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by clvx 3697 days ago
Brazilians can use other apps if they want them too. I don't see your point of freedom to communicate being blocked. You're complaining as tcp/ip would've been blocked and it's not. The point here is Whatsapp is not cooperating with authorities, and surely that's not remotely plausible in a state government. I'm not saying they have to weak encryption or putting backdoors, but a reasonable way to help any government with investigations which hurt society in general.
3 comments

'I'm not saying they have to weak encryption or putting backdoors, but a reasonable way to help any government with investigations which hurt society in general.'

What is it with the "I'm not saying they should have a backdoor, but there should really be [some rhetorically obfuscated equivalent to a backdoor]"?

This is cryptography, not politics. There's no middle ground here. You either have secure communications or you don't. If the data can be provided to the government, that also means it can be leaked, stolen, purchased, spied upon, etc.

Other apps with proper user-controlled encryption would also be blocked.

It is impossible to help the investigations in the way they were asked to while also having proper user-controlled encryption. You are asking for weaknesses or backdoors if you don't recognize that Whatsapp gave up all the information they had, which was nothing.

> Brazilians can use other apps if they want them too.

Having a country change like that does not do good for people. People using dumb phones might have WhatsApp, but not alternatives.