| > 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... |
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.