<story><title>WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2016/05/02/whatsapp-used-by-100-million-brazilians-was-shut-down-nationwide-today-by-a-single-judge/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joshvm</author><text>I can believe them when they say they don&amp;#x27;t keep data. When I got a new phone (the old one broke), I was expecting my conversations to be in the cloud somewhere so that I could recover them. Nope, I lost everything that I hadn&amp;#x27;t backed up.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see what they can gain from storing masses of old chats and then not allowing users to download them onto new devices. If they kept chats to do analytics on, there&amp;#x27;s no reason that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t expose it to users too.&lt;p&gt;(This may also explain how they survived as a company for so long with so many users and so little revenue. All they&amp;#x27;re doing is running a few fast servers to shuttle messages back and forth, no storage requirements at all).&lt;p&gt;On the other hand Telegram does seem to store conversations - if you log in using a desktop app, it will pull down your recent chats.</text></item><item><author>envy2</author><text>There seem to be a few problems with this analysis.&lt;p&gt;First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact &lt;i&gt;prohibited&lt;/i&gt; from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content, except in emergencies. Instead, foreign law enforcement must make a request for assistance to the US DoJ, which will then (eventually, and maybe) process it and serve it on the US company. This is one of the reasons why MLAT reform, such as the proposed UK-US agreement[1], is so important because it would allow US companies to directly respond to foreign law enforcement requests.&lt;p&gt;Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court&amp;#x27;s request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.justsecurity.org&amp;#x2F;29203&amp;#x2F;british-searches-america-tremendous-opportunity&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.justsecurity.org&amp;#x2F;29203&amp;#x2F;british-searches-america-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www2.camara.leg.br&amp;#x2F;atividade-legislativa&amp;#x2F;comissoes&amp;#x2F;comissoes-temporarias&amp;#x2F;parlamentar-de-inquerito&amp;#x2F;55a-legislatura&amp;#x2F;cpi-crimes-ciberneticos&amp;#x2F;videoArquivo?codSessao=55221&amp;amp;codReuniao=42467#videoTitulo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www2.camara.leg.br&amp;#x2F;atividade-legislativa&amp;#x2F;comissoes&amp;#x2F;co...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>soneca</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m here to defend the judge&amp;#x27;s ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil.&lt;p&gt;Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.&lt;p&gt;Now, the judge ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation (a suspect murderer - edit: drug dealer). But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil. The order was sent to Facebook, who ignore as Whatsapp is another company. So, without any executives in Brazil that could be held responsible for disobeying the law, the judge fine the company. They continue to disobey the order (for months). The judge suspends Whatsapp activity (for 24h a few months ago, but that order was suspended itself after a few hours). Now Whatsapp continue to disobey the judge&amp;#x27;s order until this day. The  judge suspend the company again.&lt;p&gt;All arguments I hear against the judge is in the line that Whatsapp is &amp;quot;too big to fail&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s not a valid point in my opinion. If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are. If they had operations and executives in Brazil this would never had happened at the first place. They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended).
But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.&lt;p&gt;It is very unfortunate that it came to this point, but it is not like a judge decided yesterday that Whatsapp should sufer for whatever reason. They got a lot of months of warning for this. And he is acting completely according to the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cantrevealname</author><text>&amp;gt; I can believe them [WhatsApp] when they say they don&amp;#x27;t keep data.&lt;p&gt;If that&amp;#x27;s true, I&amp;#x27;m in awe of their integrity. Skype on the other hand now has complete disregard for user privacy. Skype stores your voice mails and video messages forever[1]. This is something that they started doing 2-3 years ago and few people seem to be aware of it. It&amp;#x27;s amazing how low Skype fallen from its early days when it was considered a beacon of privacy and on the cutting edge of encryption and security.&lt;p&gt;[1] Details: Clicking on Preferences -&amp;gt; Privacy -&amp;gt; Delete history (OS X) or Options -&amp;gt; Privacy Settings -&amp;gt; Clear history (Windows) pretends to delete the voice&amp;#x2F;video messages but it merely hides them from your view. If you re-install Skype on the same computer or run Skype on a different computer, all those &amp;quot;deleted&amp;quot; voice mails and video messages re-appear. The delete and clear buttons are basically lies; there&amp;#x27;s no polite way to put it.</text></comment>
<story><title>WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2016/05/02/whatsapp-used-by-100-million-brazilians-was-shut-down-nationwide-today-by-a-single-judge/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>joshvm</author><text>I can believe them when they say they don&amp;#x27;t keep data. When I got a new phone (the old one broke), I was expecting my conversations to be in the cloud somewhere so that I could recover them. Nope, I lost everything that I hadn&amp;#x27;t backed up.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see what they can gain from storing masses of old chats and then not allowing users to download them onto new devices. If they kept chats to do analytics on, there&amp;#x27;s no reason that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t expose it to users too.&lt;p&gt;(This may also explain how they survived as a company for so long with so many users and so little revenue. All they&amp;#x27;re doing is running a few fast servers to shuttle messages back and forth, no storage requirements at all).&lt;p&gt;On the other hand Telegram does seem to store conversations - if you log in using a desktop app, it will pull down your recent chats.</text></item><item><author>envy2</author><text>There seem to be a few problems with this analysis.&lt;p&gt;First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil. Under many readings of US law (specifically, ECPA), US companies are in fact &lt;i&gt;prohibited&lt;/i&gt; from complying with requests from foreign law enforcement for content, except in emergencies. Instead, foreign law enforcement must make a request for assistance to the US DoJ, which will then (eventually, and maybe) process it and serve it on the US company. This is one of the reasons why MLAT reform, such as the proposed UK-US agreement[1], is so important because it would allow US companies to directly respond to foreign law enforcement requests.&lt;p&gt;Second, apparently, the data does not exist. WhatsApp publicly stated, including in testimony before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes[2], that it does not and has not retained any message content once messages are delivered, even before the recent full roll-out of E2E. Based on these statements, it would seem that WhatsApp is indeed unable to comply with the court&amp;#x27;s request, regardless of any jurisdictional arguments.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.justsecurity.org&amp;#x2F;29203&amp;#x2F;british-searches-america-tremendous-opportunity&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.justsecurity.org&amp;#x2F;29203&amp;#x2F;british-searches-america-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www2.camara.leg.br&amp;#x2F;atividade-legislativa&amp;#x2F;comissoes&amp;#x2F;comissoes-temporarias&amp;#x2F;parlamentar-de-inquerito&amp;#x2F;55a-legislatura&amp;#x2F;cpi-crimes-ciberneticos&amp;#x2F;videoArquivo?codSessao=55221&amp;amp;codReuniao=42467#videoTitulo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www2.camara.leg.br&amp;#x2F;atividade-legislativa&amp;#x2F;comissoes&amp;#x2F;co...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>soneca</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m here to defend the judge&amp;#x27;s ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil.&lt;p&gt;Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.&lt;p&gt;Now, the judge ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation (a suspect murderer - edit: drug dealer). But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil. The order was sent to Facebook, who ignore as Whatsapp is another company. So, without any executives in Brazil that could be held responsible for disobeying the law, the judge fine the company. They continue to disobey the order (for months). The judge suspends Whatsapp activity (for 24h a few months ago, but that order was suspended itself after a few hours). Now Whatsapp continue to disobey the judge&amp;#x27;s order until this day. The  judge suspend the company again.&lt;p&gt;All arguments I hear against the judge is in the line that Whatsapp is &amp;quot;too big to fail&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s not a valid point in my opinion. If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are. If they had operations and executives in Brazil this would never had happened at the first place. They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended).
But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.&lt;p&gt;It is very unfortunate that it came to this point, but it is not like a judge decided yesterday that Whatsapp should sufer for whatever reason. They got a lot of months of warning for this. And he is acting completely according to the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spdustin</author><text>Telegram isn&amp;#x27;t end-to-end encrypted unless you&amp;#x27;re in a &amp;quot;secret chat&amp;quot;, and that chat exists only between two different devices and can&amp;#x27;t be used by multiple devices on one account.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;feature&amp;quot; of the normal chats&amp;#x2F;channels&amp;#x2F;groups&amp;#x2F;supergroups of Telegram that you are able to download them to other devices, or to restore them on a freshly wiped device, because (and I&amp;#x27;m over-simplifying here, but the end result is the same) they are encrypted with a key known to the server, and which other devices signed into your account can then be authorized to use.</text></comment>