[caio1982]

What really happened: a drug smuggler with ties to a major criminal organization had been investigated and sentenced several months ago and since July Facebook and WhatsApp folks had not complied (actually they simply ignored all requests) with some users data the justice demanded to keep prosecuting the guy and his associates. Allegedly, according to the new https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framewo... if a company does exactly what they did, they can be temporarily blocked by a court decision as some sort of punishment for obstruction. Mark Zuckerberg complained saying it was just one judge who ordered this but AFAIK the block was requested by PA's office.

To be fair, some Brazilian judges are pretty stupid and have no idea how the internet works so it's quite possible the original users data request was super broad and that's why Facebook and WhatsApp just ignored it. On the other hand, it's only through very effective wires and digital data examination in recent years that the Brazilian justice is finally putting some big sharks into jail. That's why I have mixed feelings about all this (and I'm a Telegram user myself).

Source, in Portuguese: http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-wh...

[pqdbr]

The order wasn't super broad, it was actually specific to a single individual, like you said.

Also, even if it was broad, you don't get to ignore judicial orders. You answer to them giving your reasons and appealing if you don't agree. Ignoring them will get you either punished or arrested.

WhatsApp notoriously doesn't even have an office in Brazil. No way to even get a judicial order to them.

Facebook, the parent company, simply says they are Facebook and not WhatsApp, so they can't help.

By the way, the judge in case actually demonstrated quite a deep understanding of the web. Unable to get WhatsApp to comply, he ordered all telecoms to block WhatsApp IP addresses, which was quite a smart move.

[PeterisP]

You do get to ignore judicial orders if you are outside of their jurisdiction.

If, say, a valid legal authority in Iran issues some judicial order that affects me or some content that I have published (even if it is accessible in Iran), then it is perfectly reasonable to ignore it as long as I'm not in Iran, don't have an office there, etc.

I am not and should not be bound by Iran's laws and judgements, I reside elsewhere. Whatsapp is not and should not be bound by Brazil's laws and judgements, they reside elsewhere. If their host country allows (or requires!) them to protect user privacy, then they should follow their own laws, not those of Brazil.

Should Whatsapp censor messages critical of Thailand's royalty because they are illegal there? Should Whatsapp censor messages that are blasphemous and thus illegal in some places? Should Whatsapp give up personal details of the users who have made such illegal messages? In my opinion definitely NO.

Countries should not get to export their restrictions across the globe, they can either participate in the global network with an understanding that foreign companies will follow their laws and not yours, or countries can self-isolate as in this case Brazil has done.

[donkeyd]

I agree, very much with your point.

The judge's decision to block WhatsApp in Brazil, hoewever, is completely within their jurisdiction. So in order to fight it, WhatsApp would have to go to Brazil. Otherwise they'll just lose a very big market.

[rmc]

Fair enough. WhatsApp doesn't have to obey the laws in Brazil. It also means they don't have a right to complain when a country blocks them.

[Lawtonfogle]

Why not? They can complain all they want. You might be more likely to dismiss their complaint when they don't follow the local laws, but it doesn't make their complaint outright invalid.

[pauljohncleary]

yes, and by ignoring those laws it's perfectly reasonable for that judiciary to ban your service within the bounds of their jurisdiction

[nolok]

You are right but you are not giving full respect to the fact that it is a company doing business there.

The company is free to chose not to operate in their country. It can chose to not answer to any official /judicial question (I'm not even saying agree with, only answer). It can do so even if it concerns a citizen of the country in question.

But if it does all that, it cannot expect said country to let them operate their business freely on "their soil", and that it is on the Internet does not change that, it's still accessing the Brazilian market.

I'm not agreeing with what Brazil is doing here, but I don't like the "I'm not on your soil so I can ignore you and still operate on your market" logic.

[kogepathic]

> You do get to ignore judicial orders if you are outside of their jurisdiction.

That's nice to say in theory, but in practice it doesn't work. Just ask Microsoft. [1] [2]

Fact of the matter is, if the Metropolitan police came to Facebook with the proper paperwork requesting data on a British user as part of a criminal case, Facebook would cooperate with them.

> Should Whatsapp censor messages critical of Thailand's royalty because they are illegal there?

No. But if Thailand decides to prosecute someone for making these statements via WhatsApp, then they have every right to legally request the data from WhatsApp. A user in Thailand broke Thai laws.

> Should Whatsapp censor messages that are blasphemous and thus illegal in some places?

Again, no. But if the jurisdiction decides to charge someone for breaking the law, WhatsApp and Facebook must cooperate with the legal request for data. To ignore such a request is circumventing due process.

> Should Whatsapp give up personal details of the users who have made such illegal messages?

Yes. If the request follows the legal process in the jurisdiction, then of course WhatsApp should be obligated to hand over the data.

What you're essentially saying is that if someone in the US plans a bombing of American citizens via WhatsApp, and if the FBI finds out of this plot and decides to request the data from WhatsApp, WhatsApp has every legal right to tell the FBI to fuck off. [3]

Obviously this is ridiculous. Someone did something which was against the laws of their country of residence, and that country has every right to legally prosecute them for breaking the law. To claim that WhatsApp is somehow immune from this simply because they're a foreign company operating in that country is ridiculous.

> with an understanding that foreign companies will follow their laws and not yours

Sorry, that's not how business works. Just ask VW about their recent 'dieselgate' incident if you need an example.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/09/microsoft-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corporation_v._Unite...

[3] http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-terror-messagi...

[PeterisP]

The countries have every right to legally prosecute their residents for breaking the local law. This doesn't mean that everybody worldwide has a duty to assist this prosecution. Even more, there are many cases (e.g. those I listed above) where a honest person should not cooperate but hinder and obstruct this foreign legal prosecution as much as their own local laws allow.

Whatsapp has a duty to protect their user's privacy. Unless they receive a binding legal order from their authorities (in Whatsapp's case, USA) it is entirely right to ignore nonbinding requests from judges in Brazil, Thailand, Iran or everywhere else. Simply submitting to out-of-jurisdiction authorities is not due process, it is sharing personal data with third parties without the user's consent which (IANAL, IMHO) is legal in USA but would be prohibited if, for example, Whatsapp was headquartered in EU.

In your examples, the listed companies (or their appropriate subsidiaries) are subject to those laws because they are headquarted there, those laws are their local laws exactly unlike the nonexistent legal relationship between Whatsapp and Brazil.

Some countries will have bilateral agreements to obtain evidence from abroad - a process on how e.g. Brazil law enforcement could cooperate with USA law enforcement to get a request that has some legal force in USA (and vice versa). In the absence of that, a provider should side with their users privacy and ignore foreign requests as a policy.

[AndrewKemendo]

Fact of the matter is, if the Metropolitan police came to Facebook with the proper paperwork requesting data on a British user as part of a criminal case, Facebook would cooperate with them.

That's because they are British. No, seriously.

Some countries have most favored nation status in diplomatic and economic affairs. As a result, if you piss off the wrong partner nation then you will get stomped on locally.

Brazil doesn't. So the US is not going to force the whatsapp guys to do shit.

[btreecat]

>By the way, the judge in case actually demonstrated quite a deep understanding of the web. Unable to get WhatsApp to comply, he ordered all telecoms to block WhatsApp IP addresses, which was quite a smart move.

Because VPN services do not exist in or are not accessible from Brazil?

[jeromegv]

Because the % of people that have a VPN configured on their phone, among 100 millions users, is likely to be very small.

[thiopental]

No worries, in a few years, corporations will be able to sue governments into oblivion for lost revenue on cases like this...

[pqdbr]

I'd love to know what your background in law is to say such an absurd thing. What case would they have ? "We failed to comply with a judicial order and decided to protect criminal's privacy instead, and we got blocked. We want damages". Seriously ?

[mmariani]

I think he's talking about TPP or TTIP which so far have nothing to do with Brazil. But who's to say such a deal is not on the plans of some politicians there as a quicker way out of the economic mess currently happening there?

[PeterisP]

It would require an international treaty with appropriate language to do so (not that it is likely IMHO), but then it can be analogous to the "your environmental laws caused us to shut down our polluting factory, so you owe us damages" cases.

[marcosdumay]

Brazil is not a party to the trans-Pacific agreement.

[razster]

I'm seeing more and more news article saying that Brizilian judges want to shut down the social web? This seems like a huge over-reaction, no?

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/16/brazils-congress-has-shut-d...