Excerpt: "A Brazilian state judge ordered mobile phone operators to block
nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours, a move
that will have widespread international reverberations for the increasingly
contentious debate over encryption and online privacy."
James Clapper. (photo: unknown)
WhatsApp, Used by 100 Million Brazilians, Was Shut Down Nationwide by a
Single Judge
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman, The Intercept
03 May 16
Brazilian state judge ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide
the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours, a move that will
have widespread international reverberations for the increasingly
contentious debate over encryption and online privacy. The ruling, issued on
April 26, became public today when it was served on mobile service
providers. It took effect at 2 p.m. local time (1 p.m. ET); as of that time,
people in Brazil who tried to use the service could not connect, nor could
they send or receive any messages. Failure to comply will subject the
service providers to a fine of 500,000 reals per day ($142,000 per day).
WhatsApp is the most-used app in Brazil, a country of 200 million people (it
is now owned by Facebook, the countrys second-most used app). An estimated
91 percent of Brazilian mobile users nationwide more than 100 million
individuals use WhatsApp to communicate with one another for free (it has
900 million active daily users around the world). Brazilians spent this
morning, in the hours before the block took effect, frantically sending each
other messages on WhatsApp warning that the service was going down for three
days.
This ruling comes from the same judge, Marcel Maia Montalvão, of a small
town in Sergipe state, who two months ago ordered Facebooks vice president
for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, to be detained over WhatsApps failure to
cooperate with a subpoena issued as part of a criminal investigation. The
judge said the arrest was justified by Facebooks repeatedly failing to
comply with judicial orders in a drug-trafficking case. Pursuant to that
order, Dzodan was arrested by federal police and held in custody for a full
day, until an appellate court overturned the order.
Afterward, the Facebook executive insisted that the way that information is
encrypted from one cellphone to another, there is no information stored that
could be handed over to authorities. WhatsApp similarly said: WhatsApp
cannot provide information we do not have. According to Folha de São Paulo,
Brazils largest newspaper, todays ruling ordering the shutdown of WhatsApp
stems from the same case.
The extraordinary orders reflect what is becoming a global controversy over
the fight of technology companies to offer their users end-to-end
encryption. That service, which has become quite in demand in the wake of
reporting from the archive provided by Edward Snowden, ensures that only the
users but not the company itself can access the content they are
sharing. The post-Snowden fixation of tech companies to demonstrate a
genuine commitment to protect the privacy of their users (motivated by
business self-interest) has driven a wedge between the once-fully
collaborative Silicon Valley and U.S. government surveillance state
partners, creating a protracted and bitter public PR war that culminated
last month in the Apple/FBI fight over access to iPhones.
As a result of its encryption protections, the position of WhatsApp in
response to subpoenas has been that it is incapable of turning over users
communications because the encryption not only keeps governments and
non-state actors out but also the company itself. Over the past several
years, numerous countries have begun enacting laws to bar companies from
using any encryption that they cannot circumvent, and the Obama
administration has been debating whether to support legislation that would
allow only the use of encryption to which government agencies have backdoor
access (in the 1990s, the Clinton administration used the Oklahoma City
bombing to argue for a similar law, but it was blocked by a coalition of
privacy advocates from both parties in Congress).
This is not the first time WhatsApp service has been interrupted in Brazil.
Last December, in a separate case, a lower court judge in São Paulo state
ordered service providers to block the app for 48 hours as retribution for
its failure to cooperate in a criminal investigation. An appeals court
overturned the ruling but only after hours of service outage, invoking
constitutional principles to say that it does not seem reasonable that
millions of users are affected because of the inertia of a company.
In many ways, Brazil with huge numbers of internet users and a growing
online population of young people is a key battleground for the global
struggle for internet freedom. The Wall Street Journal called Brazil the
social media capital of the universe. In January, after the last WhatsApp
shutdown, two analysts from the Brazil-based Igarapé Institute, Robert
Muggah and Nathan Thompson, wrote in the New York Times, The country has
one of the fastest growing populations of internet users in the world.
Online tools like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are used not only to
express opinions; they are an affordable alternative to exorbitantly priced
Brazilian telecom providers.
In a country with turbulent political conflicts and a highly engaged online
population, the debate over internet freedom has become very prominent.
Along with Germany, the Brazilian government, in the wake of the Snowden
revelations, was the most vocal in denouncing the U.S. for excessive NSA
surveillance (Brazil was a key target for such spying). In 2014, the
government enacted what it claimed was a law to protect internet freedom,
Marco Civil da Internet, that did provide some privacy protections but
also granted new surveillance powers to the government. Just last month, the
government demanded, and received, a new draconian anti-terrorism law that
provided it with extreme new law enforcement powers (causing ex-President
Lula da Silva to break with his party, which controls the government, by
telling The Intercept in an interview that he opposes the new law).
And now, as The Intercept reported last week, a new cybercrime bill on the
verge of being enacted could codify internet-shutdown powers of the type the
state judge today imposed. In a Facebook post, Ronaldo Lemos, founding
director of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro and an
architect of Brazils landmark 2014 Marco Civil internet legislation, wrote:
Tomorrow, the Cybercrime CPI will vote on a proposal to make this type of
block lawful. If the CPI proposal goes forward, this will be the new normal
in the country. Every week we would have news of sites and services that are
blocked, as it is in Saudi Arabia and North Korea.
It is stunning to watch a single judge instantly shut down a primary means
of online communication for the worlds fifth-largest country. The two
security experts in the NYT wrote of the first WhatsApp shutdown: The
judges action was reckless and represents a potentially longer-term threat
to the freedoms of Brazilians. But there is no question that is just a sign
of what is to come for countries far from Brazil: There will undoubtedly be
similar battles in numerous countries around the world over what rights
companies have to offer privacy protections to their users.
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James Clapper. (photo: unknown)
https://theintercept.com/2016/05/02/whatsapp-used-by-100-million-brazilians-
was-shut-down-nationwide-today-by-a-single-judge/https://theintercept.com/20
16/05/02/whatsapp-used-by-100-million-brazilians-was-shut-down-nationwide-to
day-by-a-single-judge/
WhatsApp, Used by 100 Million Brazilians, Was Shut Down Nationwide by a
Single Judge
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman, The Intercept
03 May 16
Brazilian state judge ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide
the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours, a move that will
have widespread international reverberations for the increasingly
contentious debate over encryption and online privacy. The ruling, issued on
April 26, became public today when it was served on mobile service
providers. It took effect at 2 p.m. local time (1 p.m. ET); as of that time,
people in Brazil who tried to use the service could not connect, nor could
they send or receive any messages. Failure to comply will subject the
service providers to a fine of 500,000 reals per day ($142,000 per day).
WhatsApp is the most-used app in Brazil, a country of 200 million people (it
is now owned by Facebook, the countrys second-most used app). An estimated
91 percent of Brazilian mobile users nationwide more than 100 million
individuals use WhatsApp to communicate with one another for free (it has
900 million active daily users around the world). Brazilians spent this
morning, in the hours before the block took effect, frantically sending each
other messages on WhatsApp warning that the service was going down for three
days.
This ruling comes from the same judge, Marcel Maia Montalvão, of a small
town in Sergipe state, who two months ago ordered Facebooks vice president
for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, to be detained over WhatsApps failure to
cooperate with a subpoena issued as part of a criminal investigation. The
judge said the arrest was justified by Facebooks repeatedly failing to
comply with judicial orders in a drug-trafficking case. Pursuant to that
order, Dzodan was arrested by federal police and held in custody for a full
day, until an appellate court overturned the order.
Afterward, the Facebook executive insisted that the way that information is
encrypted from one cellphone to another, there is no information stored that
could be handed over to authorities. WhatsApp similarly said: WhatsApp
cannot provide information we do not have. According to Folha de São Paulo,
Brazils largest newspaper, todays ruling ordering the shutdown of WhatsApp
stems from the same case.
The extraordinary orders reflect what is becoming a global controversy over
the fight of technology companies to offer their users end-to-end
encryption. That service, which has become quite in demand in the wake of
reporting from the archive provided by Edward Snowden, ensures that only the
users but not the company itself can access the content they are
sharing. The post-Snowden fixation of tech companies to demonstrate a
genuine commitment to protect the privacy of their users (motivated by
business self-interest) has driven a wedge between the once-fully
collaborative Silicon Valley and U.S. government surveillance state
partners, creating a protracted and bitter public PR war that culminated
last month in the Apple/FBI fight over access to iPhones.
As a result of its encryption protections, the position of WhatsApp in
response to subpoenas has been that it is incapable of turning over users
communications because the encryption not only keeps governments and
non-state actors out but also the company itself. Over the past several
years, numerous countries have begun enacting laws to bar companies from
using any encryption that they cannot circumvent, and the Obama
administration has been debating whether to support legislation that would
allow only the use of encryption to which government agencies have backdoor
access (in the 1990s, the Clinton administration used the Oklahoma City
bombing to argue for a similar law, but it was blocked by a coalition of
privacy advocates from both parties in Congress).
This is not the first time WhatsApp service has been interrupted in Brazil.
Last December, in a separate case, a lower court judge in São Paulo state
ordered service providers to block the app for 48 hours as retribution for
its failure to cooperate in a criminal investigation. An appeals court
overturned the ruling but only after hours of service outage, invoking
constitutional principles to say that it does not seem reasonable that
millions of users are affected because of the inertia of a company.
In many ways, Brazil with huge numbers of internet users and a growing
online population of young people is a key battleground for the global
struggle for internet freedom. The Wall Street Journal called Brazil the
social media capital of the universe. In January, after the last WhatsApp
shutdown, two analysts from the Brazil-based Igarapé Institute, Robert
Muggah and Nathan Thompson, wrote in the New York Times, The country has
one of the fastest growing populations of internet users in the world.
Online tools like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are used not only to
express opinions; they are an affordable alternative to exorbitantly priced
Brazilian telecom providers.
In a country with turbulent political conflicts and a highly engaged online
population, the debate over internet freedom has become very prominent.
Along with Germany, the Brazilian government, in the wake of the Snowden
revelations, was the most vocal in denouncing the U.S. for excessive NSA
surveillance (Brazil was a key target for such spying). In 2014, the
government enacted what it claimed was a law to protect internet freedom,
Marco Civil da Internet, that did provide some privacy protections but
also granted new surveillance powers to the government. Just last month, the
government demanded, and received, a new draconian anti-terrorism law that
provided it with extreme new law enforcement powers (causing ex-President
Lula da Silva to break with his party, which controls the government, by
telling The Intercept in an interview that he opposes the new law).
And now, as The Intercept reported last week, a new cybercrime bill on the
verge of being enacted could codify internet-shutdown powers of the type the
state judge today imposed. In a Facebook post, Ronaldo Lemos, founding
director of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro and an
architect of Brazils landmark 2014 Marco Civil internet legislation, wrote:
Tomorrow, the Cybercrime CPI will vote on a proposal to make this type of
block lawful. If the CPI proposal goes forward, this will be the new normal
in the country. Every week we would have news of sites and services that are
blocked, as it is in Saudi Arabia and North Korea.
It is stunning to watch a single judge instantly shut down a primary means
of online communication for the worlds fifth-largest country. The two
security experts in the NYT wrote of the first WhatsApp shutdown: The
judges action was reckless and represents a potentially longer-term threat
to the freedoms of Brazilians. But there is no question that is just a sign
of what is to come for countries far from Brazil: There will undoubtedly be
similar battles in numerous countries around the world over what rights
companies have to offer privacy protections to their users.
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
