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Brazil arrests Facebook executive in row over police access to data
- ng-user 11y agoGod I'm happy Yahoo is dying, that was disgusting to read.
- spacehome 11y agoUm, "Don't shoot the messenger"???
- ng-user 11y agoGuess I didn't make it obvious enough, their website is what I found disgusting.
- adamlaiacano 11y agoYeah, that's the spirit!
- ng-user 11y agoThe quality of the website is what I was referring to, I apologize for not making it obvious.
- dmoy 11y agoJudges 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. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/12/30/brazil.usa.immigration.reut/ http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/12/30/brazil.usa.immi...
- caiob 11y agoSimple reciprocity.
- x5n1 11y agoAll 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.
- fapjacks 11y agoSo... You're suggesting Americans have some kind of power over the American government or something?
- x5n1 11y agoWell it is suppose to be a representative democracy.
- yeahrightfam 11y agoDid you recently suffered a stroke? Have you forgot that you think that way too? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11082956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11082956
- 13thLetter 11y agoIt'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.
- x5n1 11y agoAs 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.
- nibs 11y ago(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.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoGreenwald 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.
- csandreasen 11y agoProbably 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.
- guelo 11y agoJournalists have beats. It's ridiculous to expect Greenwald to report on every government in the world.
- zghst 11y agoFor some reason, true oppressive regimes aren't worth reporting on anymore.
- bicknergseng 11y agoDidn't know that "focus" == "bias".
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- celticninja 11y agoLets be fair here: 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.
- dudus 11y agoBrazil also arrested Google Brazil CEO/Country Manager a few years ago. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/26/tech/brazil-google/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/26/tech/brazil-google/
- tathastu 11y agoBrazil 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.
- vaadu 11y agoWhat if FB fired the VP? Pay him a nice severance, pay his legal fees but cut him off from being able to comply with the court order. At that point the authorities are left holding the bag.
- zghst 11y agoThen they go to the next guy in line.
- justinclift 11y agoWonder if they would hire someone already in prison, purely to be a placeholder...? :D
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- nandemo 11y agoNo 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.
- maze-le 11y ago> 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...
- edcastro 11y agoPut simply, they are in contempt of the court disregarding the subpoena. This, under Brazilian law, warrants the arrest. They could fight the subpoena but decided to do nothing, so, I kinda agree with the court on this one.
- envy2 11y agoIt'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.
- edcastro 11y agoI 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.
- nandemo 11y agoThe 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus 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.
- danielmantovani 11y agoJust 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 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.)
- Artur_Gaspar 11y agoAs 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.
- danielmantovani 11y agoDo 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 ?
- yeahrightfam 11y agoBrazil 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.
- Artur_Gaspar 11y agoI'm not saying Facebook is right, but following the law isn't necessarily the right thing to do, neither need one always expect punishment.
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