
Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban - sultansaladin
http://thephonesgsm.blogspot.com/2015/12/telegram-gains-1-million-users-after.html
======
pqdbr
I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give
such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp
is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute
criminals.

Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is
absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example,
simply don't have it. This is not me saying; this is our Constitution saying
it (and the Constitution of every Western country that I know).

We are biased to see all measures against privacy with bad eyes, specially
after Snowden. But that's because you are good people and see the matter with
those eyes, not with the eyes of a criminal. Do you guys think that
pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? I don't.

Also, what the NSA was (is?) doing is a complete absurd, with no judicial
oversight, mass collecting everything they can get in secrecy. This has
nothing to do with what we have here. In Brazil, only a judge can authorize
someone to be wiretapped, it can only be done in criminal cases with jail time
(no civil cases). Also, the judge must specify a single phone number or single
e-mail account and the decision must be reviewed every 15 days, otherwise it
expires. Also, there's a national database of wiretaps that every judge must
feed by the end of the month, specifying how many wiretaps there are currently
running.

WhatsApp and Facebook are not, by any means, above the law. If they want to
provide a communication service here, the law is clear that they must abide by
judicial orders that allow wiretapping in very specific cases.

~~~
bmelton
> No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for
> example, simply don't have it.

I know nothing of Brazilian law, but in America, criminals have rights,
including the right to privacy. Convicted criminals and convicted felons do
not, but that is an entirely different category, and your wording seems
woefully imprecise.

> Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the
> right to privacy ? I don't.

 _Alleged_ pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the full panoply of
rights available to them as anyone else until such time as enough supporting
evidence may be provided that the police can say that a) a crime has been
committed, b) the alleged had the means to have committed the crime, c) the
alleged had the motive to have committed the crime, d) the alleged had the
opportunity to have committed the crime, and often e) the alleged is very
likely to have committed the crime.

Only after THAT hurdle is cleared may the rights of the alleged criminal be
intruded upon by the state, and without a grand jury, even those intrusions
must be minimally invasive.

At least in America, a judge cannot issue a warrant for the wiretaps you
described on the mere accusation that "so and so is a
{pedophile,terrorist,drug dealer}."

~~~
sliverstorm
_in America, criminals have rights, including the right to privacy. Convicted
criminals and convicted felons do not_

It sounds like you are rather pedantically making a distinction between
criminals and convicted criminals.

~~~
bmelton
Indeed. It is the very crux of my post. I view the distinction as worthwhile.
In fact, I should probably have gone further and drawn distinction between
convicted criminals and convicted criminals who are currently serving time.

------
caio1982
What really happened: a drug smuggler with ties to a major criminal
organization had been investigated and sentenced several months ago and since
July Facebook and WhatsApp folks had not complied (actually they simply
ignored all requests) with some users data the justice demanded to keep
prosecuting the guy and his associates. Allegedly, according to the new
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framewo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Civil_Rights_Framework_for_the_Internet)
if a company does exactly what they did, they can be temporarily blocked by a
court decision as some sort of punishment for obstruction. Mark Zuckerberg
complained saying it was just one judge who ordered this but AFAIK the block
was requested by PA's office.

To be fair, some Brazilian judges are pretty stupid and have no idea how the
internet works so it's quite possible the original users data request was
super broad and that's why Facebook and WhatsApp just ignored it. On the other
hand, it's only through very effective wires and digital data examination in
recent years that the Brazilian justice is finally putting some big sharks
into jail. That's why I have mixed feelings about all this (and I'm a Telegram
user myself).

Source, in Portuguese: [http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-
bloqueio-wh...](http://gizmodo.com.br/investigacao-trafico-droga-bloqueio-
whatsapp/)

~~~
pqdbr
The order wasn't super broad, it was actually specific to a single individual,
like you said.

Also, even if it was broad, you don't get to ignore judicial orders. You
answer to them giving your reasons and appealing if you don't agree. Ignoring
them will get you either punished or arrested.

WhatsApp notoriously doesn't even have an office in Brazil. No way to even get
a judicial order to them.

Facebook, the parent company, simply says they are Facebook and not WhatsApp,
so they can't help.

By the way, the judge in case actually demonstrated quite a deep understanding
of the web. Unable to get WhatsApp to comply, he ordered all telecoms to block
WhatsApp IP addresses, which was quite a smart move.

~~~
PeterisP
You do get to ignore judicial orders if you are outside of their jurisdiction.

If, say, a valid legal authority in Iran issues some judicial order that
affects me or some content that I have published (even if it is accessible in
Iran), then it is perfectly reasonable to ignore it as long as I'm not in
Iran, don't have an office there, etc.

I am not and should not be bound by Iran's laws and judgements, I reside
elsewhere. Whatsapp is not and should not be bound by Brazil's laws and
judgements, they reside elsewhere. If their host country allows (or requires!)
them to protect user privacy, then they should follow their own laws, not
those of Brazil.

Should Whatsapp censor messages critical of Thailand's royalty because they
are illegal there? Should Whatsapp censor messages that are blasphemous and
thus illegal in some places? Should Whatsapp give up personal details of the
users who have made such illegal messages? In my opinion definitely _NO_.

Countries should not get to export their restrictions across the globe, they
can either participate in the global network with an understanding that
foreign companies will follow _their_ laws and not yours, or countries can
self-isolate as in this case Brazil has done.

~~~
kogepathic
> You do get to ignore judicial orders if you are outside of their
> jurisdiction.

That's nice to say in theory, but in practice it doesn't work. Just ask
Microsoft. [1] [2]

Fact of the matter is, if the Metropolitan police came to Facebook with the
proper paperwork requesting data on a British user as part of a criminal case,
Facebook would cooperate with them.

> Should Whatsapp censor messages critical of Thailand's royalty because they
> are illegal there?

No. But if Thailand decides to prosecute someone for making these statements
via WhatsApp, then they have every right to legally request the data from
WhatsApp. A user in Thailand broke Thai laws.

> Should Whatsapp censor messages that are blasphemous and thus illegal in
> some places?

Again, no. But if the jurisdiction decides to charge someone for breaking the
law, WhatsApp and Facebook must cooperate with the legal request for data. To
ignore such a request is circumventing due process.

> Should Whatsapp give up personal details of the users who have made such
> illegal messages?

Yes. If the request follows the legal process in the jurisdiction, then of
course WhatsApp should be obligated to hand over the data.

What you're essentially saying is that if someone in the US plans a bombing of
American citizens via WhatsApp, and if the FBI finds out of this plot and
decides to request the data from WhatsApp, WhatsApp has every legal right to
tell the FBI to fuck off. [3]

Obviously this is ridiculous. Someone did something which was against the laws
of their country of residence, and that country has every right to legally
prosecute them for breaking the law. To claim that WhatsApp is somehow immune
from this simply because they're a foreign company operating in that country
is ridiculous.

> with an understanding that foreign companies will follow their laws and not
> yours

Sorry, that's not how business works. Just ask VW about their recent
'dieselgate' incident if you need an example.

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/09/microsoft-...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/09/microsoft-
court-case-hotmail-ireland-search-warrant)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corporation_v._Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corporation_v._United_States_of_America)

[3] [http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-terror-
messagi...](http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-terror-
messaging-20150608-story.html)

~~~
PeterisP
The countries have every right to legally prosecute their residents for
breaking the local law. This doesn't mean that everybody worldwide has a duty
to assist this prosecution. Even more, there are many cases (e.g. those I
listed above) where a honest person should not cooperate but hinder and
obstruct this foreign legal prosecution as much as their own local laws allow.

Whatsapp has a duty to protect their user's privacy. Unless they receive a
binding legal order from _their_ authorities (in Whatsapp's case, USA) it is
entirely right to ignore nonbinding requests from judges in Brazil, Thailand,
Iran or everywhere else. Simply submitting to out-of-jurisdiction authorities
is not due process, it is sharing personal data with third parties without the
user's consent which (IANAL, IMHO) is legal in USA but would be prohibited if,
for example, Whatsapp was headquartered in EU.

In your examples, the listed companies (or their appropriate subsidiaries) are
subject to those laws because they are headquarted there, those laws _are_
their local laws exactly unlike the nonexistent legal relationship between
Whatsapp and Brazil.

Some countries will have bilateral agreements to obtain evidence from abroad -
a process on how e.g. Brazil law enforcement could cooperate with USA law
enforcement to get a request that has some legal force in USA (and vice
versa). In the absence of that, a provider should side with their users
privacy and ignore foreign requests as a policy.

------
etiam
Shame they went there instead of to Signal, but I guess it may still be a
marginal improvement.

~~~
tazjin
Signal, and in extension the other privacy-aware messengers (Threema etc), can
not replace Telegram or iMessage because they lack basic features like multi-
device sync.

The hard problem of messaging has not been solved yet, what people should
build is a service like iMessage but with the public key pool per account
publicly auditable and verifiable.

~~~
lqdc13
This has to be a joke. Multi-device sync? Most people don't know what that is.

They just want a pretty GUI, their friends to be on it, and an easy way to
send videos/photos/voicemails/whatever.

Granted, I've never wanted to send videos and sending photos works well on
Signal right now. But until recently the GUI wasn't very polished.

~~~
tazjin
Of course they know what that is - and actively use it - just think of
Facebook messenger.

~~~
lqdc13
They might actively use it but not because they want to.

In fact, Brazil's most popular chatting app that is recently banned there
doesn't have multi-device sync. Hangouts does. Everyone could use hangouts,
but not nearly as many people do.

~~~
swah
Using your phone number and address book to find contacts is what made it
really easy for me. Also, iPhone users don't use Hangouts, but were somehow
"forced" to use Whatsapp to talk to people on Android phones.

------
soneca
A superior ranked judge ('desembargador') just revoked the ban. And said (my
translation):

 _" In face of the constitutional principles, it does not seem reasonable that
millions of users are affected in result of the company (whatsapp) inertia"_

In portuguese:

 _" ""em face dos princípios constitucionais, não se mostra razoável que
milhões de usuários sejam afetados em decorrência da inércia da empresa"_

The judge also said that a fine would be more appropriate.

source (in portuguese):
[http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-
just...](http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-justica-
concede-liminar-para-restabelecer-aplicativo-no-brasil.html)

------
dheera
I miss the days of ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Zephyr, Gtalk, Facebook's XMPP, and
all those other messengers. They had relatively open or decipherable
protocols, and on almost all OSes there were at least a couple decent
applications that allowed you to login to all messaging services using a
single piece of software. I could even write gateways and plugins to use NLP
and autoreply, encrypt messages, and all kinds of other awesome things which I
can't do anymore.

It seems like we've taken a step back in technology.

~~~
CaptSpify
Me too. A lot of those open standards still exist, but everyone has walled off
their garden. It's infuriating. I don't mind using whatever _protocol_ my
contactee wants, but I'm not going to install 10 different messaging apps with
various permissions just to communicate with them. Inter-connectivity is the
name of the game, not exclusiveness.

------
hamhamed
When startups say being lucky was a big part of their success..I guess this is
what they meant

------
lenlorijn
Facebook/Messenger is sending a message to Brazilians stating they're working
to get WhatsApp back up and suggest to use Messenger while WhatsApp is
blocked. [https://imgur.com/kx4B3na](https://imgur.com/kx4B3na)

------
pedrodelfino
I am from Brazil and I can say: we are almost becoming the new Argentina.

And this is quite interesting because Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela
(at least they were, but few weeks ago they had elections and the left wing
lost). And Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba.

~~~
personjerry
Can you explain each of those statements in turn?

~~~
jpatokal
"Argentina is becoming the new Venezuela": formerly prosperous country adopts
ridiculous economic policies (key industries nationalized and handed over as
private fiefs to incompetent cronies, exchange rate controls, price caps),
sees economy go down the toilet and inflation rocket out of control

"Venezuela clearly is becoming the new Cuba": Not content merely with wrecking
the economy, leadership squashes all opposition and turns country into a
straight-up dictatorship (of the proletariat!)

Fortunately both statements are hyperbolic, as both countries have just held
reasonably fair elections where the electorates decided to kick the bums out,
but there are still choppy waters ahead...

~~~
aesoprock
Argentina cannot into economic prosperity since 1700s

~~~
saint_fiasco
Weren't they prosperous for a while after World War I?

~~~
mahouse
They were prosperous when they had surges of incoming white immigrants from
Europe, yes.

~~~
saint_fiasco
It was more about them selling food to war-thorn countries. Even Paraguay had
a budget surplus after WWI for similar reasons, and they didn't get many white
immigrants.

------
rplnt
These messaging apps are worse than... well, I don't know. This is as bad as
it gets. Bicycles maybe? Incompatibility, fragmentation.. the worst thing you
can have for application that is supposed to be used for communication.

~~~
rmc
There has always been fragmentation with messaging apps. In the 90s/00s it was
MSN and Yahoo and IRQ etc etc

~~~
amyjess
In the 00s, we had multi-IM clients like Trillian, Gaim/Pidgin/libpurple,
Kopete, Telepathy, etc.

Now, there's so little work done in reverse-engineering IM protocols. It's
really sad. Part of this is because Sean Egan got hired by Google to work on
Hangouts, so he's out of the reverse-engineering game for good, and it's sad
that nobody took up the mantle from him.

------
jdahlin
I'm sure that the phone operators were very happy to comply to ban, they hate
WhatsApp. When WhatsApp first got popular here it ended their very lucrative
business of SMS and more recently they introduced VOIP calls which
considerably cheaper than normal phone calls, especially long distance.

Three of the major phone operators (Vivo, Claro, TIM) implemented the ban,
while the fourth (Oi), did not. The CEO of Vivo, one of the major phone
operators, came out a couple of months ago saying that WhatsApp is "piracy",
since they are not affected by the same regulations as the normal phone
operator.[1]

[1]:
[http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsap...](http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2015/08/1666187-whatsapp-
e-pirataria-pura-afirma-presidente-da-vivo.shtml) (portuguese)

------
junto
All of this is good. The more competition the better. Pity they aren't all
compatible. Then we might actually have an real email killer on our hands.

------
nasir
This is how regulations can influence you're business. Unrelated to this, but
in corrupted countries a relative of the guy in the government can easily kill
your business by asking him to ban yours or promote his!

------
Grazester
So what does this tell us about Telegram? Are they willing and able to provide
the authorities with the relevant info should a request such as the one made
to whatsapp be made to them?

------
lordnacho
Would it be possible to get the messages if FB/WhatsApp decided to do so? I
heard they started doing end-to-end encryption, with the keys only on the
user's phone.

Also, if you've designed a system like this, could you also design one where
you'd be unable to comply with the shutdown order? I suppose one of the
Bitcoin related message services would be like that.

------
hidingfromherd
Perhaps I'm being hard-headed here, but I don't understand the need to debate
secure communications here, beyond the benefit of opening doubt in the minds
of those ignorant of the underlying physical process.

This boils down to the fact (for me, and by proxy, my community) that I (and
by proxy, my community) will not use insecure communication because someone or
someones wants me to do so.

Shake your fist, rattle your sabres, put me in your sights, it will not change
my (and by proxy, my community's) resolve.

And if I (and by proxy, my community) is to be prosecuted for using secure
channels, then I (and by proxy, my community) will resort to steganography.
Exact circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a
dedicated mind and an overwhelming power (of math) on my communications'
transit.

The only means by which a paternal element can mediate the policies of my
interactions would be to mediate the interface by which I (and by proxy, my
community) communicate (in this case -- electronic/digital computer<->human),
and enforce this with vigilant, and economically costly violence.

This matter-of-factness is similar to that in traffic stop interactions. I'm
not happy that men with guns can systematically stop my transit, search my
belongings, and steal my assets (at least in Texas), with ex post facto logic
applied to the inherent justice, and I have no way of stopping this. The exact
circumstances aside, there's no getting around the effects of a dedicated mind
and an overwhelming power on my transit.

So I work around it, I try not to get stopped, and I deal with it when I do
get stopped. I don't shake my fist or pout, beyond for the benefit of opening
doubt in the minds of those ignorant of the underlying physical process.

------
Dolores12
So facebook\whatsapp is criminal in Brasil because they broke the law.

------
kamilszybalski
Wow. Merry Christmas indeed.

------
AndrewKemendo
_I 'm a judge in Brazil._

Your comment history says otherwise:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143)

Seem to be a run of the mill dev to me. I'm surprised you got as many
credulous responses as you did.

~~~
dang
What you did here is not cool.

On HN, we start from the benefit of the doubt. A person can be both a
programmer and a judge. pqdbr's comment was coherent and plausible. The null
hypothesis is therefore that pqdbr is making a valuable contribution.

It's fine and interesting to look through someone's comment history for
background. It can also be ok to ask questions based on that, but this is
always delicate and must be done respectfully. But to dig around for a bit,
leap to a sinister conclusion, and fling it at them with a couple insults for
good measure is a serious violation of civility on this site.

HN members with outlier backgrounds (and 'judge' certainly is one) are some of
the most valuable contributors we have; doubly so—if not more—when they speak
computing too. Imagine what it would feel like to share from one's expertise
in the most on-topic way possible, only to be randomly slapped in the face and
have your character impugned. You owe pqdbr a lot more of an apology than
"Cool! Always happy to be wrong when evidence supports it." (Edit: which, now
that I think of it, reads more like a humblebrag than making amends.)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751003)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Totally respect moving it as it is a distraction at this point.

That said, my comment wasn't particularly harsh and I think it's reasonable to
be suspect of such lofty claims, especially with basically no proof to be
found anywhere in a cursory search. One commenter did some serious research to
find Portuguese language proof and that is why this was even an issue.

Had the commenter been full of BS, which is the overwhelming majority in these
cases, nobody would have made much of a fuss about it.

I also expressed my gratitude for pointing out the errant conclusion to the
other poster who did research, so I have no problem admitting a false
conclusion. Being wrong with a lot of support (upvotes) seems to be my primary
sin here.

~~~
dang
You're misinterpreting the upvotes on a comment like that. They simply mean
what GIFs of popcorn mean.

Outrage and drama drive more upvotes than intellectual curiosity does. That's
why upvotes, though vital, are not the final arbiter here. HN is a
constitutional democracy, and what you did was unconstitutional. Please don't
do it again.

------
dataker
Interestingly, Fitch downgraded Brazil's Debt to junk yesterday.

[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-95454...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/057c1240-a40f-11e5-b73f-9545472cb784.html)

Anti-technology culture tells a lot about an economy, group or nation.

~~~
jzwinck
If you think this makes Brazil "anti-technology" I am curious to know your
opinion about South Korea, which despite making a huge fraction of the world's
smartphones and televisions has prevented Google Maps from working fully for
their country. Point being, there are lots of reasons for countries to block
certain things, and the notion that technology is inevitable and
unquestionable does not carry water in many places outside the Bay Area.

~~~
dataker
It would "be reasonable" to ban if the alternative was a similar local service
(e.g. Baidu vs Google in China).

The alternative here was an outdated SMS communication (telecoms in Brazil are
so terrible they make Verizon look good).

~~~
PauloManrique
Yeah, because we can't access ICQ, Skype, Telegram, Viber, Line, WeChat,
GroupMe and several other apps, right?

