like Brazil lead away from the path the USA is pushing the world down. Unfortunately I don't see much good happening in that way. I hope I am just not aware of good things other countries are doing but I worry that isn't the reason I don't hear about good moves to thwart the dreams of authoritarian regimes.

So if a judge demanded a telco hand over an audio recording of any specific conversation, they must comply -- even though calls are not recorded and stored?

If a judge demanded the postal service hand over an image of every envelope processed, it must comply -- even though no such images exist?

Where does it end?

>> If a company didn't bother to retain records on who bought something they are now required to recall due to safety failures

I am not aware of any law in the US ( talk on US laws because you discuss it later in your comment) that requires by business to keep sales records for the purposes of recalls, the only businesses required to do that are business that sell regulated goods, (firearms, explosives, Drugs, certain chemicals, etc)

Normal Consumer Goods are recalled all of the time with out the Manufacturers, or Retailers having a master list of every person that bought that item.

The Law orders it to collect the data, the data is available and Watsapp does collect it, but instantly discards (or so they claim).

What is in there that can not be punished?

I don't think this specific law is a good one, but it is not in clear violation of our Constitution, and was brought up by People's representatives... We should fight for improving it, and we should stop relying on infrastructure owned by private companies. But I can't think this judge is wrong.

The Law orders it to collect the data

Which law orders them to collect the data?

I think this statement weird. End-to-end encryption is very recent, the data asked by the judge is for communication made before this feature roll-out. So I'm assuming Whatsapp do have the information for these two particular cases. But I could be wrong.

Anyway, maybe they are just using it for PR support on their position against the court decision, betting that all of that Telegram new users will come back to Whatsapp after the suspension (that's what happened before).

WhatsApp publicly stated[1] in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes in December 2015 that they do not, and have not ever, retained the content of communications—regardless of E2E or not. Apparently, WhatsApp only retains messages until they are delivered.

[1] http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...

When I buy a new cell phone my Whatsapp conversation history is lost but my Facebook message history is not. It's likely that Whatsapp discards the messages from their servers immediately after they confirm it has arrived to destination (the two check marks).

If the communication was made a long time ago, Whatsapp may no longer have it, encrypted or not.

End-to-end encryption for Android to Android conversations has been in place since November 2014: https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/

You are assuming, just like the judge. That is not correct, you should trust in the company when they say that. The hole world works as that, trust. A judge cannot assume that they have that data, because they don't. This judge just dont have any tech acknowledge, thats the problem, people that dont understand what they are doing. BTW, its not End-to-end encryption related, is just that they dont store that data in anywhere.

Do we know for sure what cases this particular order is connected to? Because WhatsApp has been encrypting Android communications since 2014 [0].

[0] https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/

Surely they are physically able to answer the court?

That's my thinking -- an inability to comply could have been addressed with the court. Instead, it appears that they had no representation in front of the court in order to make that argument, have hearings and otherwise determine that compliance is impossible.

The merits of the case are one thing, however not appearing to address those merits (or lack thereof) seems to be the failure point.

But I could be wrong.

If it is impossible for you to drive legally - say, for example, you are blind - that does not permit you to then drive illegally.

When it comes to decisions this big, I always assume there's more than meets the eye.

You're probably aware of the statement Brazilian telcos made on the intent of charging according to bandwidth usage and it's public reaction. Which to me indicates that telcos are kinda desperate on trying to find new sources of revenue. And this happened not long after one big telco company acquired a big competitor. Add the fact that Brazilian telcos have already tried to shut down whatsapp before[0].

Whatsapp makes sms and mobile phone calls a pricey redundancy to anyone with access to wifi, no wonder they're desperate.

Do I have any evidence the two cases are related? no. But the flow of events is certainly interesting.

It just doesn't seem justifiable to restrict communication for millions of people due to a single case. As in, sure, arresting a drug dealer may be a good thing to society overall, but is that worth the limitation shutting down whatsapp imposes on Brazilian citizens?

The decision may be in agreement with the law, but is it in harmony with the law's ultimate purpose? which is to protect the interest of the society as a whole?

[0]http://www.zdnet.com/article/mobile-operators-unite-against-...

There are lots of apps that let you send free sms over wi-fi, including Cacao (not sure of spelling, I don't use it but my partner does, seems popular in Korea?) and also why would the sale of iPhones with FaceTime and Messages not be an even greater threat than WhatsApp to telecom revenue?

I don't doubt the telecom companies are trying to control their market, but I doubt they are behind some huge conspiracy. It is more likely that the govt/courts are trying to control the flow and availability of user's data and are in cahoots with the telecoms companies who have close ties to govt.

"why would the sale of iPhones with FaceTime and Messages not be an even greater threat than WhatsApp to telecom revenue?"

There's no "would", whatsapp is a bigger threat. Simple math: number of whatsapp users > number of iphone owners.

As I said I don't know if the cases are related, I just laid down some well known and interesting facts. Your conclusion sounds perfectly reasonable to me (:

Besides the point that Whatsapp does not have the data, how does it make sense to stop 100 million people from communicating to prosecute one drug dealer? If you look at it from the point of view of society as a whole the judge has done a lot more damage than the alleged drug dealer. The judge has other options, such as issuing fines, that won't disrupt the lives of millions of people.

Fines have been issued over and over. FB's president in Brazil has been arrested. What else do you suggest this judge (limited by what the law prescribes) should do?

Get a grip on reality and attain an understanding of how these communication systems work, then move on to other avenues of investigation

This ruling makes end-to-end encryption illegal where, a service provider at no time holds the keys to decrypt messages between communicating parties. This is a protocol decision and since the Snowden revelations, a point of concern for civil libertarians. The Apple v FBI debate is a child of these exact concerns. The idea that governments want to legislate unfettered access to private communications and devices should be met with skepticism and public scrutiny that this Brazilian case will hopefully provide.

I agree with you. And I think all this should be framed "is the law right? should we change it?"; instead is always presented as "an authoritarian, out of his league, small town judge who is arrogant and clueless about tech".

He is just following the law, so fight the law, no diminish the judge.

Remembering that a "single judge" following the law with authonomy launched the biggest attack on corruption of brazilian history, and the fact that he is not a supreme court justice acted in favor of an independent investigation (search "sergio moro" and "lava-jato" police investiagiont).

No, judges need to notice when a law creates a contradiction or a stupid scenario and not make such rulings. Judges are supposed to have "wisdom". Pointing at a broken law, then breaking communications for everyone hardly seems wise. Unless he's secretly hoping this will force a big change in law and government.

The ruling punishes Brazilians on order(s) of magnitude more than it'll Facebook(WhatsApp). This heavy-handed approach is a power grab.

It also happened before end-to-end encryption be available: http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/operadoras-sa... (portuguese-br), so it's not necessarily about end-to-end encryption.

> This ruling makes end-to-end encryption illegal where, a service provider at no time holds the keys

The Big Company (like WhatsApp, Google, Apple) is always the easy target for subpoenas, judicial orders, and National Security Letters when it comes to encrypted transmissions.

Here's an idea for a legal maneuver to take Big Company out of the picture: Suppose crypto was handled by an open source 3rd-party program that was outside of the hands of Big Company. This 3rd-party program would encrypt/decrypt all incoming and outgoing messages, and the program would be mandatory.

If you want to use WhatsApp or other Big Company apps, you must install this open source and fully vetted program. Then if Big Company gets a subpoena, they can legitimately answer that they have absolutely no control over the encryption.

I'm going light on technical details because there are many ways that this could be implemented. The main idea is to insulate Big Companies from renegade legal attacks.

Supposedly Whatsapp has less than 100 employees.

Such as Tor?

Hey soneca, could you give me a transcript of the conversation between Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva on January 31st, 2011? If you can't, then you'll have to go to prison.

It's an irrational, unreasonable request, which makes it highly questionable as a legal ruling.

There is no legal basis to support the judge decision. A telecommunication service must keep records, but by the very difficult to understand Brazilian regulation, WhatsApp can not be considered a telecom service.

A service like WhatsApp is an over the top service, very much like any other communication service that you can use in the internets (like email), that does not need to comply to the telecom services regulations.

The truth is that the judge does not understand the matter being ruled and a single Judge closing a service used by 100m citizens is another proof of a very authoritarian and arrogant judiciary system.

I am sorry, but your argument is idiotic. It boils down to "WhatsApp wasn't there to produce something they didn't have, so a district court judge managed to order a bunch of nonparties to the lawsuit to take down WhatsApp." That's like a district judge in NY ordering all the telcos to block all iPhones because Apple refuses to hack a phone for him. What kind of judicial system are you running there in Brazil? I am glad that you are in the minority, but that's no way to run a country.

Please take a look at the HN guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't really like seeing what is very very close to a personal attack ("your argument is idiotic", "I am glad you are in the minority...") in what should be a civilized place.

With all respect, how is that "very very close" to a personal attack? Sure, they're passionate, and frankly I disagree with other sides of what they've said in their comment, but it's not a personal attack in the slightest: it's a strongly worded indictment of the parent comment and the opinions expressed therein. There's nothing wrong with that, that's exactly how arguing works, at least in my opinion :)

Therein lies the rub. What's "legal" does not always mean it's right.

To hide behind "it's legal" to me is harmful to humanity as ofttimes the law is behind the curve, we can and should be better.

> Therein lies the rub. What's "legal" does not always mean it's right.

> To hide behind "it's legal" to me is harmful to humanity as ofttimes the law is behind the curve, we can and should be better.

I'm with you - but acting on your convictions and doing what's right should also mean accepting the consequences of the current laws. I for one am freaked out by a future where Multinationals get to pick and choose which laws they would like to follow because "the law is behind the curve". Uber's actions and general attitude suggest this future is actually now.

Thank you so much for this! The way Uber cherry picks the laws in the countries or even US states just disgusts me to no end. It would indeed be a scary future if multinational corporations get to infringe on countries' sovereign rights.

> I'm here to defend the judge's ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil.

Your position is very unpopular for several, very important reasons. Not the least of it is the shutdown of a communication service that is used by most of the population, on the grounds of a single case.

There are other ways to go about this issue. Starting by the Itamaraty(Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

Don't forget that this was a single judge, from a single state. By all means block whatsapp in that state if you must. But Brazil was supposed to be a federation.

> You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.

There is something called Civil disobedience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience) and surely if you analyze every law system it contradicts itself.

So, Facebook, a participant in PRISM, is now conducting civil disobedience. Totally believable.

Yahoo is also a participant in PRISM, and fought as hard as they could against it in secret court.

https://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/

I think it's safe to assume that all companies involved in PRISM aren't happy with it and tried their hardest to fight it.

I was not talking about Facebook but about Brazilians.

Also, following your reasoning, if Facebook was a participant in PRISM, does it mean they don't have any right to fight? Privacy is at stake here, Facebook is only one problem instance.

I see your point, but what is scandalous in this decision is not that WhatsUp is being shut down, but the way this is happening. You have a judge from a remote jurisdiction in Brazil who has enough power to shut down the service in the whole country. I wound't be surprised if this resulted as a process that went through several levels of justice in Brasil, but the fact that any judge can block a service in the whole country is completely crazy and a direct threat to free expression in the country.

Of course, knowing Brazil as I do (I am Brazilian) I am not surprised that this is happening. In fact, judges these days feel that they have power to block even actions of the president of the Republic.

Well, a judge just like that had authonomy to launch the biggest attack on corruption of our history, with a much welcomed independence from political influence. So this is not always for the worst! :)

That's what you think. You seem glad that this is happening because the government is unpopular. But judges can use this power to attack any government. This doesn't sounds like an advantage to me.

> You have a judge from a remote jurisdiction in Brazil

Irrelevant.

> judges these days feel that they have power to block even actions of the president of the Republic.

Thankfully so. Presidents are not above the law.

That's the problem with the mentality of Brazilians these days. There is a concept called jurisdiction for a reason. Judges make decisions that are tied to their jurisdiction, and if necessary those decisions could be disputed at higher levels up to the supreme court. If you accept that any judge can make decisions for the whole country you have just installed the chaos in the judicial system, because you have to fight judges all over the country to do anything. That's what happening here with WhatsUp, for example.

The case of the president is even scandalous. Many Brazilians are happy with these arbitrary decisions because the government is unpopular. But the same thing can happen now to any government, making Brazil practically impossible to govern properly.

> if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply.

> They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended).

So what would happen? Like you said that law, if you paraphrased it correctly, is very clear - how would lawyers shouting about it actually help? Would they change the law the first time WhatsApp fight back? Presumably not - otherwise the law would be pointless wouldn't it? So how would that stop their activity being suspended?

I'm trying to avoid jumping to conclusions, but to give you a chance to just tell me I'm wrong - is this protectionism?

"If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are."

Well, law does not work this way. Execution of law MUST comply with some rules, e.g. proportionally. Lack of proportionally (execution will harm 100 m people, no less) is the sound reason to suspend the order. Note I dont agree o disagree with the law.

I am Brazilian as well and feel the same way. Laws are laws. We can change them if we don't like them, but defying and ignoring them is the wrong course of action.

>I am Brazilian as well and feel the same way. Laws are laws. We can change them if we don't like them, but defying and ignoring them is the wrong course of action.

This almost sounds like fundamentalist religion, to say the law is that sacrosanct. Some bad laws have historically been overcome precisely by people ignoring them, rendering them effectively unenforceable.

> Some bad laws have historically been overcome precisely by people ignoring them, rendering them effectively unenforceable.

On the other hand, some good laws have also been overcome by people ignoring them. For example laws governing limitation of police power (search, detention etc.), traffic laws (speeding, jaywalking, aggressive driving against cyclists, a relevent example in Brazil is ignoring of traffic lights). If it gets to the stage where everyone is doing it, then the authorities no longer care.

I don't know whether WhatsApp has the requested data or not, but I think overall this action is a good thing: it shows that even important (in Brazilian society) companies are not above Brazilian law and if there is a problem with what this judge did, or the power he's wielding, then it should, hopefully, lead to that being fixed.

The alternative is ignoring and not enforcing the law, and ending up with bad laws, which can then be selectively enforced (see Böhmermann affair for example). This may appeal to some, but it's clearly not for everyone.

> Laws are laws.

This is horrible reasoning.

Thank you for the perspective from "the other side". Whether or not one agrees with it is another thing, but it's necessary to get the missing context which your post fulfills.

> But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.

Whatsapp deletes its messages from its servers after delivery. So it can't even provide the messages even if it wanted to.

Also, since end-to-end encryption, the as-yet-undelivered messages sitting on Whatsapp servers are encrypted. Whatsapp has no way to actually read them.

> Whatsapp deletes its messages from its servers after delivery. So it can't even provide the messages even if it wanted to.

That's not a valid excuse for any law I'm aware of. It's your responsibility to be aware of, and to comply with, laws in places you do business in. To be clear, this is a terrible law, and I think Whatsapp should absolutely not concede to it. But just so we're clear, "I didn't know any better" isn't an excuse for breaking the law.

I think you're confused, but I can't think of any clearer way to explain this to you. I suggest you try to read my post again.

>* Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.*

So? Like Jim Crow laws, merely "being there" is too little justification for a law.

How was the justice system able to communicate the shutdown order, but not able to communicate the request for user data?

Because they ordered the shutdown to brazilian internet providers. These internet providers company block the access for Whatsapp services. And they are more than happy to comply, as they hate Whatsapp for taking their SMS revenue. But they are in fact only obeying an justice order.

They are specially pissed off by whatsapp's free voice calls.

Ah. I wondered why the ISP's seemed so happy to comply.

Can't WhatsApp set up it's communications in a way that makes blocking them break a lot of other unrelated things?

They can simply block network traffic. They don't need WhatsApp to shut itself for Brazilians.

Because the shutdown is done by ISPs, but the request for user data can be ignored by WhatsApp.

Brazil's faltering economic performance has a lot to do with this style of heavy-handed regulation.

Well, this alone will not make WhatsApp comply with the law, specially if these conversations were encrypted.

Also, there also has to be a consideration for the 100 MILLION users that might depend on this service. Imagine companies that depend on this to communicate efficiently and businesses that rely on this platform to take orders etc.

If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, but not at the cost of hurting your own people.

Taking it to an extreme, would they also take down a bank website if they didn't comply with a similar request and stop people from withdrawing money? I don't think so.

This takedown will not help in the investigation in any ways. So it seems the justice system isn't working for their main customer: the people.

> Whatsapp is "too big to fail"

What a terrible analogy.

Do you understand that the judge is requesting something that is impossible? The data simply doesn't exist on WhatsApp's servers. Facebook cannot provide this data, because they don't have it. The chat is fully encrypted from one phone to another, and the unencrypted text doesn't ever touch their servers. Sure, the judge might order Facebook to install a backdoor and be able to grab unencrypted messages off a user's phone in the future. But apparently this is about a case that happened in the past. There is literally nothing they can do. Does the judge not understand this?

Too big to fail makes no sense here. If you're that big, it's actually easier for you to have an office in every major company where you do business and comply with regulations.

So you think the great firewall of China is also a good thing?

So 100M people have to suffer because one person mis-used a tool? That's disproportionately harsh punishment and not to defend in any case.

Unfortunately I think the Judge does not understand the context here, users of whatsapp will simply use another messaging app - the role of a messaging app is not to store users conversations but relay them.

Any messaging app that actively stores conversations, and then turns them over to anyone when requested will simply not be used by the public (or if it is, it won't be for very long).

> But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil.

No, the problems is that with encryption, whatsapp cannot satisfy the judge's order anyways! Instead of showing such colossal ignorance, the judge needs to ask some CS/crypto experts if it's possible or not.

This is like the judge handing a company a 2048-bit number and ordering it to factor it! Now!

But WhatsApp doesn't have the information. It's like ordering Fedex to turn over a package that they've already delivered.

You've missed the point. The judge is in his right to punish the company, you don't have to defend that.

But to punish ONLY the company, not it's users.

He could impose heavy financial penalties, for instance. But affecting the life of 200 mm users? No way ...

The data is simply not there. Especially with the new end to end encryption system. The best they could do, if they could do that, is give you undelivered encrypted messages.

Unless they've been lying to us all along.

>> "a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil"

Curious if you have an explanation of why given it appears the majority of your friends do not support this, why do you and they do not?

Well, it is Whatsapp's fault if they're that easy to block! Brazil is a pretty big user base. Maybe they ought to come up with a workaround?

You suggest to break the law and should be punished just for that.

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will." Aleister Crowley

Whatsapp is end to end encrypted and won't have the data.

Why can't the judge order the ISP to turn over the contents of the conversation, then shut the ISP down for failing to comply?

> But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.

Ignoring and evading broken justice systems and immoral laws is exactly what people who believe in freedom should do, whether it's in Brazil, the US, or any other fucked up political system.

My favorite answer to justice requests from American companies (Google, Facebook etc) is that their servers are in other country so they don't have to obey Brazilian laws. BTW, it is easy prove wrong issuing a "ping" and knowing the speed of light.

If you had a server set up in Brazil that did something perfectly legal in Brazil, but flaunted US law, would you want to be beholden to US law?

It's not a flip answer. I operate a business on the App Store in part knowing that I'm bound by US law, not the laws of random countries. My app is available in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and so on. They are more than welcome to block the traffic from our servers based on their local laws, but I am not bound by the laws of Saudi Arabia - and neither should you be.

If you sell your services to American individuals and companies, paying American taxes for it, announce in USA, target American market -- like they all do in Brazil -- then the answer is yes.

while (true) { printf("There are unjust laws. The law can't be above the people. Laws are not a moral absolute."); }

Whatsapp is literally unable to comply with the order. It's like the judge ordered a submarine to invade Lesotho - it's not something the submarine can do, it's not within their technical capabilities.

It is ok - you won't understand.

It is still punishing millions of innocent users and of my executives were being arrested for technicalities I wouldn't have anybody in the country either. It is a stupid law, a retard of a judge who should have applied proportional harm based on how many innocents this hurts.

At 100 million, somebody will likely due because they couldn't get a ride and end up with a stranger.

Unlike in N. America, in Brazil a lot of businesses depend on WhatsApp. You can talk with your doctor, call a plumber, claim insurance. On billboards no one puts a website address or an email, just phone number and WhatsUp. That's an economy cripling move and it's shocking how one judge can do it.

More important. Why aren't congressmen creating rules to prevent these monopolies ?

?? Can't tell if serious.

Unless whatsapp did something to wreck their competition in Brazil, any effective monopoly they possess is by virtue of people choosing to use their system over other systems.

This sort of effective monopoly cannot and ought not be stopped unless the monopoly power is abusing their position. And how would you when it's a choice people have made? Mandate that every 5th person mustn't use WhatsApp?

Monopoly isn't even about market size it's about companies exploiting their market position using anti-competitive practices. There is no indication WhatsApp has done any of this except being the most popular product in a highly competitive and open market.

With at least Claro whatsapp is free there[1], not sure about the other telcos. And yes, people use it. I just spent a few weeks there and for every call there were like 50 whatsapp-messages.

[1] http://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/telecommunications/claro-b...

The fact a simple messaging service outperforms giant, monopolistic telecoms should speak volumes to the level of kleptocracy present in Brazil.

This judicial ruling is a political power grab. Ask yourself this, who does banning WhatsApp actually punish more? Facebook or the people of Brazil? It's the latter by a mile. Standing behind the "law is the law" is a cop out when the law was clearly written by and for the domestic telecom industry. WhatsApp will set a dangerous precedent if they change their internal operations at the demand of any regulation.

I'm not sure what law you can make to change people's favorite choice of Instant Messenger.

Do we need more proof? The Internet is broken. A few months back there were protests against government in my country (also in South America). That day I witnessed how Twitter images were selectively blocked. (I remember reporting it here on HN). What was really scary is how they could select the pictures/videos to block, almost in realtime. Here we have about 5 ISPs serving 95% of the market (counting both mobile and landline) and all hook to a couple of bigger pipes to move ALL Internet traffic in/out of the country.

Try as I might but can't understand why we do not break free from centralized communications, given that we already have both the hardware and software technology to do so.

I like an old saying: when banging your head against a stonewall, you will always break the head and never the wall. So, what do we gain from discusing politics? What do we gain with laws written on paper but bent for the best bidder? Let's be pragmatic, in particular on a site like HN. We shouldn't be talking about the law, whether it is right or wrong, we should be discusing how many nodes do we need on a mesh network to solve communications for a city like Sao Paulo. Is the tech there yet? Can it get there? Who's advancing on these subjects? How can we help? (like really help not writting useless letters to congressmen)

Don't bang your head on the stonewall...

Apps exist that route around censorship. People need to inform themselves. We are in an era where encryption and self-sustenance are deemed scary and suspicious.

If all of these 100m users were on FireChat, this headline wouldn't exist.

Not sure, we tried Firechat among friends and family on the last aftermath of an earthquake and some had problems installing or activating it. Also, it just drains the battery. However, I agree with you, the technology to circumvent centralized and censored communications is already there, it just needs adoption and improvement. But we need to think bigger, not only chats, we need a free Internet.

I am so tired of these “takedowns” and other brute-force methods that are used to essentially squash ants. It always seems way, way too easy to do, and the collateral damage is way too high.

The Internet needs to start acting like a series of dumb pipes again: so dumb that you have no idea where information really is, and so huge so as to be impractical for anyone to control.

Consider highway systems. For roads, the only way to “shut down” somebody’s access without controlling every road, everywhere is to have some idea where your target is. And even then, you probably have to control several access points to really keep that target from moving. And unless they live at the end of a single country road that you control, being draconian about road control is usually going to be very hard and probably impossible. And that is a good thing, because if shutting down highways made any sense then a hell of a lot of people would be inconvenienced on a regular basis (or worse than inconvenienced, if they were in an ambulance or something).

Blocking Internet tools is arguably far worse than blocking highways because networks transport an almost incomprehensibly-large amount of information and the effects are vast. By the same token, seizure of a device is arguably far worse than seizure of something like a truck because a device can effectively provide access to someone’s entire life and not just the little bit of information that an authority is seeking.

Enough paranoid blocking and seizure, let’s try to focus on world progress.

The reality is still a few big telcos/ISPs operating the infrastructure, so government has zero problems mandating filtering/wiretapping/blocking.

And since laying fiber is expensive, and putting up sats is even more expensive, and running a mesh through the continent is pretty unfeasible, we're stuck with these economically optimal big targets (the ISPs/telcos).

As long as there is a network operator with access to core and edge routers, blocking is easy. And by the nature of BGP and the Internet you'll always know who to ask next to filter something.

Or you can use Tor and-or a VPN. Multi-homing for times like this should be set up by default in operating systems.

Telex? https://telex.cc/software.html

As long as you can connect to an ISP implementing the protocol, which is outside of the targeted jurisdiction, you should be able to access the destination site.

This is exactly why operating many small Murmur and/or XMPP servers is a better approach than relying on a single big-co's proprietary service with which you no signed SLA. Just like game servers, it's easy to operate a community Murmur server and it's also possible to set up one on your home router given the low bandwidth and hardwre requirements.

Yet, if I suggest that I prefer Mumble over closed source voice chat or centrally provided WebRTC service like appear.in, people downvote me or treat me a like a luddite.

But I do understand that given the comfort of a centrally managed WhatsApp, it's hard to resist.

The only reason there are no fancy mobile clients is that those who would build them are doing it for the silo'd Vibers, Skypes, and WhatsApps.

Comfort seems to trump reliability.

> Comfort seems to trump reliability.

Everything is centralized because of one simple reason: you can't monetize distributed.

So, as a developer, if I want paid, I'm going to make a centralized system. The fact that the centralized system is way easier to develop/debug is just a bonus.

As a user, I'm going to use the system that has the easiest installability/usability cross section. That app is likely to be the one that gets the most developer time. The one that gets the most developer time is likely to be the one that lets the developers get paid.

And thus, the circle is closed, and the feedback loop begins.

You can monetize a fancy client that's commercial.

You can monetize hosting Mumble servers.

Decentralized services are much harder, but at some point we have to prefer them and use federation as a means to have something like a global network of continents of servers (or realms in MMO lingo).

My point is that as long as we don't pursue decentralized services, we won't get them. There are efforts for people to host everything privately, and with ipv6 I like to think it's only a matter of time until all IoT devices can be repurposed as servers.

Distributed means spam. That's not a solved issue. Email sorta gets around it with tons of filtering. On IM, spam is much more annoying (it's assumed you'll get lots of junk email even if not spam).

In what way does a centralized server prevent spam? You'll only receive messages after you've accepted the contact request, so the worst that can happen is contact request spam.

How would this prevent Telco/mobile operators from blocking XMPP traffic with Murmur headers?

The technical details of the court orders has nothing to do with shutting down WhatsApp servers or coercing them into doing a MITM on their own customers...

Not that I disagree that decentralization helps add resiliency against state intervention but this particular threat model requires a different solution. Such as preventing ISPs from being able to block your traffic.

It's easier to force a company to block access in a certain country, but if you run the servers or there are various parties hosting it for you, you have a higher chance of still using it.

But, that might of course require disobedience until the laws are declared invalid in front of the supreme court. I'm no activist, but the way politics has been meddling with the Internet convinced me that we have to fight to keep existing freedoms.

The same holds for Telegram and Signal.

> The Telephone, Used by 300M Americans, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

Try rationalizing this headline. All communication services, whether they are "apps", "networks", "utilities", etc... should fall in some category of protection where such things cannot happen.

2nd time in less than 12 months. probably, we are going to see a surge in telegram downloads/usage today.

A true shame since Telegram is just as centralized as WhatsApp, minus the strong end-to-end encryption. Should it become the de facto messaging app for Brazilians, the next judge will just block Telegram instead.

But decentralized communication networks that work mobile first are hard, we all know it, so there's room for improvement, randomizing server addresses on a daily rotation, or whatever may render pointless these blockades.

WhatsApp could incorporate obfuscation proxies if they wanted to. Like the Tor connection bridges that exist to help get around a Tor block.

Maybe only activated once they detect a threat or something.

Yes, it's happening, more than 1M accounts* created by brazilians today.

[1]: https://twitter.com/telegram_br/status/727201106166689792

Too bad they're switching to a messenger that can easily be subverted by governments and doesn't come with E2E encryption by default. Might as well use Hangouts or Skype.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...

I prefer open source software that lacks features (e.g. E2E, which could be implemented by someone), than proprietary software that "supposedly" has some features (like E2E) which you cannot verify (that is, Whatsapp says they have that feature, but their software not being opensource cannot guarantee anyone that they are stating the truth).

The solution to this isn't a legal one, unfortunately. We can no longer trust the government, of what ever nation, period. In US we have Clinton and Trump as the presumptive nominees, both will be terrible for privacy and liberty. The solution is for WhatsApp (and others) to design a protocol that runs over common ports and encrypts end to end the communication and the protocol. Make it impossible to block without costly deep packet inspections and banning of thousands and thousands random relays, and it will not be blocked.

Would a p2p architecture thwart this kinda blocking?

Probably yes, my concern is that this can be exactly what judges, telcos and its lobbyists want. They could use this in the future to justify blocking client-to-client connections, implement deep packet inspection, maybe even transform internet in Brazil in a deny-by-default network, where only allowed content would be accessed. Too much of a conspiracy theory? Maybe yes, but given the current political turmoil in Brazil, I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm going to guess you meant... thwart?

Maybe technically, but probably not legally, although I understand very little of the issues at play.

Thanks for the correction. Fixed

Not if the App Store is still in the mix. It's a centralized distribution failure point for the app.

This is only really a problem for unjailbroken iOS devices. On every other platform decentralized distribution is a solved problem with many different solutions.

Next law will make it illegal to have whatsapp installed on your phone. Your turn?

You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.

I assert, and I think many of us here are moved by the notion that, as time moves forward, technological solutions tend to be confounding for entrenched power structures and empowering for social liberation.

I don't really know how to parse "you can't fix social problems with technology," but I have much more confidence in the growing power of, for example, uncensorable media than I do in any fantasy of change in the nature of government.

My sense is that government will be co-opted by the rich to excuse violence against the poor, and that this rule will apply in proportion to the size of the government and the size of the landmass over which it claims dominion. Technology seems to be the cultural foil to this trend.

I think that "you can't fix social problems with technology" is too oversimple and too absolute to have real meaning in the current techno-political environment.

>You can't fix social problems with technology

This is an increasingly popular meme, and I have some sympathy for the sentiment that we shouldn't ignore the political process, but ultimately it's twaddle - a backlash against the staggering impact that technology has had and will continue to have. Exhibit A: the printing press.

In this case it's even pragmatically untrue. Make a communications platform that's technically impossible to block, and government will not make itself look foolish attempting to block it. Even the US government, who dearly wanted to kill encryption for the masses before it got off the ground in the 90s, was forced to back off after the tide of encryption technology proved un-stemmable.

Sure you can!

Imagine if Brazil tried to ban Bitcoin. How successful do you think they would be?

The court doesn’t care about encryption – they only want the IP address of the user, so they can identify them.

The judge – which has experience with E2E encryption – says he knows he can’t get the messages.

I agree, but it's still important to try.

Nations seem to care alot about "cyberattacks". Yet a single well-positioned person has the power to disrupt a mass communication service for 72 hours. Without a single keystroke. Impressive.

My sister worked closely with many of the parties involved in the "Marco Civil", Brazil's brilliant Internet Bill of Rights. Two years later, I feel much of her work was in vain. No significant legislation was enacted from it and lately judges are trying to circumvent common sense by brute force. Now over 100M people are unable to use their communication platform of choice for 72h. In the meanwhile, congressmen are busy impeaching the president and calling it an act of god, probably as a device to expiate their own sins. It would make a good argument for a Game of Thrones clone series, some would say. And my sister, she's been out of the job since last January. She was let go when local NGOs ran out of money for fighting for an open internet. It seems freedom is the first thing that runs out in a recession. Scarcity is a bitch.

Seems like a hint that we should design our means of communication to resist single points of failure.

For the record, WhatsApp has had end-to-end encryption enabled for Android<>Android since 2014. And 92.4% of smartphones in Brazil use Android: http://www.statista.com/statistics/245189/market-share-of-mo...

So it is very unlikely they have any plaintext data for the users in question. Especially if the investigation happened recently since the roll-out of E2E on all devices.

Additionally, it's possible WhatsApp did not even store old messages for non-encrypted devices beyond a certain timeframe.

WhatsApp have said they don't store the messages anyway, whether they were sent in plain text or not.

Also any such records would be stored on servers in the US, not Brazil, so would be subject to US law. The Brazillian judge should be entering a request with the US DOJ but is either too much of an idiot or too busy doing political grandstanding with stupid futile gestures like this.

They should shut down access to the whole internet in Brazil, then. It happens to be full of companies, forums, services and data networks which probably don't give a rat's sit-upon about what the law in Brazil or any other country says but just keep on transmitting messages and bits from user to user.

I don't think being a messenger should come with obligations to divulge private persons' conversations or, more generally, bits to anyone. Local laws can force local companies to do so but it has nothing much to do with internet: a letter remailing company (or, the post office, as we used to say in the 1900's) could provide similar service.

To generalise, all private communications reduce down to talking in private. If you really had to, you could talk to your friend in private and there's nothing any government could do to retrieve those conversations back after the fact. Technological means just make the communication more flexible but it should not mean the conversation should become less private just because it happens on the internet instead of the local backwoods.

In fact, when governments (across the globe) do that it will only motivate creating solutions which make it impossible for the company to hand over their customer's data, with end-to-end and client-side encryption. Yet all governments do see that it's their right to make demands because it's always the easy thing to do.

This has nothing to do with massive surveillance, dragnets, etc. It's a simple and very specific criminal investigation where people have been found to be using WhatsApp to coordinate drug trafficking activities. The judge is just following the law and asking Facebook/WhatsApp to cooperate in identifying these people (and is being met with resistance).

Tech giants in this area are just facing their own karma for having allowed dragnets schemes to be used in their networks. If they had denounced those activities and continued to only allow targeted surveillance with a court order, we wouldn't have this trust crisis that prompts them to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It's technically possible for these companies to come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders so criminals can be identified and punished by their respective country's laws. They simply won't because it will be their word against the vast evidence that they have allowed dragnet activities in the past, which will cause a backslash everywhere.

Umm, but the issue is that WhatsApp CAN'T comply with the order, because they do not have access to the communications (because they are using end to end encryption).

I have no idea what you mean by "come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders"... they aren't being asked to identify anyone, they are being asked to hand over unencrypted communication, which they do not have access to.

Maybe this isn't in the international news, but one of the prosecutors in this case specifically said they understand e2e encryption prevents FB/WhatsApp from handing out the messages but they want at least the IP addresses so those can be followed up with the local telco companies to identify who is the subscriber. It's business as usual and, AFAIK, FB/WhatsApp has been denying all requests equally. There was specific mention of "no cooperation at all" which would be a subjective statement saying the company is not willing to find ways to help this criminal case in good faith.

I think the term "in contempt of court" is what is happening here, although my vocabulary for law terms is limited.

The details are under seal, you simply can not know that.

Brazil has no law ordering companies to collect communication contents (and it would be against our Constitution). Instead, there is a law requiring them to collect IP addresses of sender and receiver of messages, and storing them for 6 months in case a court requests them.

This is information Facebook has, and this is the law they broke last time the service was blocked.

Ah ok. I guess I am misinformed.

End to end encryption in Whatsapp is extremely recent, I doubt the information the judge is after falls under that.

https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/

"The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we'll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We'll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed."

This was in 18 Nov 2014. The latest announcement from last month was:

"Over the past year, we've been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.

As of today, the integration is fully complete. "

Brazilian here.

I've always used Telegram for privacy purposes.

It was amazing to watch the flood of friends "just signing up".

Although it has to be said that Telegram does not offer true end-to-end encryption by default. For general-purpose usage, WhatsApp may actually be considered more secure than Telegram.

Indeed Telegram is not more secure than WhatsApp, but I usually take into account the position of each company and how that affects my particular use case.

But... Telegram isn't E2E encrypted so is less private..?

I mean, it's not blocked so I guess it's better than nothing but it's not a plus for privacy: it's a net negative.

Telegram's secret chats are E2E encrypted.

Using an unexamined and unpublished encryption algorithm. Encryption is hard and when someone says "trust us", you know they are implementing poor encryption.

The title makes it sound much worse than it is -- it's actually only a 72-hour shutdown. From the beginning of the article:

> A BRAZILIAN STATE JUDGE ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours...

It is as bad as they make it sound. WhatsApp is the biggest form of communication in Brazil. It would be effectively the same as SMS and phone calls being disabled in the U.S. (or maybe just like the effect of blocking StackOverflow for all programmers ;))

Anyone know how WhatsApp is being blocked?

The judge ordered mobile operators to block it. It's on them to set up the firewall rules / null routes / etc.

IP blocking at the carrier level.

I feel a bit silly for asking, but do you have a source? There is loads of misinformation going around in this thread. Are you from Brazil and do you observe this, or did you read it somewhere?

That should be fairly easy to circumvent. Just setup clouds of proxies. As with Tor and China. In AWS etc.

Good. Now they can all switch to Signal.

Why should that be any different? Signal and WhatsApp are functionally equivalent from this perspective. Both are end-to-end encrypted and therefore targets, and both are dependent on centralized, blockable servers and therefore vulnerable.

1) If people were to switch, it would bring more people onto a platform that is not tied to Facebook, a company that loathes privacy.

2) Signal is free software, including the messaging server (https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server). This makes it less sensitive to take-downs (anyone could set up an alternate server), and makes third-party security code audits possible.

I'm going to guess that this isn't only affecting consumers. Governments and businesses gradually (sometimes informally) adopt tools their employees use outside work. Tools that are convenient, consistent and prevalent are especially valuable.

If this becomes the "new normal", I'd expect to see criminals launching more burglaries and terrorists launching more attacks during the service shut-downs. If you know your target is in a weakened state, you're going to take advantage of it.

This is why we need decentralization.

And I'm sure we'll not grab the opportunity to use a descentralized messaging protocol. It's like people want somebody to exploit them.

I hope that someday someone smarter than me figures out how to make a truly free internet that isn't bound to be undermined by laws, ISPs, and hosting providers. Of course you would still be free to program censorship into your own walled garden, but the substrate would not be controllable by anyone. I used to think that the Internet was that, but it's proven not to be almost daily.

The only way is for every home to have its own node in a web so it is entirely private, but one still needs to cross the oceans and deserts.

Is telegram also blocked, I think it sounds like a good alternative that people can use now, if it's not already blocked.

A better alternative would be Signal https://whispersystems.org/

Telegram is a terrible alternative. Messages aren't even end to end encrypted by default and they're kept accessible on Telegrams servers. See the recent news on how a russian activists Telegram account got hacked giving them access to all stored messages: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...

Also this:

Thomas H. Ptacek: By default Telegram stores the PLAINTEXT of EVERY MESSAGE every user has ever sent or received on THEIR SERVER.

Edward Snowden: I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram's defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it's unsafe.

https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/678065993587945472

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678271881242374144

https://twitter.com/moxie/status/678219238394298372

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678274362609426432

And the response from Pavel where he admits that security isn't a priority

https://twitter.com/durov/status/678305311921410048

Sounds Telegram is the type of messaging system that the judge would like Brazil to use.

I agree that Signal would be a better alternative, I've been trying to convince my family to use it over WhatsApp.

But wouldn't Signal be vulnerable to this type of block too, as they are centralized?

"Sorry, Brazil! Your mobile networks can't process as many verification SMS as we're sending them. Over a million users joined, more waiting"

https://twitter.com/telegram/status/727200237308227585

Some brazil users started to - Actor (actor.im)

Disclaimer: CEO of Actor and Ex-Telegram employee.

That app looks really cool!

I was looking at the Actor Developer Hub, there is a guide explaining how to install an Actor Server. Does that mean that Actor is decentralized? How does that work?

Telegram gets hit hard every time WhatsApp gets blocked in Brazil. It's happened 2x before (at least).

How exactly are they shutting it down? Are all ISPs ordered to block it?

"Politics is the art by which politicians get money from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other" -- Oscar

Simple solution (just 4 steps).

Instal Orbot (tor proxy), run it, setup Settings->Select apps->What's up and give the finger to your censors.

I'm not saying the judge did the wrong thing but I think one could avoid this kind of problems by using decentralized services.

What I find interesting the most is that they have 100M users in Brazil, yet they don't have an office there.

Maybe this is a great opportunity for whatsapp competitors? Especially brazilian?

Makes me wonder why people aren't making a self-hostable IM system that govt can host and ask it's citizens to use. There can be a setting to switch end to end enable/disable encryption.

I am not being entirely facetious. It's after all how Cisco made a lot of money by selling IDS equipment.

I suspect that most (neoliberalist) governments do not feel that it is their job if the market is handling it. Also, people seem to trust megacorporations like Facebook more than their own government for private communication, although I am profoundly troubled by this naive majority view on privacy — I'd rather have my communications end-to-end encrypted without some huge corporation or any government harvesting my (meta)data; it's just too easy to abuse.

just a passing thought, would this happen to have anything to do with privacy and surveillance concerns? seems oddly suspicious this comes after WhatsApp announces end to end encryption

Google, Used by 1B+ Chinese, Blocked Nationwide for Years by GFW.

First its iPhone/Apple. Now its WhatsApp/Facebook.

Someone needs to create sane international e-commerce laws. I guess the question is "Who?"

and I thought only India had technically laid back judges.

this is my shitty country and his shitty law.

What most people outside of Brazil don't realize is that WhatsApp is almost universally used by Brazillians to communicate about EVERYTHING, even your doctor [0][1]. My wife is Brazillian and uses it to communicate with her family in Brazil every day. This will have disastrous consequences for Brazilians domestically and internationally. This policy is being put in place by unelected judges and cartel of monopolistic telcos - all at the expense of the people.

[0]http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap... [1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-brazilians-use...

That sounds incredibly dystopian. A proprietary communication protocol made by a foreign company dominating all communications without recourse sounds like something out of 1984.

I mean, if your doctor is using it, you know you are screwed the day Facebook does anything you disagree with, because you are wholly dependent on them at that point. That was why we even developed interoperable federated messaging protocols over 15 years ago, apparently the world forgot about how bad the 90s were.

Dystopian only in the mind of a sci-fi fan. In practice it's a free communication service that helped millions to connect. No one forced people to use WhatsApp like something from 1984, people chose it from the various alternatives.

In fact, a lot of people prefer Telegram, and a lot use neither, preferring good old cellphone conversations. Oh wait, isn't that a closed protocol that dominates all offline communications? How dystopian...

It's not without recourse. It's just a system that became a defacto standard. If WhatsApp goes away for good, surely everyone will move on to something else, maybe even considering the "centralizedness" of it, but the transition costs are there, especially on a case with such short notice.

> A proprietary communication protocol made by a foreign company dominating all communications without recourse sounds like something out of 1984.

Yes but still better than orkut, I guess...

Don't forget, a lot of diseases are hereditary, so your children are screwed as well.

That's quite an overstatement. People know how to adapt. On the first court order, people were posting on Facebook about how to connect using VPN providers. Millions others downloaded Telegram.

I, for one, think that this kind of thing is a very good example on why we should NEVER rely on closed services. Whatsapp may be doing all of the right things (creating new features, improving privacy, keeping the product free and separate from FB), but it is still closed.

What's your definition of 'closed'?

No, it won't have disastrous consequences. It happened last year as well

Typical authoritarian act by a lower court judge that will be reversed in 1 or 2 days

Nothing to see here

> Nothing to see here

I feel like this is an overly dismissive attitude to have, even, or especially if, everything you said is true and this is some common behavior.

Depends on how you define disastrous. As pointed out several other times in the comments, several commercial activities rely on WhatsApp on several levels.

Even blocking for a few hours causes several man-hours to be spent in setting up alternatives. And lots of telephone costs, as well, since many companies - including those with technicians on the field, sometimes in another state - use that to communicate instead.

Or maybe WhatsApp could comply with the law?

Others have said they don't have the data. How can they comply, then?

"disastrous consequences"? Perhaps Brazilians should engage in some technological risk management.

It's almost like Brazil is the most technologically advanced poor-3rd-world-nation

I know from my brief time at Facebook, they use Brazil user-searches in their intro classes to tableau reporting on users' graphs - "show me everyone in Brazil who is 18 years old and posted about subject-X"

Samstave,

Just a bit of nitpick to save you some trouble in the future. Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal.

Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word. There are much better, non-pejorative terms to be used.

Brazil is a part of the BRICS or the world emerging countries. Right now it is in a huge political crisis and on the verge of a coup but it is not a poor-3rd-world-nation, it is a the world seventh economy and also dictating tendency for many emerging countries and a continental power in the south.

That being said, you are completely correct that Brazilians love technology. Our smartphone revolution and expansion is awesome and we're keen to adopt new tech. Still more than half of the country doesn't have access to net infrastructure at their home and depends on cybercafes.

If you want some real data on the technology adoption and usage in the country you can use the metrics and indicators from CETIC[0] which is the Brazilian Institute for the study of information technology usage and adoption. Their reports are awesome and will give you a much greater insight on internet usage in the country.

[0]: http://cetic.br/

PS: Sorry for the long rant, I work with digital inclusion and web literacy programs here in Brazil, unlocking new digital skills in low-income neighborhoods so I've been immersed in this type of thing for too long.

Calling Brazil a "poor-3rd-world-nation" is really ignorant, as it has a development index similar to Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Cuba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

Your comment was filled with the typical Valley arrogance and ignorance with anything outside of SoMa.

Not only is Brazil not a poor-3rd-world-nation, but other similar developing nations are by far more "technologically advanced" (e.g. China, India).

Brasil is the 8th economy in the world.

Brasil is not poor, is F*n corrupt.

Not unsympathetic to the brasileros affected, but this is not the first time this happened over there - surely at this point the fragility of centralised platforms, and becoming reliant on them, is well known by now?

It also points to the fragility of Brazilian institutions.

If the institutions were fragile, the Internet companies would just refuse to comply and block WhatsApp. The fact that they complied shows how strong the institutions are.

Skype back in the day went to great lengths to be unblockable (mostly for commercial reason, there was a time before smartphones that people actually payed lots of money for international and domestic calls). It was pre MS.

Why are not the other messengers doing the same?

I was never a big Skype user, but my understanding is that Skype relied on individual users serving as "supernodes" in a peer-to-peer distribution network for messages and calls. The Skype client's default configuration opted you into serving as a supernode, and this was a supremely unpopular move.

It was more than that- there were antidebugger measures. The node list was encrypted. Protocol obfuscated. Also people in skype network were nodes. The supernodes were dedicated servers.

Keep electing terrible politicians Brazil

In this case the decision maker wasn't even elected.

America's track record is often just as bad. The difference is people don't care and the politicians don't end up in jail.

This has nothing to do with the state of democracy of Brazil.

That's assuming there are fair elections in Brazil.

Yep we're stuck to voting machines since 1996, so there's no way to know about that

That's assuming there are civil rights in Brazil.

You are full of crap. The seventh world economy in the terms you are refering to is meaningless. By your logic, is Brazil welthier than Switzerland or Netherlands? NOT even close. GDP is MEANINGLESS if you really want to know how the average citizen lives in a country. The fact is that in Brazil the prices/inflation are through the roof, housing and goods are extremly expensive and their salaries are ridicusly low. Let alone the rampant and systemic corruption. So no, maybe Brazil as a whole concept is not poor. But the Brazilians? Yes, most of them are.

EDIT: BTW, this is a forum to discuss. If you think I'm wrong say why, don't just downvote. And no, saying "crap" in the internet is not a reason to be wrong.

> You are full of crap.

Comments like this break HN's civility rule. Please (re-)read the site guidelines and eliminate this kind of thing from your posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614911 and marked it off-topic.

I didn't downvoted you, actually, I agree with you. GDP is not the best way to measure or have this type of discussion.

GDP proves to us that the "country is rich", HDI tells us that "this richness is not distributed" which means that we have an endemic and self-perpetuating problem with wealth distribution and access to infrastructure, which I believe you'd agree.

I completely agree with your statement that we have a rampant and systemic corruption scheme in place here and that makes solving all of this mess an extremely complex problem.

Being the seventh world economy is not meaningless, it proves that with the correct measures in place, we have the economic power to move economy/jobs and wealth forward. If we could pair that with proper access to education and opportunities then we'd have a really marvelous place.

All the criticisms you made there are true and still, we're in a better place than 20 or 25 years ago, specially when we're talking about the low-income classes and impoverished. Lots of advancements there but nowhere close to solving the problem...

Oh, the EDIT wasn't targeted to you especifically, more of a general thing.

I agree with you, but I found the first comment misleading, thus my heated response. By meaningless I meant regarding the "feel" that you get as a citizen, or as a turist, or even as an outsider watching the news, which is that the country and its people are in trouble (also relative, compared to UE or US, not to central Africa for example). I completely agree that the country has a lot of potencial, resources, and great people. It has vast amounts of petroleum, the Amazonas etc etc. And I also agree that one of the problems is the distribution of the wealth. And sure, you are improving the situation.

I think a somehow similar "rich" country in a bad situation is Argentina, with lots of resources and also oil reserves. So is Russia. Bad management, corruption, education etc are some causes of it. It is indeed a very complex problem.

"saying "crap" in the internet is not a reason to be wrong"

But saying "you are full of crap" on HN is a reason to be downvoted.

I suspect you are being down voted for your tone, not for the accuracy of your comment.

Yeah ... Personally, I don't find a bit of emotion in the discussion bad as long as you provide arguments.

Again?

I'm here to defend my rights, put the service back now! Fine WhatsApp or Facebook or whatever, but don't block the service nation-wide!

Who gives a fuck about a bloody judge? Judges, politicians, governments are all involved in huge scandals. Let's stop respecting them.

I don't know about Brazil but these sort of things happen routinely in third world countries like India all the time because some judge could not understand what the new technology is. The decision will be reversed in one or two days.

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