Jugde blocks Whatsapp for 72 hours in Brazil

[Inimigor]

Edit: Whatsapp has returned after ~24 hours.

A Brazillian Judge called Marcel Montavão has issued a mandate for suspending all communication for Whatsapp for the period of 72 hours, the service suspension started today (May 2nd) at 14:00 (GMT -3) and is still going at the current moment.

The reason for the service suspension is the on going investigation of an interstate drug dealing gang. The Judge wants Whatsapp to give all information related to the investigation.

He also got Diego Dzodan arrested for the same reason. Diego Dzodan is facebook's vice-president for Latin America. The episode happened on March 1st this year.

Previously, Whatsapp was suspended for 48 hours, in February 2015, but it was overruled in the same day. In this case it was different judge, called Luiz de Moura Correia. With the idea of forcing the company to release information about child abuse and pedophiles that used Whatsapp for their crimes.

If the internet providers don't respect the mandate, they will be subjected to a R$500.000,00 fine for each day that this happens. (That's around US$ 150.000,00)

Whatsapp's position on the case is very clear, they say that they don't have the information, since after the messages are sent, they are deleted from the servers.

Quote

"Isso significa que a polícia prendeu alguém por causa de informações que não existem" - Said the representatives of the company.

Translating it to english.

"That means that the police arrested someone because of information that doesn't exist"

03/05: Whatsapp returns.

The service suspension has been lifted today, after Ricardo Múcio Santana de Abreu Lima, another politician from Sergipe appealed for reconsideration on the order due to the disproportion of the punishment.

The set of laws called "Marco Civil" in Brazil determines that whenever possible companies should cooperate to invetigations however they can. By this law specifically, the government is more leaned towards being right, BUT, the same set of laws also define the principle of proportion, where, any kind of punishment for companies, must be in proportion to the issue and effect as few uninvolved people as possible. Ricardo Múcio used that as one of arguments for stopping the blockage. And it seems to have worked!  
 

Quote

Punishing 100 million people is definitely a disproportional punishment

Say specialists about the suspension.

The story isn't over, but at least people can chat about it using their beloved emojis again!

Source: Época

My personal opinion on the blocking

Spoiler

The blocking of a communication service such as whatsapp is outrageous, it's a tool for many! I use it at work daily! I've switched to telegram until whatsapp gets back up, but it hurts the user and hurts the company A LOT(i know it sounds strange).

My comparison to this is: There's a hit & run in an important road, the investigators ask the people who built the road to give the plate of the car to them, and close the road because they won't give the information. Ignoring ANY other people who need to use that road to get somewhere, not just driving for pleasure, but also people who go to work, hospitals, school and everything else!

Even if whatsapp HAS the information, it's an awful way to "force" the company to give the information, wich hurts lots of people who have absolutely no envolvement on the situation.

Sources:

Folha de São Paulo:
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2016/05/1766869-justica-determina-bloqueio-do-whatsapp-em-todo-o-brasil-por-72-horas.shtml

G1 Globo:
http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2016/05/justica-do-sergipe-manda-operadoras-bloquearem-whatsapp.html

Edited May 3, 2016 by Inimigor
adding more info and personal opinion.

[I am an SSD]

These are the kind of situations that help you decide whether you can trust a company

 

Microsoft, on the other hand, wont have any problem forking over information......

[Inimigor]

Just now, I am an SSD said:

These are the kind of situations that help you decide whether you can trust a company

 

Microsoft, on the other hand, wont have any problem forking over information......

Yeah, I'm not even sure Whatsapp has these informations, if they actually have it, and are not giving it away, mad props for them.

[LAwLz]

If the messages were sent after the rollout of WhatApp's fantastic end-to-end encryption then they can't help even if they wanted. It's like threatening to put the CEO of Good Years in jail because someone using their tires ran someone over.

[Danger Warning]

From what I understood, this situation has continued for months and WhatsApp/Facebook's official position is that the data can't be accessed because it doesn't exist. According to this article, Diego Dzodan was only held for a day before an appelate court overturned the order, whereas the newspaper linked above hints to the idea that he was held in solitary confinement for ten days. I think the important aspect is that Brazil might pass a cybercrime bill that basically would allow them to lawfully block websites and services. It's also strange how much power a single judge has, if he's able to order the shutdown of this massive service countrywide.

[SImoHayha]

Good luck brazil. It isn't going to happen, no matter how much you bitch and complain they won't cave in and if they cave in whatcha going to get from it ? blank data? They explained all data is deleted so assuming that the data is also overwritten with other data so that means that you defeiniately can't get it out.

[kelvindeschutter]

oh Brazil you never change

[suicidalfranco]

brazil just went full merica retard

never go full merica retard

[Inimigor]

2 hours ago, Keik + Tee said:

From what I understood, this situation has continued for months and WhatsApp/Facebook's official position is that the data can't be accessed because it doesn't exist. According to this article, Diego Dzodan was only held for a day before an appelate court overturned the order, whereas the newspaper linked above hints to the idea that he was held in solitary confinement for ten days. I think the important aspect is that Brazil might pass a cybercrime bill that basically would allow them to lawfully block websites and services. It's also strange how much power a single judge has, if he's able to order the shutdown of this massive service countrywide.

Politics in Brazil are really, REALLY f**ked up. The WhatsApp Official position is exactly that they couldn`t give the data even if they wanted, since they don`t have it.

The article says that normally, the legal period for preventive/investigation custody is ten days, not that he was held for 10 days.

And yep, that is exactly what happened, there are plenty of situations where a single person has too much decision power. There's still now whatsapp here in Brazil. I am acessing it using a VPN, but most people are using Viber and Telegram due to the block happening. Pretty awful situation.

[Danger Warning]

17 minutes ago, Inimigor said:

The article says that normally, the legal period for preventive/investigation custody is ten days, not that he was held for 10 days.

 

I wrote that the article hinted to it. Notice that in neither the article you posted nor in the article they link regarding Dzodan's arrest is mentioned it was only during one day. The only information I found regarding his potential time imprisoned was that the general procedure in these cases is ten days of solitary confinement. These are currently the most read article related to market and the second most read article related to tech, but I can't find anything through text or link provided by the site in the pages of these articles to inform me he was released that night. I'd have to search it by myself.

[Inimigor]

4 minutes ago, Keik + Tee said:

 

I wrote that the article hinted to it. Notice that in neither the article you posted nor in the article they link regarding Dzodan's arrest is mentioned it was only during one day. The only information I found regarding his potential time imprisoned was that the general procedure in these cases is ten days of solitary confinement. These are currently the most read article related to market and the second most read article related to tech, but I can't find anything through text or link provided by the site in the pages of these articles to inform me he was released that night. I'd have to search it by myself.

Oh, this other article from Extra says that he was released the next day, he did spend the night in Jail. Any detents are put in a cell by themselves as the "adaptation period"

[Yog]

Let me start by saying I'm against any sort of broad request of information by a government. I don't think a government should be able to go to a private company and say "give me all of your data because there might be criminals using it"...a proper government would say "these three criminals committed these specific crimes, here's a warrant requiring their data and only their data." However, I want to critique the comparisons made because they're very wrong.

 

5 hours ago, Inimigor said:

My comparison to this is: There's a hit & run in an important road, the investigators ask the people who built the road to give the plate of the car to them, and close the road because they won't give the information. Ignoring ANY other people who need to use that road to get somewhere, not just driving for pleasure, but also people who go to work, hospitals, school and everything else!

First, the construction company doesn't own or operate the road (at least here in the states it doesn't), a government does (well, most of the time)...the company is only there to lay down the asphalt (or concrete). Talking to the construction company would be pointless because they're not involved in any way. Whatsapp is entirely owned by a private company (facebook right?), it's in their complete control, they can do whatever they want with it. Second, roads don't inherently have a record of what's going on on top of them and that information isn't relayed to the owner, let alone the construction company. They might have certain sensors embedded in them but that wont tell you any pertinent information. Whatsapp does keep record of everything- that's the nature of digital communication, the record has to exist at some point - the only reason why there is no record to give is because they delete it before it's asked for.

 

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's like threatening to put the CEO of Good Years in jail because someone using their tires ran someone over.

Similar to the first one but you make a huge mistake of at least implying that Whatsapp is in trouble because someone else committed a crime...they're not in trouble for that but for not releasing information about a crime, big difference. Also, once again, good year doesn't record anything at all, they can't...whatsapp does but deletes it.

 

Personally, I do think this is a grey area and I can see valid points for both sides. To the police it basically looks like whatsapp is shredding documents (if they were analog) so the police can't see anything. For whatsapp they see it necessary to protect their users from hackers/overbearing governments. However, i'll revert to my original point of the broad requests of information...governments these days brought this sort of behavior on themselves by behaving poorly. If they could be trusted maybe this sort of communication wouldn't be desired/needed. Any government that abuses its powers has no room to complain when even innocent people hide as much as they can from them.

[Inimigor]

1 hour ago, Yog said:

First, the construction company doesn't own or operate the road (at least here in the states it doesn't), a government does (well, most of the time)...the company is only there to lay down the asphalt (or concrete). Talking to the construction company would be pointless because they're not involved in any way. Whatsapp is entirely owned by a private company (facebook right?), it's in their complete control, they can do whatever they want with it. Second, roads don't inherently have a record of what's going on on top of them and that information isn't relayed to the owner, let alone the construction company. They might have certain sensors embedded in them but that wont tell you any pertinent information. Whatsapp does keep record of everything- that's the nature of digital communication, the record has to exist at some point - the only reason why there is no record to give is because they delete it before it's asked for.

What I said by this comparison is that after the road is done, there is not much the contructors could do. The same thing with the data, once it's delivered and deleted, there's not much the company can do, it's up to the person who did something wrong to be issued. 

(By the way there are plenty of roads owned by private companies here in Brazil, and they are much better than government mantained roads).

They could be using some sort of RAMdisk technology, since the idea is that the data only goes through the servers and are imediatelly gone, economically, a RAMdisk sounds like the most viable way to do it fast and have no problem in writing and erasing everything a bunch of times. And I can't even begin to think of a way to get data back from a RAMdisk.


And the goodyear thing @Lalz said is the same, It's an analogy to someone unrelated to the company doing something wrong and the person who takes the punishment is the "face" of company. Unfair for him, especially if they don't store the data.

Let's say Goodyear has some sort of serial number on tire batches, You can identify the batch and see the people who bought tires from that batch and are on that region. You go to the store who received that batch, but the seller threw away the packaging from the tire. Would you arrest them because they "threw away evidence of a crime"?

It`s not the same level of blame. But If you throw away every Data and can't recover it, how can a punishment help the case?

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Inimigor said:

They could be using some sort of RAMdisk technology, since the idea is that the data only goes through the servers and are imediatelly gone, economically, a RAMdisk sounds like the most viable way to do it fast and have no problem in writing and erasing everything a bunch of times. And I can't even begin to think of a way to get data back from a RAMdisk.


And the goodyear thing @Lalz said is the same, It's an analogy to someone unrelated to the company doing something wrong and the person who takes the punishment is the "face" of company. Unfair for him, especially if they don't store the data.

Let's say Goodyear has some sort of serial number on tire batches, You can identify the batch and see the people who bought tires from that batch and are on that region. You go to the store who received that batch, but the seller threw away the packaging from the tire. Would you arrest them because they "threw away evidence of a crime"?

It`s not the same level of blame. But If you throw away every Data and can't recover it, how can a punishment help the case?

If you want the analogy to be even more accurate you also have to take into account that the data is encrypted end-to-end. So WhatsApp really has no way of knowing what was being sent even if they stored messages permanently. To get back to the Goodyears analogy, it would be like if the customers got to make up their own serial number for their tires. When they opened the box for the tires it was just a blank piece of paper that said "here, write your own serial number. You don't have to tell anyone about it either".

Even if Goodyears were to keep track of every single tire ever sold, their database would just be full of lines of blank serial numbers, because nobody would willingly go though the trouble of contacting Goodyear and report their serial number they themselves came up with and wrote down.

 

 

@Yog I strongly recommend you read a bit about how WhatApp's encryption work. If you don't understand the white papers then find some article that explains it in less technical terms for you. But let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing WhatsApp can do about it. They have 0 knowledge or control over what users are sending using their app. The only info they store temporarily is completely unreadable to them, the police and anyone else except the intended recipient.

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

Inb4 government introduces a mandatory "No one but us" messaging app and everyone is forced to comply... Again doesn't really solve anything.

 

/s

[Misanthrope]

What the fuck, its like they appointed the fucking joker as a judge. 

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

3 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

What the fuck, its like they appointed the fucking joker as a judge. 

The joker has a better sense of reasoning and form to madness than that judge.

 

EDIT 1: 

 

Joker: There are just some people who want to see the world burn. - The Dark Knight

 

A simple, yet perfect appeal to emotion. Nothing too complicated and easy to understand and berate

 

Judge: I want data that doesn't exist

 

It simply does not compute

 

I'm also surprised why the government hasn't struck a deal with the NSA/CIA to go harvest WhatsApp data and encryption keys in exchange for cheap foreign labor and tax havens.

 

I mean its been done before during Cold War, why not now?

 

 

[Inimigor]

Whatsapp returned to activity a few hours ago.