[bzxbot]

No, it's not, at least not in Brazil. As mentioned above, wiretapping need to be authorized by a judge. The police must provide a reasonable justification. If the provided justification is weak or deemed unlawful, a lawyer can exclude all the data collected in trial.

If privacy is a human right that cannot be violated ever, how are going to deal with criminals that use services such as WhatsApp?

[jacquesm]

> If privacy is a human right that cannot be violated ever, how are going to deal with criminals that use services such as WhatsApp?

By finding evidence that does not rely on services such as WhatsApp. How did anybody ever get convicted before the age of WhatsApp, or for that matter the invention of the telephone. It's not as if wiretaps and cell phone messages are the only kind of incriminating evidence that can be found on the vast majority of crimes. And if that is the evidence that stands between a free man/woman and their conviction then maybe it is better that they go free because it is all too easy to forge such evidence or to plant it.

[TeMPOraL]

> How did anybody ever get convicted before the age of WhatsApp, or for that matter the invention of the telephone.

A nitpick, but I really dislike this line of reasoning. Before WhatsApp criminals communicated using different means which were easier to monitor. Now that they have WhatsApp (or whatever), they will use that instead of easier to monitor methods. A move to modern communication tools gives them an edge over law enforcement, so it's no surprise LE feels a pressing need to do something about it. It's an arms race.

[bmelton]

> Before WhatsApp criminals communicated using different means which were easier to monitor

Perhaps sloppy criminals did so, but the careful were engaging in schemes more like what we see on "The Wire". Meeting in secluded, noisy locations wherein privacy was all but guaranteed.

People, including not-convicted criminals, have the right to privacy. If the NSA and law enforcement are going to make it harder and harder to find private places through dragnet collection, it should not be surprising that the populace will seek to reclaim privacy.

If it's an arms race, as you say, it's an arms race that law enforcement was winning at so one-sidedly that the relationship was becoming abusive. Tools like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc., are the citizenry's first efforts at serious competition.

[jacquesm]

There is no obligation on the part of criminals to make it easy for law enforcement to catch them, and criminals will use whatever tools they can to stay out of jail. Yes, that's an arms race, but that arms race has nothing to do with whatsapp. That's just a general purpose tool that has been re-purposed. This is what I was getting at with my recent comment that knowledge (and by extension technology) is dual use. You can't make something that will not somehow benefit the bad guys too if it benefits the good guys.

[_jgdh]

I appreciate that Brazil has implemented this well. Suppose I told you that it was exactly the same in China - the police provide reasonable justification, judges approve the request and only then is someone's privacy violated. Would you buy it? Or would you point out that judges in China are merely rubber stamping authorities?

And lest you think that this is only a problem with China, America has the exact same issue. The FISA court was supposed to hear requests for people's private info but it was a glorified rubber stamp, granting 99.9999% of requests. And that's the problem, you cannot have a free and vibrant democracy when people's privacy is negotiable.

Perhaps that sounds like hyperbole, but have a look at what other commenters are saying about fishing expeditions and tell me if you still think so.

[panglott]

This is a false choice. Apparently in Brazil, if you are suspected of a crime, you have no right to privacy at all. The reasonable alternative to that is not an absolute, unviolable right to privacy, but a limited right to privacy with a presumption of innocence.