Brazil detains Facebook VP after he failed to give up user data

in legal on 2016-03-01 22:09 (#15P7Q)

Continued legal issues for companies using strong encryption in their products:

Apple isn't the only company in hot water over encryption. Facebook's VP of Latin America, Diego Dzodan, was detained by police this morning in Brazil after the company failed to comply with a court order to hand over Whatsapp user data, CNN reports. The big problem: Whatsapp (which Facebook owns) fully encrypts messages between users, and it has no records of messages sent. Even if it were to get access to a specific device, the encryption is likely too difficult for the company to crack.

Regardless of whether you are a small outfit like Lavabit or an enormous company like Apple, the government has you in their sites if you stand up for user's privacy.

Re: Fines (Score: 3, Insightful)

by wilson@pipedot.org on 2016-03-02 09:32 (#15QKH)

That's a very naive view considering WhatsApp is not simply WhatsApp, it's Facebook. And Facebook needs a presence in Latin America in order to sell ads for example (read: money). Just because you can send some money to a guy in China using PayPal doesn't mean a company can do the same, there are much stricter laws for business. And before you say that they should pull out of a market, yes you can do that but where do you draw the line? USA? China? Brazil? EU? If you continue like that eventually you will be out of a business.

What we (as citizens of these countries) have an obligation to do, is inform our fellow countrymen and try to steer the country away from these kind of policies. After all, politicians are still elected by the majority.