Brazilian Judge Shuts Down WhatsApp for 48 Hours

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/16/brazils-congress-has-shut-down-whatsapp-tonight-and-the-rest-of-the-social-web-could-be-next/?ncid=rss

by NN88 • 11 years ago

221 164 11 years ago

techcrunch.com

gjrlkgrelmgr• 11 years ago

If you go ahead and read the article, you'll realize that it's more about Facebook complaining their business will be more heavily regulated in Brazil than outright censorship.

rbanffy3• 11 years ago

That and that Facebook may have to comply with valid court orders. How outrageous a judge telling what Facebook should do.

aianus3• 11 years ago

A judge in a corrupt third-world country can say whatever he wants, I don't think Facebook should blindly be following court orders from overseas.

reubenmorais• 11 years ago

Telegram reports 1.000.000 new users 4 hours after the block started, 1.500.000 new users 1 hour ago: https://twitter.com/telegram

adrtessier2• 11 years ago

John Gilmore's oft quoted in these cases: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." When, if ever, will politicians learn this? Will it take a generation that has grown up on the Internet and watched this to make them realize these actions are pretty futile?

roymurdock2• 11 years ago

This is exactly what the judge wants. He is trying to get Whatsapp to comply with his request. What could be a better way to do this then to drive millions of users to a competitor? The longer Whatsapp holds out, the more users leave the service, possibly for good.

Thing is, this better be a really important case. Because if users migrate and stay on Telegram, it could be much harder for Brazilian courts to get records in the future.

newman3144• 11 years ago

Ugh. I wish Signal had the UX to compete with Telegram so that people would use Signal instead.

NN885• 11 years ago

is it that much better?

jmcphers3• 11 years ago

This. When my wife first got an Android phone I installed Signal on there as the default SMS app (she values her privacy and was worried about Google Hangouts). This lasted for almost a day until she tried to send a group text to a few of her friends. When she found out she had to create a named group first, she asked me to install a different messaging app immediately.

SapphireSun• 11 years ago

I'm really curious. I've been using Signal for years, and it's been much much better than the default app on my phone (not to mention more secure). What's so good about Telegram? I've avoided it because of its suspicious encryption.

oceanofsolaris2• 11 years ago

I think in this context it might be interesting that WhatsApp is actually using the same end-to-end encryption employed by Signal/Textsecure for some users. This encryption is in general considered superior to the strange protocol Telegram employs.

The problem WhatsApp has right now in Brazil MIGHT be caused by them simply not posessing the information the judge wants them to hand out. But I am heavily speculating here, since I neither know what information they were asked for, nor whether the data in question was end-to-end encrypted.

The problem with WhatsApps encryption is of course that you have no way to check the encryption status of a conversation. It seems to only work for one-to-one messages between Android users as of the end of last year. Maybe this has changed in the meantime. Maybe the encryption has been enabled for more or less users in the meantime. Who knows.

hcarvalhoalves2• 11 years ago

The news is misrepresenting what is actually happening.

A judge ruled for a 48 hour ban of WhatsApp from telcos to try to coerce WhatsApp into releasing private chat information for an ongoing criminal investigation (wild guess: they want information from politically exposed actors due to the recent corruption investigations). There are precedents, and that's a tactic local judges are using to try to get cooperation from international private companies.

This is the actual fact, but the article is conflating that with Marco Civil and other regulatory attempts that have nothing to do with this particular court ruling.

TL;DR TechCrunch publishes unchecked, alarmist news.

ank_the_elder2• 11 years ago

That sounds like a more interesting story - do you have any links to learn more about it? (even if they are in Portuguese) Thanks!

hcarvalhoalves2• 11 years ago

It's linked in the article: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/12/1719934-justica...

rbanffy3• 11 years ago

It seems it's related to a narcotraffic investigation, unrelated to corruption scandals, at least for now.

eduardordm2• 11 years ago

My wife is a judge and she is not alarmed. She is terrified. We are green card holders and came back to the country 16 years ago. Tonight was the first time we had a conversation about leaving this place for good.

adenot• 11 years ago

I thought if you leave US for more than 3 (?) months you loose your green card status.

sounds2• 11 years ago

Dictator-like behavior has a polarizing effect, which is generally the precursor to large realignments (and possibly violence). On that note: please be careful!

"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." - Stars Wars Episode 4

Large realignments are the fallout: those who benefit from the dictatorship will be in favor of it. Dictators also have difficulty maintaining their grip on power.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

Your wife is a non-citizen judge?

NN885• 11 years ago

I'm not understanding your clarification. It still seems like a ridiculous reason to shut down whatsapp

x0x02• 11 years ago

Not at all. When companies decline to obey local law, it's reasonable for them to be cut off from operating in that country. Which is what the judge is proposing, temporarily. Probably with longer cutoffs to follow if this doesn't inspire obedience of judicial orders.

lucasnemeth3• 11 years ago

It's a confidencial investigation, you have no reason to believe it is a politically exposed actor. It can be any sort of investigation, this is highly manipulative. The people who actually created this block wants to make you think it's related to the Lava-Jato, but they are probably doing it due to lobbists from telecom industries.

They could fine facebook, the owner of whatsapp and that have offices in Brazil. It is unrelated to close the service. Has the Brazilian government ever closed Vivo or Tim because it had legal problems? No. They charge fines.

There are precedents, and they were absurd.

All the information on the article regarding Cunha is correct.

graeme• 11 years ago

That's crazy. I was in Brazil for a month. everybody was on whatsapp. Facebook a distant second for message volume.

SMS wasn't even on the radar.

tabacof• 11 years ago

This is insane, this judge must be on a power trip. WhatsApp is now part of Brazilian social life and economy. Everyone here is part of many groups of friends, family or workmates, that is where most instant communication happens.

In my company, our deployment engineers, who usually are on very remote places with bad and unreliable internet, rely on WhatsApp. I'm not saying this is the best practice, but this is simply the way Brazil works right now. Even the mobile phone companies offer plans with free WhatsApp connection, because that is what most people here care about. Another example: In Brazil, 9 in 10 doctors use WhatsApp to talk to patients (http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap...).

To disregard all the people and businesses that rely on WhatsApp for whatever reason is unbelievable. But this is not without precedent, once another Brazilian judge blocked YouTube for a whole day because it refused to take down a celebrity video.

This says a lot about the over-sized, inefficient, and stupid state we have, always meddling and intervening.

andreyf3• 11 years ago

Seems to me like it might be WhatsApp that's on a power trip. What would an American judge do if WhatsApp were to ignore a lawful subpoena?

morgante4• 11 years ago

What would an American judge do if WhatsApp were to ignore a lawful subpoena?

Fine WhatsApp. Not compel all telcos to block it...

msh7• 11 years ago

But its not a lawful subpoena.

What's app is a America n company, so it should only respond to American supoenas. Just as a American judge should not be able to order a Brazilian company to do anything before having it go though the Brazilian courts.

beagle3• 11 years ago

It also says that, in a contained but nontrivial aspect of life, Brazil has given up its sovereignty to WhatsApp (and by transitive ownership, Facebook, and by transitive law enforcement, USA/NSA). And for various reasons, it is applying for a similar serf status at Telegram as we speak.

Think about it: Mark Zuckerberg can task his employees with an elaborate "find and replace" on all brazillian texts, replacing e.g. "sugar" with "salt", and it will just happen. Think that's improbable? Facebook has been toying with your emotions before [0]

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-a...

necessity3• 11 years ago

People voluntarily use WhatsApp because they consider it the best service. If it starts replacing "sugar" with "salt" I'm sure people will voluntarily start using something else. What should not happen is government force you to use something else.

barbolo• 11 years ago

I'm a client of Bradesco, a popular bank in Brazil. I've chosen to migrate my account to a digital account called "Bradesco Prime Digital". The main communication channel with my account manager is WhatsApp, so he can take the day off.

I'm also selling my house and I'm pretty sure that every Real Estate agents in São Paulo use WhatsApp as the main communication channel. So no visits today.

I was having a conversation with the pediatrician of my children, so no answers today on what to do with my baby vomiting. It's not so serious to make a call, but it was fine to send a message.

My mother is 63 and sends WhatsApp messages every day to me, so no mommy messages today.

Well, it's not all that bad... I think today may be a very productive day for me.

hudell• 11 years ago

After reading this and other messages like this, I feel like I'm living on a bubble. I hardly ever use whatsapp and didn't know it was so widely used by everyone around me.

rccrv2• 11 years ago

It wasn't Congress that decided that.

It is a single judge that gave an order to block the service for 48 hours.

It can be reversed if another judge decides the "liminar" (I don't know how to say this in English, it's a temporary decision) shouldn't been given.

jessaustin• 11 years ago

"Injunction", perhaps?

rccrv2• 11 years ago

That is a good equivalent and it gives some idea of what happened for those familiar with the concept. Thanks for the clarification.

bbarn• 11 years ago

This is the place the Olympics are going to be this summer. I can't help but hope the people use it as a stage to protest, but would imagine the media would largely ignore it.

necessity3• 11 years ago

From someone living in Brazil, this article is a clickbait full of misinformation.

First off, we are nowhere near "shutting down social web". WhatsApp was shutdown by a court order because they did not comply with a subpoena to hand over information from a user in July and August. I recently submitted a link with a local (Brazilian) newspaper explaining the issue.

If Brazil’s conservative Congress gets its way, they’re going to take down the entire social web as we know it, with bills circulating through the legislature to criminalize posting social media content and to allow the government to spy on its citizens.

Conservatives are not the only ones trying to censor the internet in here, absolutely every politician wants it.

It’s an about-face from last year, when President Dilma Rousseff approved Marco Civil, a groundbreaking Internet “Bill of Rights”, as a response to the Snowden revelations that the NSA was spying on Brazil. The landmark bill, Brazil’s first internet legislation, protects net neutrality, user privacy and freedom of speech.

On the contrary! Marco Civil threatens user privacy (more below), and the "net neutrality" part has lead to just the same that happened today: Mobile companies were forced to shutdown their "free WhatsApp and Facebook" plans, making millions get blocked from WhatsApp[4]. Anyway, back to the privacy issues, article 11 of the text[1] is the more worrying one. Some highlights:

§ 2º A autoridade policial ou administrativa poderá requerer cautelarmente que os registros de conexão sejam guardados por prazo superior ao previsto no caput. § 4º O provedor responsável pela guarda dos registros deverá manter sigilo em relação ao requerimento previsto no § 2º

It says basically that police can require records of visited CONTENT without a court order and the ISP is required to supply that without informing the user. Somewhere else in the text it forces ISPs to store user history for a year. If the text really wanted to protect user privacy it would say something about cryptography, which isn't mentioned anywhere in the text.

Article 2 says there must be a "social purpose" for websites and that gov. may take websites down if it feels it doesn't serve the public interest. Brazilian govt. already has a history of censoring YouTube and Facebook videos involving politicians, judges or celebrities[5][2][3].

[1] http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?...

[2] http://oglobo.globo.com/tecnologia/para-nao-sair-do-ar-no-br...

[3] http://www.conjur.com.br/2012-ago-08/google-retirar-ar-video...

[4] http://gizmodo.uol.com.br/tim-claro-twitter-gratis/

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PYQktiGLhw

NN885• 11 years ago

First off, we are nowhere near "shutting down social web". WhatsApp was shutdown by a court order because they did not comply with a subpoena to hand over information from a user in July and August. I recently submitted a link with a local (Brazilian) newspaper explaining the issue.

You make it sound like thats ok?

beothorn• 11 years ago

It doesn't say contents, it says registros de conexão "connections log". The intent was to log IP adresses and dates, not content, but it is known that the interpretation of the text would be up to our judicial system. It also does not say without a court order. It says they can require them to log those ips, but access to these information requires a court order (as said on chapter 2 item I)

There are other ambiguities regarding who should keep those logs, ISP or service providers.

Free Whatsapp and facebook does hurt net neutrality. It undermines competition and leads to a division between services that are "free" and the ones which are not, on a ISP level.

That's not what article 2 says, article 2 is a preamble with the intentions of the marco civil and contains no definition of rules nor obligations. The removal of those videos are not based on marco civil, but on other laws and our own constitution.

The problem is not the Marco Civil, but how it is being interpreted. Our judges do not understand what is cryptography. Our population don't understand and doesn't care. People are just upset that whatsapp is offline.

speeder2• 11 years ago

I am from Brazil, and although bizarre decisions happened before, I can say that this time they actually went through with it, and I can't talk to my psychologist (I only communicate with her with WhatsApp, I never considered that the government would ever actually shut it down).

As for the article it is one of the most bizarrely biased articles I ever read, spouting some information that are outright lies.

Example: it says that Marco Civil law was an example of the congress favouring internet openness, that is an outright lie, the judge that banned WhatsApp for 48 hours, used Marco Civil to do it, if Marco Civil had never passed, WhatsApp would not be banned today.

Another innacuracy is saying that it is a "conservative" congress dominated by "evangelical extremists" and "military apologists"

The biggest bloc in the congress was allied with the leftist president in the elections, and still is mostly allied with said president. (the exception is "PSC", that is a socialist christian party, they tend to ignore the president wishes a lot, still it is 13 deputies out of 79 in that bloc)

Second biggest, is indeed right-leaning, but their policies resemble US democratic party of the 90s, instead of true conservatism.

Third bloc is dominated by a party with no political leanings to left, or right (they only do whatever it takes to stay in power, and have left and right politicians in their ranks). The vice-president is of that party, and they are in "opposition" only because they want the vice-president to take over.

Fourth is PT, with 59 seats, it is the president party, and is named "workers party" and has many outright communist people in it.

Next 3 groups are socialist, then there is the democrats party, that has policies like US democrats, then the rest of the parties are mostly socialist too.

In total there are from 512 lawmakers, 108 are "conservative".

Also, I've been following the votes on the Uber ban on Brazil, almost in all cases left wing parties that voted to ban Uber (and some even proposed to not only ban Uber, but make a law that make apps that call regular taxis to send lots of personal information to the governmens, including full GPS-tracked route of the person while inside the cab).

Meanwhile the big bloc that is "conservative" (the one that on my list is on the second biggest bloc in the congress) is the one that regularly vote against laws that restrict freedoms.

Still, our congress is awful, and is indeed proposing (and sometimes passing) lots and lots of bullshit laws.

iamcurious• 11 years ago

only communicate with her with WhatsApp, I never considered that the government would ever actually shut it down

So you got her number on your cellphone which means you can call and text. You can talk to her, not for free but a few messages should be enough to arrange for another free service.

speeder2• 11 years ago

Yep, I am installing Telegram now.

silveira• 11 years ago

I'm in the US and my family is in Brazil. I relly on WhatsApp over 3G/4G to comunicante with them as they are usually without access to faster internet (DSL/cable). I read about the blockage a few hours ago and made me concerned because if anything happens that's the most reliable channel I have.

Then I receive a message from my brother saying he was going to the hospital (on WhatsApp, just before they cutted it off). Fortunately he had time to tell me he is fine.

My other brother is in a ship, almost same connectivity problems.

I know that there are workarounds, other applications, vpns, IP masking etc. But WhatsApp is something that my parents and brothers can use.

obvio171• 11 years ago

I bet there are tons of hospital staff who use WhatsApp in Brazil every day to coordinate mission-critical stuff, in which case this absurd move is putting people's lives at risk.

rmdoss• 11 years ago

Can confirm whatsapp is down for some friends in Brazil.

However, the real reason is not for what Techcrunch is saying.

The issue is that WhatsApp didn't want to cooperate with the federal police and release chat information from some criminals. According to some sources there, they followed all due process and WhatsApp ignored.

As a retaliation, to show that WhatsApp has to comply with Brazilian local laws when storing data from Brazilians using the service in Brazil, they banned WhatsApp for 48 hrs.

A lot less alarmist.

morgante4• 11 years ago

some criminals

You mean suspected criminals, right?

It still seems pretty reactionary. The solution isn't to block an entire service.

ossreality• 11 years ago

The solution isn't to block an entire service.

Oh really? What else are you supposed to do when a startup flush with cash decides to ignore the laws of your nation, exactly?

pinkrooftop• 11 years ago

Better an entire nation go without WhatsApp than one guilty man go free /s

lagadu4• 11 years ago

It still seems pretty reactionary. The solution isn't to block an entire service.

Why not? If they're not complying with court mandated orders, then the court is empowered to enact any legal (in Brasil) measures to coerce cooperation out of the offender. If whatsapp wants to operate there they have to follow the law; they stopped following the law, they're no longer welcome.

cthalupa7• 11 years ago

As a retaliation, to show that WhatsApp has to comply with Brazilian local laws when storing data from Brazilians using the service in Brazil, they banned WhatsApp for 48 hrs.

Why must WhatsApp comply with Brazilian laws? They have no offices there.

If I run, say, a porn site, hosted in the US, as a US company, is it my responsibility to prevent users in a country where pornography is illegal from using my site? Do I have any duty to comply with said country requesting the identity and viewing history of citizens living in it?

Of course not. That country can certainly block my site if their laws allow them to, but the idea that whatsapp /has/ to comply is ridiculous.

kuschku3• 11 years ago

The idea is that if WhatsApp doesn’t want to be blocked, they have to follow the laws.

And so they are blocked for 48 hours, warning them that they might be blocked permanently.

It’s the only way to deal with lawbreaking companies in a globalized world.

DannyBee• 11 years ago

"Why must WhatsApp comply with Brazilian laws? They have no offices there. " They don't.

They only have to comply if they don't want to be blocked.

"If I run, say, a porn site, hosted in the US, as a US company, is it my responsibility to prevent users in a country where pornography is illegal from using my site? Do I have any duty to comply with said country requesting the identity and viewing history of citizens living in it? "

Generally not, as long as you are not going to travel to that country and subject yourself to personal jurisdiction ;-)

"Of course not. That country can certainly block my site if their laws allow them to, but the idea that whatsapp /has/ to comply is ridiculous. "

Errr, they have to comply or be blocked from brazil's perspective, and that's what the poster said. It doesn't sound like you disagree with that, so i'm not clear on what you are arguing for ...

rmc4• 11 years ago

If they don't want to obey the laws of the country, then they have no right to complain when that country doesn't give them any protection.

You can damn well bet that WhatsApp will be paying attention to the Brazillian courts now.

jrapdx3• 11 years ago

Never realized that the political scene in Brazil was as crazy as the article portrays. Makes the US election campaigns look downright tame. As bizarre as some candidates' ideas seem to be, hard to imagine how judges or US congress would get away with attempting the same things.

If provisions like those in the article persist, predictably the predominantly young users of social media will protest loudly, I would think the resulting unrest would be too big a liability for the judges and politicians.

A while back I knew a guy who worked for a US company involved with setting up inventory and telecommunications software for businesses. Having traveled to Brazil to assist with installing the systems, he described the extremely convoluted regulatory environment down there, and how difficult that made it to get anything done.

While the whole affair is hard to understand, the basis for picking on particular targets (e.g., WhatsApp) doesn't make sense. Unless all such services are banned it only punishes the particular providers for no good cause. Speculating out loud about their target selection is unproductive, but possibly someone has more actual info about it.

So I guess like politics anywhere, what they do know well is how to shoot themselves in the foot. Until it's realized what they've done it will cause a lot of trouble for legitimate enterprises, let alone the massive population so negatively affected.

Edit: In the time it took me to write this comment, a bunch of people have add comments about the situation. Wow, that was fast...

shmerl• 11 years ago

Use XMPP + Jingle. How are they going to shut down that?

ex3ndr2• 11 years ago

Right now we (https://actor.im/br/) are trying to launch free and open alternative to WhatsApp/Telegram with Open Source community in Brazil.

tetrep• 11 years ago

why not textsecure? it's free and open source.

ex3ndr2• 11 years ago

Text secure is a cool application, but they are not focused on people. Very different goals of projects.

dmingod666• 11 years ago

Switched to hacker news a year back, Never visit techcrunch.. Best decision. On an unrelated note, just hate their 'apple is the center of the universe' line of thought..

NN885• 11 years ago

500,000 users signed up for Telegram in 3 hours

https://twitter.com/telegram/status/677278277657055232

HaseebR7• 11 years ago

What's up with capitalizing every first letter ? I thought "Whatsapp Tonight" is some new service Whatsapp is providing that I didn't know of.

threatofrain• 11 years ago

Does this mean it's illegal for a company to create a zero-knowledge communication network in Brazil? Or encryption without backdoors?

zorked• 11 years ago

No.

free2rhyme214• 11 years ago

Time to switch to Telegram!

outworlder• 11 years ago

To put this in perspective, it would be as if a single judge in the US managed to shutdown all SMS for 48 hours, in the whole country. ()

Because, you see, SMS is too expensive in Brazil. So people resort to WhatsApp instead.

() It doesn't matter if SMS is not controlled by a single company, the block has to be enforced by all internet and cellphone operators in the entire country.

kbart• 11 years ago

Terrible news, but it proves once again that we need decentralized, end-to-end encrypted OSS communications to be safe.

bitJericho• 11 years ago

Amazing how easy it is to tell a tc article by the title. When is hn going to ban tc?

milkers• 11 years ago

It even didnt happen in Turkey. The country which loves bans.

expadaden• 11 years ago

you can always use temporary free and reliable vpn provider to unblock WhatsApp or any other websites and apps.... try https://www.hashtagvpn.com

misja111• 11 years ago

I'm confused. As far as I know WhatsApp does not archive any messages on its servers. Messages are only kept there temporarily until they are delivered to the recipient and then they are deleted.

This is also what WhatsApp states in its legal documentation: https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/ : "The contents of messages that have been delivered by the WhatsApp Service are not copied, kept or archived by WhatsApp in the normal course of business."

Furthermore, messages are end-to-end encrypted. So how could WhatsApp comply to the judge's demand?

cnvogel• 11 years ago

Furthermore, messages are end-to-end encrypted.

I don't think so. WhatsApp states in their FAQ: "WhatsApp communication between your phone and our server is encrypted." [https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21864047]

fernandomm• 11 years ago

The real reason is that WhatsApp refused to provide information about a PCC member.

PCC is the largest criminal organization in Brazil. It's involved in several criminal activities like drug dealing and gun trafficking. It was also responsible for "closing" Sao Paulo city some years ago forcing people to stay at their homes as well as killing hundreds of cops ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeiro_Comando_da_Capital ).

The judge tried to obtain the information from WhatsApp for several months but it was simply ignored. Blocking WhatsApp was one of the last options that she had to try to obtain the information.

Here is more information from a reliable source ( it's in portuguese ): http://www.conjur.com.br/2015-dez-16/bloqueio-whatsapp-pivo-...

julioneander• 11 years ago

It scares to think that a single decision from a judge can suspend the most widely used communication service in Brazil like that. The whole nation was affected by a decision that concerns to a few people only.

jld89• 11 years ago

WhatsApp didn't break any US laws. If whatsapp doesn't follow Brazils laws it can't break them. However Brazil is in its full rights to ban it if it considers it isn't coherent with the local laws.

It's simple really.

Brazilian Judge Shuts Down WhatsApp for 48 Hours

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