Judges in Brazil certainly have a way with foreign companies & countries. For example with immigration issues (fingerprinting[1], random deportations) they will go tit for tat.
All governments should extend the courtesy that US extends to their citizens to Americans entering their country. Perhaps that will encourage Americans to encourage their government to treat non-Americans better.
It's kind of pathological to take a story about Brazil doing something wrong and twist it into yet another indictment of the United States. There are other countries in the world, you know.
As someone who has suffered more than once at the border, having never done anything wrong. I think we need to fix the problem with the US government's treatment of non-US citizens at its borders. And not only that, it exports its shit customer service at the border to other country's in the name of security.
I agree with you that American border control is horrible and abusive. That doesn't mean we ("we" = worldwide press) shouldn't call out other countries for having horrible and abusive policies in this area as well, though. Not everything bad that happens is the fault of the United States.
(Non-serious): I think it would be funny to shut down the Facebook account of all senior Brazillian officials. 2006-Zuck would definitely do it but 2016-Zuck probably had dinner with them and promised to create lots of local jobs.
Greenwald at The Intercept writes a lot about American spying and overreach in data access. I'll be interested to see what he writes about Brazil's activities such as this.
Probably about as much as you see from him on the subject of Russia and China. The Intercept is about as unbiased as Fox News - lots of criticism directed towards the US and its allies, silence on every other country.
1: Greenwald is an American so the actions of the US government are relevant to him and his readers.
2: Greenwald is a lawyer, trained in US law, therefore the actions of the US Government vis-a-vis US Law is a suitable topic for him to cover.
3. China and Russia have been oppressing their people and their peoples rights for a long time. Neither have a constitution that is supposed to enshrine the rights of the citizens. SO there isnt much of a story there i.e. russians have no constitutional right to privacy, when that privacy is invaded by the state because the state has enacted laws that allow it to do that, there is no story. Plus even if there were there are probably russina lawyers and journal;ists who would be more knowledgeable on the subject and could bring it to the awareness of their russian readers. I doubt many russian media watchers read a lot of greenwald.
4. The US sells itself as the land of the free, so their hypocrisy makes the story worthwhile/interesting. China and Russia have never really hidden the fact that they will spy on anyone and everyone that they can. US says "we are your friends" and then spies on everyone regardless of their status as friend or foe.
But you know handy to throw in a straw man argument to try and deflect attention away from the US government and make the journalist the bad guy in this situation.
> China and Russia have been oppressing their people and their peoples rights for a long time. Neither have a constitution that is supposed to enshrine the rights of the citizens. SO there isnt much of a story there
Counterpoint: If something goes without saying for long enough, people stop knowing it, because they never hear it.
The "drunk looking for his keys under the streetlamp" model of news reporting is indefensible. Let it go long enough and you end up with a large population of belligerently uninformed people, like we have now, who think the United States is the most violent, oppressive, and brutal government in the world, and that Americans have no human rights. This has real world consequences of an increase in relative political power and legitimacy for genuinely oppressive states.
Im not saying that it's right but it is not Greenwald's fault that this is happening an blaming him for it is essentially trying to discredit what he has brought to light because of what he has not covered. If that isnt a trick straight out of the CIA/NSA handbook then I dont know what is.
Identifying bias or double standards is journalism 101. Spies do that too given they have to collect information too. Yet, wondering about a guy who ran off with the Snowden leaks on his own for selfish gain... even to Schneier's surprise... isnt CIA/NSA propaganda. It's a legitimate concern about his motives and/or moral high ground he tries to leverage in debates.
> China and Russia have been oppressing their people and their peoples rights for a long time. Neither have a constitution that is supposed to enshrine the rights of the citizens.
I find it an interesting puzzle that the U.S. constitution is so well-respected that people routinely win court cases (and invalidate legislation) by asserting rights under it, while in China apparently the idea that the constitution should substantively constrain the government is considered naive and harmful.
He's a journalist living in Brazil who gave speeches to their hovernment about US's abuse of them in terms of spying. Now, what about the country he lives in?
That could be true. I'd expect him to be covering something significant in his home country. Interestingly enough, one Google led me to a huge piece from his former employer:
Most interesting is the Petrobas scandal. The lead rep of government's side of the Snowden debate on Schneier's blog kept arguing spying on Brazil was legitimate, esp Petrobas. He said they're more an instrument of the state than a typical company and probably highly corrupt. That could lead to problems for the U.S. that leverage from spying could help deal with. Brazil is in process of proving him right.
So, there, I've done more to get word out to Brazilians than Greenwald has his whole time living there. :P
Brazil may be shooting themselves in the foot -- they're trying to create an innovation industry around Sao Paulo and these things will just create a chilling effect that chases a huge bunch of industries out of the country.
No need to fire anyone. They should hire a legal team that either 1) makes sure the company is able to provide data requested by the Brazilian justice system requests, 2) enables the company to legally refuse such requests.
Though maybe your point is that it is the VP that has the responsibility of taking care of that? In that case I'd agree with you.
> makes sure the company is able to provide data requested
How should that be possible if FB doesn't store this information in the first place? I mean, if there would be a legal requirement for data retention on behalf of the state, I could understand the issue. But there isn't...
It's not that simple: it seems that the issue isn't that WhatsApp/Facebook have wilfully disregarded the subpoena, but rather that Brazil isn't happy with their assertions that the information requested doesn't exist. WhatsApp has previously stated publicly that they don't retain any messages once they're delivered; if this is true, it's not strictly that they aren't willing to comply (though this may also be true), it's that they can't comply.
I agree, and if they CAN'T comply, they should address it on the court, not on a public statement that has no valid legal value.
That's what it comes to. The court requested three times, increasing the fines each of the tries and it was received with [legal] silence from Facebook. That's why they went ahead and issued the arrest warrant.
The odd thing is, there are so many ways you can avoid an arrest legally in Brazil as long you have the legal resources. They could have thrown a liminar (injunction?) to avoid handing the data or, as a last resort, an habeas corpus to avoid the arrest.
Our ex-president Lula has just avoided questioning/testifying on a corruption case. He's suspected of having gotten an apartment from construction companies as a bribe. It was on someone else's name, so he doesn't pay taxes on it etc (also illegal apart from the bribe). This is much more serious than this Facebook case, and there's so much evidence now that it would be a slam dunk case in any decent country. And Lula got out of it legally.
Just to clarify stupid arguments. The federal police was asking information like ip address from organised crime pages, they use Facebook as other social network pages(In this case actually we are talking about Whatsapp). Don't have ANYTHING TO DO WITH SPY CITIZENS. Like PCC(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeiro_Comando_da_Capital) has an official facebook page. There is many people in Brazil who stole cellphones, kill people and post on Facebook(Yeh, I know is ridiculous dumb, but people does). Definitely the IP address will help the cops. Please stop to talk about stupid spy conspiracy without understand the "why". They arrested Facebook's VP because they don't know what to do anymore, because Facebook always deny the justice requests. Oh, if you think that they are protecting your data, you are just dumb as a stone, they are just protecting them self.
(Sorry for my poor english, it isn't my first or second language.)
As someone commented, it could be the case that Facebook/WhatsApp does not even have the data any more. Also, WhatsApp operates as a separate business from Facebook.
In my opinion this looks a lot more like a display of power by the government, than an actual effort in the investigation.
I don't see either how Facebook would be "protecting themselves". They have little to gain and much to lose by not cooperating with the government. It's not about publicity because it wouldn't have made the news at all if they complied.
Now, even mentioning the following may be going into conspiracy theory territory, but telephone companies were trying to get WhatsApp banned not long ago. I wouldn't be surprised if this event would further their goals.
Do you really believe that Facebook/WhatsApp don't have the data ? Please we are in 2016, data is everything! Don't you think they sell or use our data for an infinite kind of applications like send ads ? Analysing our personal data like WhatsApp and Facebook they can have so minimum details about us and classify in really minimum groups of "publicity". The mankind never in history had so mach data and ways(powerful computers) to compute it like today. it is not a stupid conspiracy theory, Google does read our email to sell ads and it is in the ToS. The question is, just because it isn't in the ToS it doesn't exist ? And nobody can investigate it ?
Yes, I believe it is possible that they don't have the data. No, I don't think they collect private messages for targeted advertising or for any purposes at all.
It explains very well why this is no trivial issue to Americans nor to tech people.
Also, your drugs should be legalized or decriminalized, anyway. It would put all the bad guys out of business and bring the entire drug market back within regulation. Portugal did it and it's considered a success, why can't Brazil?
Is really hard to separe what should be known and what should not. Like is total absolute right for many reasons as repression write about an government in anonymous. But it is right spread a video from a naked girl from work who got drunk and slept with you ? That's happen EVERY SINGLE DAY here in Brazil, guys take advantage from girls and screw up they life. Would be quick easy track the first person who did share the video, and this morons in most of the times don't think in use a proxy, Tor or something like. Because if they could think, they would never destroy a person's life doing such stupidness in exception psychopaths.
> For many people, privacy is a fundamental right - they see no reason why a government should be meddling in my affairs without a more specific reason than a blanket search for possible terrorism.
... this is not about blanket searches, and:
> I'm not saying that privacy is an absolute. Foiling criminal activity often means breaching privacy - a database of phone calls can be helpful tool to investigate a criminal network.
Because Brazil is a huge country with a far less educated society as the Portuguese, with a lot of conservatives (evangelicals pastors who only scam are just an example of what 10~20% of our Deputies Chamber looks like) politicians who push their agendas that drugs are devil's things and every drug addict should be in jail.
And I say that as a Brazilian, you're comparing an European country with 10 million people (that's less than what my hometown of São Paulo has, now sitting at 11.8 million as of 2014 census) to a country of 200+ million of mostly uneducated people.
Sorry to tell you but you don't change a whole society way of thinking in less than a generation, much less when there's no politicians' desire for that.
Yeah, anyway it should be decriminalized (as it's for users right now) or legalized, but if you want to be real about it, come up with a plan, because realistically speaking there's no way to do it in the next 10~15 years.
Brazil is a sovereign country and they are free to define their legal system any way they want. Facebook needs to comply with Brazilian law, not the other way around.
If you do something illegal you should expect punishment from the law sooner or later.
58 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 97.7 ms ] thread[1] http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/12/30/brazil.usa.immi...
Have you forgot that you think that way too?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11082956
1: Greenwald is an American so the actions of the US government are relevant to him and his readers.
2: Greenwald is a lawyer, trained in US law, therefore the actions of the US Government vis-a-vis US Law is a suitable topic for him to cover.
3. China and Russia have been oppressing their people and their peoples rights for a long time. Neither have a constitution that is supposed to enshrine the rights of the citizens. SO there isnt much of a story there i.e. russians have no constitutional right to privacy, when that privacy is invaded by the state because the state has enacted laws that allow it to do that, there is no story. Plus even if there were there are probably russina lawyers and journal;ists who would be more knowledgeable on the subject and could bring it to the awareness of their russian readers. I doubt many russian media watchers read a lot of greenwald.
4. The US sells itself as the land of the free, so their hypocrisy makes the story worthwhile/interesting. China and Russia have never really hidden the fact that they will spy on anyone and everyone that they can. US says "we are your friends" and then spies on everyone regardless of their status as friend or foe.
But you know handy to throw in a straw man argument to try and deflect attention away from the US government and make the journalist the bad guy in this situation.
Counterpoint: If something goes without saying for long enough, people stop knowing it, because they never hear it.
The "drunk looking for his keys under the streetlamp" model of news reporting is indefensible. Let it go long enough and you end up with a large population of belligerently uninformed people, like we have now, who think the United States is the most violent, oppressive, and brutal government in the world, and that Americans have no human rights. This has real world consequences of an increase in relative political power and legitimacy for genuinely oppressive states.
Really?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People's_...
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Russia#CHAPTE...
I find it an interesting puzzle that the U.S. constitution is so well-respected that people routinely win court cases (and invalidate legislation) by asserting rights under it, while in China apparently the idea that the constitution should substantively constrain the government is considered naive and harmful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiquan_movement#Retrenchment_...
In the past two weeks:
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/19/for-russia-censors-only-...
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/17/the-horror-story-of-publ...
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/15/putin-doesnt-need-to-cen...
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/24/bahrain-finds-opposition...
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/egypt-bars-journalist-fr...
Obviously there's more if you look further back. They did a whole documentary series on the Greek austerity deal, for example.
Our government aren't making requests secretly. They aren't requesting data in bulk. They aren't asking for a backdoor.
They are requesting data about specific people who are suspects in a specific case. Essentially using a search warrant.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/nov/26/seco...
https://www.cpj.org/2012/02/attacks-on-the-press-in-2011-bra...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2013/11/28/the-c...
Most interesting is the Petrobas scandal. The lead rep of government's side of the Snowden debate on Schneier's blog kept arguing spying on Brazil was legitimate, esp Petrobas. He said they're more an instrument of the state than a typical company and probably highly corrupt. That could lead to problems for the U.S. that leverage from spying could help deal with. Brazil is in process of proving him right.
So, there, I've done more to get word out to Brazilians than Greenwald has his whole time living there. :P
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/26/tech/brazil-google/
At that point the authorities are left holding the bag.
Though maybe your point is that it is the VP that has the responsibility of taking care of that? In that case I'd agree with you.
How should that be possible if FB doesn't store this information in the first place? I mean, if there would be a legal requirement for data retention on behalf of the state, I could understand the issue. But there isn't...
They could fight the subpoena but decided to do nothing, so, I kinda agree with the court on this one.
That's what it comes to. The court requested three times, increasing the fines each of the tries and it was received with [legal] silence from Facebook. That's why they went ahead and issued the arrest warrant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
Our ex-president Lula has just avoided questioning/testifying on a corruption case. He's suspected of having gotten an apartment from construction companies as a bribe. It was on someone else's name, so he doesn't pay taxes on it etc (also illegal apart from the bribe). This is much more serious than this Facebook case, and there's so much evidence now that it would be a slam dunk case in any decent country. And Lula got out of it legally.
(Sorry for my poor english, it isn't my first or second language.)
I don't see either how Facebook would be "protecting themselves". They have little to gain and much to lose by not cooperating with the government. It's not about publicity because it wouldn't have made the news at all if they complied.
Now, even mentioning the following may be going into conspiracy theory territory, but telephone companies were trying to get WhatsApp banned not long ago. I wouldn't be surprised if this event would further their goals.
http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html
Or read the google-translated version into Portuguese
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=pt&js=y&pr...
It explains very well why this is no trivial issue to Americans nor to tech people.
Also, your drugs should be legalized or decriminalized, anyway. It would put all the bad guys out of business and bring the entire drug market back within regulation. Portugal did it and it's considered a success, why can't Brazil?
http://lixo.org/blog/2013/08/05/privacidade-protege-pessoas-...
> For many people, privacy is a fundamental right - they see no reason why a government should be meddling in my affairs without a more specific reason than a blanket search for possible terrorism.
... this is not about blanket searches, and:
> I'm not saying that privacy is an absolute. Foiling criminal activity often means breaching privacy - a database of phone calls can be helpful tool to investigate a criminal network.
And I say that as a Brazilian, you're comparing an European country with 10 million people (that's less than what my hometown of São Paulo has, now sitting at 11.8 million as of 2014 census) to a country of 200+ million of mostly uneducated people.
Sorry to tell you but you don't change a whole society way of thinking in less than a generation, much less when there's no politicians' desire for that.
Yeah, anyway it should be decriminalized (as it's for users right now) or legalized, but if you want to be real about it, come up with a plan, because realistically speaking there's no way to do it in the next 10~15 years.
If you do something illegal you should expect punishment from the law sooner or later.