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WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge (theintercept.com)
972 points by tshtf on May 2, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 608 comments



Unlike in N. America, in Brazil a lot of businesses depend on WhatsApp. You can talk with your doctor, call a plumber, claim insurance. On billboards no one puts a website address or an email, just phone number and WhatsUp. That's an economy cripling move and it's shocking how one judge can do it.


More important. Why aren't congressmen creating rules to prevent these monopolies ?


?? Can't tell if serious.

Unless whatsapp did something to wreck their competition in Brazil, any effective monopoly they possess is by virtue of people choosing to use their system over other systems.

This sort of effective monopoly cannot and ought not be stopped unless the monopoly power is abusing their position. And how would you when it's a choice people have made? Mandate that every 5th person mustn't use WhatsApp?


Monopoly isn't even about market size it's about companies exploiting their market position using anti-competitive practices. There is no indication WhatsApp has done any of this except being the most popular product in a highly competitive and open market.


Principally, a monopoly is precisely about market share. Anti-trust and monopoly laws exist for situations where such monopolies are created by unethical or illegal means or when they abuse their monopoly position (directly with ability to charge customers for products and services, or indirectly by somehow shutting down competition).

And that's where, as you point out, WhatsApp hasn't done anything wrong. Even if they have a de facto monopoly in Brazil, unless they've done something other than what I've seen in the US, it's almost certainly the result of network effects and nothing to do with illicit practices.


Indeed, most monopoly rulings have happened in markets with competing oligopolies.


With at least Claro whatsapp is free there[1], not sure about the other telcos. And yes, people use it. I just spent a few weeks there and for every call there were like 50 whatsapp-messages.

[1] http://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/telecommunications/claro-b...


The fact a simple messaging service outperforms giant, monopolistic telecoms should speak volumes to the level of kleptocracy present in Brazil.

This judicial ruling is a political power grab. Ask yourself this, who does banning WhatsApp actually punish more? Facebook or the people of Brazil? It's the latter by a mile. Standing behind the "law is the law" is a cop out when the law was clearly written by and for the domestic telecom industry. WhatsApp will set a dangerous precedent if they change their internal operations at the demand of any regulation.


I'm not sure what law you can make to change people's favorite choice of Instant Messenger.


Do we need more proof? The Internet is broken. A few months back there were protests against government in my country (also in South America). That day I witnessed how Twitter images were selectively blocked. (I remember reporting it here on HN). What was really scary is how they could select the pictures/videos to block, almost in realtime. Here we have about 5 ISPs serving 95% of the market (counting both mobile and landline) and all hook to a couple of bigger pipes to move ALL Internet traffic in/out of the country.

Try as I might but can't understand why we do not break free from centralized communications, given that we already have both the hardware and software technology to do so.

I like an old saying: when banging your head against a stonewall, you will always break the head and never the wall. So, what do we gain from discusing politics? What do we gain with laws written on paper but bent for the best bidder? Let's be pragmatic, in particular on a site like HN. We shouldn't be talking about the law, whether it is right or wrong, we should be discusing how many nodes do we need on a mesh network to solve communications for a city like Sao Paulo. Is the tech there yet? Can it get there? Who's advancing on these subjects? How can we help? (like really help not writting useless letters to congressmen)

Don't bang your head on the stonewall...


Apps exist that route around censorship. People need to inform themselves. We are in an era where encryption and self-sustenance are deemed scary and suspicious.

If all of these 100m users were on FireChat, this headline wouldn't exist.


Not sure, we tried Firechat among friends and family on the last aftermath of an earthquake and some had problems installing or activating it. Also, it just drains the battery. However, I agree with you, the technology to circumvent centralized and censored communications is already there, it just needs adoption and improvement. But we need to think bigger, not only chats, we need a free Internet.


I am so tired of these “takedowns” and other brute-force methods that are used to essentially squash ants. It always seems way, way too easy to do, and the collateral damage is way too high.

The Internet needs to start acting like a series of dumb pipes again: so dumb that you have no idea where information really is, and so huge so as to be impractical for anyone to control.

Consider highway systems. For roads, the only way to “shut down” somebody’s access without controlling every road, everywhere is to have some idea where your target is. And even then, you probably have to control several access points to really keep that target from moving. And unless they live at the end of a single country road that you control, being draconian about road control is usually going to be very hard and probably impossible. And that is a good thing, because if shutting down highways made any sense then a hell of a lot of people would be inconvenienced on a regular basis (or worse than inconvenienced, if they were in an ambulance or something).

Blocking Internet tools is arguably far worse than blocking highways because networks transport an almost incomprehensibly-large amount of information and the effects are vast. By the same token, seizure of a device is arguably far worse than seizure of something like a truck because a device can effectively provide access to someone’s entire life and not just the little bit of information that an authority is seeking.

Enough paranoid blocking and seizure, let’s try to focus on world progress.


The reality is still a few big telcos/ISPs operating the infrastructure, so government has zero problems mandating filtering/wiretapping/blocking.

And since laying fiber is expensive, and putting up sats is even more expensive, and running a mesh through the continent is pretty unfeasible, we're stuck with these economically optimal big targets (the ISPs/telcos).

As long as there is a network operator with access to core and edge routers, blocking is easy. And by the nature of BGP and the Internet you'll always know who to ask next to filter something.

Or you can use Tor and-or a VPN. Multi-homing for times like this should be set up by default in operating systems.


Telex? https://telex.cc/software.html

As long as you can connect to an ISP implementing the protocol, which is outside of the targeted jurisdiction, you should be able to access the destination site.


This is exactly why operating many small Murmur and/or XMPP servers is a better approach than relying on a single big-co's proprietary service with which you no signed SLA. Just like game servers, it's easy to operate a community Murmur server and it's also possible to set up one on your home router given the low bandwidth and hardwre requirements.

Yet, if I suggest that I prefer Mumble over closed source voice chat or centrally provided WebRTC service like appear.in, people downvote me or treat me a like a luddite.

But I do understand that given the comfort of a centrally managed WhatsApp, it's hard to resist.

The only reason there are no fancy mobile clients is that those who would build them are doing it for the silo'd Vibers, Skypes, and WhatsApps.

Comfort seems to trump reliability.


> Comfort seems to trump reliability.

Everything is centralized because of one simple reason: you can't monetize distributed.

So, as a developer, if I want paid, I'm going to make a centralized system. The fact that the centralized system is way easier to develop/debug is just a bonus.

As a user, I'm going to use the system that has the easiest installability/usability cross section. That app is likely to be the one that gets the most developer time. The one that gets the most developer time is likely to be the one that lets the developers get paid.

And thus, the circle is closed, and the feedback loop begins.


You can monetize a fancy client that's commercial.

You can monetize hosting Mumble servers.

Decentralized services are much harder, but at some point we have to prefer them and use federation as a means to have something like a global network of continents of servers (or realms in MMO lingo).

My point is that as long as we don't pursue decentralized services, we won't get them. There are efforts for people to host everything privately, and with ipv6 I like to think it's only a matter of time until all IoT devices can be repurposed as servers.


Distributed means spam. That's not a solved issue. Email sorta gets around it with tons of filtering. On IM, spam is much more annoying (it's assumed you'll get lots of junk email even if not spam).


In what way does a centralized server prevent spam? You'll only receive messages after you've accepted the contact request, so the worst that can happen is contact request spam.


How would this prevent Telco/mobile operators from blocking XMPP traffic with Murmur headers?

The technical details of the court orders has nothing to do with shutting down WhatsApp servers or coercing them into doing a MITM on their own customers...

Not that I disagree that decentralization helps add resiliency against state intervention but this particular threat model requires a different solution. Such as preventing ISPs from being able to block your traffic.


It's easier to force a company to block access in a certain country, but if you run the servers or there are various parties hosting it for you, you have a higher chance of still using it.

But, that might of course require disobedience until the laws are declared invalid in front of the supreme court. I'm no activist, but the way politics has been meddling with the Internet convinced me that we have to fight to keep existing freedoms.


The same holds for Telegram and Signal.


> The Telephone, Used by 300M Americans, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

Try rationalizing this headline. All communication services, whether they are "apps", "networks", "utilities", etc... should fall in some category of protection where such things cannot happen.


2nd time in less than 12 months. probably, we are going to see a surge in telegram downloads/usage today.


A true shame since Telegram is just as centralized as WhatsApp, minus the strong end-to-end encryption. Should it become the de facto messaging app for Brazilians, the next judge will just block Telegram instead.

But decentralized communication networks that work mobile first are hard, we all know it, so there's room for improvement, randomizing server addresses on a daily rotation, or whatever may render pointless these blockades.


WhatsApp could incorporate obfuscation proxies if they wanted to. Like the Tor connection bridges that exist to help get around a Tor block.

Maybe only activated once they detect a threat or something.


Yes, it's happening, more than 1M accounts* created by brazilians today.

[1]: https://twitter.com/telegram_br/status/727201106166689792


Too bad they're switching to a messenger that can easily be subverted by governments and doesn't come with E2E encryption by default. Might as well use Hangouts or Skype.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...


I prefer open source software that lacks features (e.g. E2E, which could be implemented by someone), than proprietary software that "supposedly" has some features (like E2E) which you cannot verify (that is, Whatsapp says they have that feature, but their software not being opensource cannot guarantee anyone that they are stating the truth).


The solution to this isn't a legal one, unfortunately. We can no longer trust the government, of what ever nation, period. In US we have Clinton and Trump as the presumptive nominees, both will be terrible for privacy and liberty. The solution is for WhatsApp (and others) to design a protocol that runs over common ports and encrypts end to end the communication and the protocol. Make it impossible to block without costly deep packet inspections and banning of thousands and thousands random relays, and it will not be blocked.


Would a p2p architecture thwart this kinda blocking?


Probably yes, my concern is that this can be exactly what judges, telcos and its lobbyists want. They could use this in the future to justify blocking client-to-client connections, implement deep packet inspection, maybe even transform internet in Brazil in a deny-by-default network, where only allowed content would be accessed. Too much of a conspiracy theory? Maybe yes, but given the current political turmoil in Brazil, I wouldn't be surprised.


I'm going to guess you meant... thwart?

Maybe technically, but probably not legally, although I understand very little of the issues at play.


Thanks for the correction. Fixed


Not if the App Store is still in the mix. It's a centralized distribution failure point for the app.


This is only really a problem for unjailbroken iOS devices. On every other platform decentralized distribution is a solved problem with many different solutions.


Next law will make it illegal to have whatsapp installed on your phone. Your turn?


You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.


I assert, and I think many of us here are moved by the notion that, as time moves forward, technological solutions tend to be confounding for entrenched power structures and empowering for social liberation.

I don't really know how to parse "you can't fix social problems with technology," but I have much more confidence in the growing power of, for example, uncensorable media than I do in any fantasy of change in the nature of government.

My sense is that government will be co-opted by the rich to excuse violence against the poor, and that this rule will apply in proportion to the size of the government and the size of the landmass over which it claims dominion. Technology seems to be the cultural foil to this trend.

I think that "you can't fix social problems with technology" is too oversimple and too absolute to have real meaning in the current techno-political environment.


Then let me be more clear; you can't get around laws with technology. You have to change the laws. Proposing to make something peer to peer doesn't address the actual problem, the law.


As there are countries where laws cannot be changed, technological solutions can fix the problems once and for all.

Even in "democratic" country, you would still have to fight the lobbyists, corporate controlled media and so on.


> As there are countries where laws cannot be changed

No, there aren't.

> technological solutions can fix the problems once and for all

No, they can't. Oppression can't be fixed by circumventing the law as it just leaves the government more power to enable selective enforcement which is the ideal way to scare people into compliance.


There's no such thing as a country whose laws can't be changed. Only countries where the people don't care enough to do what's necessary to change them.


Oh, now I understand North Korea's problems!


Actually, thinking about it, North Koreans can at least argue that China will intercede in their political and economic affairs to the extent necessary to keep them subjugated. So I'll give you that.

But what's Brazil's excuse?


Do you have an actual argument? People get the government they deserve.


Really? Because Uber and AirBnB seem to be doing a pretty good job of using technology to get around laws.

edit: Actually here is a REALLY easy answer. What about Pirating and Torrenting. Do you really believe that this peer to peer technology hasn't massively helped people get around copyright laws?


Or Sci-Hub and Libgen.


>You can't fix social problems with technology

This is an increasingly popular meme, and I have some sympathy for the sentiment that we shouldn't ignore the political process, but ultimately it's twaddle - a backlash against the staggering impact that technology has had and will continue to have. Exhibit A: the printing press.

In this case it's even pragmatically untrue. Make a communications platform that's technically impossible to block, and government will not make itself look foolish attempting to block it. Even the US government, who dearly wanted to kill encryption for the masses before it got off the ground in the 90s, was forced to back off after the tide of encryption technology proved un-stemmable.


> Make a communications platform that's technically impossible to block, and government will not make itself look foolish attempting to block it.

Actually that's exactly what they'll do just as they continue to try with DRM. Governments don't care about looking foolish, they care about maintaining power and they will do so even if it requires outlawing said technology.


Sure you can!

Imagine if Brazil tried to ban Bitcoin. How successful do you think they would be?


Very. For the moment, you have to take your salary in your local currency. Therefore, you need an exchange to get Bitcoins, and the exchanges can be shut down.

People said The Great Firewall would never work. They were wrong about that, too.

The real world CAN infringe on the networked world--quite strongly.


Drugs are (highly) illegal but most people I know are at most two phone calls away from scoring whatever they want whenever they want.

I imagine if some third-world countries with capital controls banned Bitcoin, it would look similar (having to call your Bitcoin dealer and pay a markup to move money out of the country but otherwise easily accessible to those in-the-know).


> Drugs are (highly) illegal but most people I know are at most two phone calls away from scoring whatever they want whenever they want.

And yet most people don't. Knowing you can do something illegal, and doing it, are vastly different things.


> And yet most people don't.

If people's life savings depended on circumventing capital controls, they would find a way. It's already a reality in China [1] and (until recently) Argentina [2].

Hell, where I'm from (Canada) 43% of people admit to having smoked marijuana in their lifetimes. And that's just breaking the law for fun, not serious practical reasons like saving $xx,xxx when your crappy central bank decides to inflate away your bank account.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-02/china-s-sm...

[2] http://www.buenostours.com/getting-the-best-exchange-rate-fo...


You're looking at the actions of a very few people and making unjustified sweeping conclusions about what everyone is willing to do. A very small minority of the populations in both those countries are breaking the law to get their money around capital controls, that doesn't in any way challenge the point that most people won't.

Most people break drug laws at some point in their lives just for fun, still not relevant to the fact that most don't most of the time.

Most people obey most laws most of the time, especially ones that can get them into serious trouble. No amount of anecdotes of some people this or some people that changes that fact. Laws matter.


> Most people obey most laws most of the time

I think you're inverting the causation. Of course things that most people do most of the time would not be illegal, those laws would be very difficult to introduce and sustain politically.

> especially ones that can get them into serious trouble

It's not enough for a law to carry a heavy penalty, people have to believe they can/will get caught and the penalty will apply to them. Which is true for robbery and capital murder but not so with drug use, capital controls, porn bans (click here if you're 18), copyright, etc.

> Laws matter.

Only if someone has the ability, will, and the resources to consistently enforce them. Which is to say, they would not matter in third-world countries with mismanaged economies where people need to break the law to buy BTC/USD.


It's true for drug use as well, but that's not the point. The point is laws do deter, they don't prevent everyone, but they can easily kill mass adoption of anything. You can try to skirt around that all you like, but it's true none the less. Bitcoin is not special in this regard, if the US outlawed it, mass adoption would not be an option. And no, you don't need consistent enforcement of laws to make them intimidating, selective enforcement does that too.


At the rate bitcoin is being used to circumvent capital exports restrictions, there's no need for imagination. Just wait a bit for government to figure it out.


Extremely, believe it or not, most people aren't willing to break the law to use new technology. If the government says something is illegal, that'll kill most usage of it.


The court doesn’t care about encryption – they only want the IP address of the user, so they can identify them.

The judge – which has experience with E2E encryption – says he knows he can’t get the messages.


Sure, E2E is not enough. One would need plausible deniability from technologies like mixnet etc.


I agree, but it's still important to try.


Nations seem to care alot about "cyberattacks". Yet a single well-positioned person has the power to disrupt a mass communication service for 72 hours. Without a single keystroke. Impressive.


My sister worked closely with many of the parties involved in the "Marco Civil", Brazil's brilliant Internet Bill of Rights. Two years later, I feel much of her work was in vain. No significant legislation was enacted from it and lately judges are trying to circumvent common sense by brute force. Now over 100M people are unable to use their communication platform of choice for 72h. In the meanwhile, congressmen are busy impeaching the president and calling it an act of god, probably as a device to expiate their own sins. It would make a good argument for a Game of Thrones clone series, some would say. And my sister, she's been out of the job since last January. She was let go when local NGOs ran out of money for fighting for an open internet. It seems freedom is the first thing that runs out in a recession. Scarcity is a bitch.


Seems like a hint that we should design our means of communication to resist single points of failure.


For the record, WhatsApp has had end-to-end encryption enabled for Android<>Android since 2014. And 92.4% of smartphones in Brazil use Android: http://www.statista.com/statistics/245189/market-share-of-mo...

So it is very unlikely they have any plaintext data for the users in question. Especially if the investigation happened recently since the roll-out of E2E on all devices.

Additionally, it's possible WhatsApp did not even store old messages for non-encrypted devices beyond a certain timeframe.


WhatsApp have said they don't store the messages anyway, whether they were sent in plain text or not.

Also any such records would be stored on servers in the US, not Brazil, so would be subject to US law. The Brazillian judge should be entering a request with the US DOJ but is either too much of an idiot or too busy doing political grandstanding with stupid futile gestures like this.


They should shut down access to the whole internet in Brazil, then. It happens to be full of companies, forums, services and data networks which probably don't give a rat's sit-upon about what the law in Brazil or any other country says but just keep on transmitting messages and bits from user to user.

I don't think being a messenger should come with obligations to divulge private persons' conversations or, more generally, bits to anyone. Local laws can force local companies to do so but it has nothing much to do with internet: a letter remailing company (or, the post office, as we used to say in the 1900's) could provide similar service.

To generalise, all private communications reduce down to talking in private. If you really had to, you could talk to your friend in private and there's nothing any government could do to retrieve those conversations back after the fact. Technological means just make the communication more flexible but it should not mean the conversation should become less private just because it happens on the internet instead of the local backwoods.

In fact, when governments (across the globe) do that it will only motivate creating solutions which make it impossible for the company to hand over their customer's data, with end-to-end and client-side encryption. Yet all governments do see that it's their right to make demands because it's always the easy thing to do.


This has nothing to do with massive surveillance, dragnets, etc. It's a simple and very specific criminal investigation where people have been found to be using WhatsApp to coordinate drug trafficking activities. The judge is just following the law and asking Facebook/WhatsApp to cooperate in identifying these people (and is being met with resistance).

Tech giants in this area are just facing their own karma for having allowed dragnets schemes to be used in their networks. If they had denounced those activities and continued to only allow targeted surveillance with a court order, we wouldn't have this trust crisis that prompts them to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It's technically possible for these companies to come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders so criminals can be identified and punished by their respective country's laws. They simply won't because it will be their word against the vast evidence that they have allowed dragnet activities in the past, which will cause a backslash everywhere.


Umm, but the issue is that WhatsApp CAN'T comply with the order, because they do not have access to the communications (because they are using end to end encryption).

I have no idea what you mean by "come up with ways to identify specific people targeted by court orders"... they aren't being asked to identify anyone, they are being asked to hand over unencrypted communication, which they do not have access to.


Maybe this isn't in the international news, but one of the prosecutors in this case specifically said they understand e2e encryption prevents FB/WhatsApp from handing out the messages but they want at least the IP addresses so those can be followed up with the local telco companies to identify who is the subscriber. It's business as usual and, AFAIK, FB/WhatsApp has been denying all requests equally. There was specific mention of "no cooperation at all" which would be a subjective statement saying the company is not willing to find ways to help this criminal case in good faith.

I think the term "in contempt of court" is what is happening here, although my vocabulary for law terms is limited.


The details are under seal, you simply can not know that.

Brazil has no law ordering companies to collect communication contents (and it would be against our Constitution). Instead, there is a law requiring them to collect IP addresses of sender and receiver of messages, and storing them for 6 months in case a court requests them.

This is information Facebook has, and this is the law they broke last time the service was blocked.


Ah ok. I guess I am misinformed.


End to end encryption in Whatsapp is extremely recent, I doubt the information the judge is after falls under that.


https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/

"The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we'll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We'll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed."

This was in 18 Nov 2014. The latest announcement from last month was:

"Over the past year, we've been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10.

As of today, the integration is fully complete. "


Brazilian here.

I've always used Telegram for privacy purposes.

It was amazing to watch the flood of friends "just signing up".


Although it has to be said that Telegram does not offer true end-to-end encryption by default. For general-purpose usage, WhatsApp may actually be considered more secure than Telegram.


Indeed Telegram is not more secure than WhatsApp, but I usually take into account the position of each company and how that affects my particular use case.


Telegram secure chats are more secure than Whatsapp's recent encryption because the code is open source.



Oh ffs, here we go again.

Yes, the signal protocol and signal's implementation are both open source, but you have no way to actually verify that WA has actually implemented the protocol correctly and securely. Sure you could do some basic packet analysis but this wouldn't tell you about the presence of any remotely triggered backdoors.

The only way for you as a user to actually verify the security is by reading the source and compiling the software yourself, or reading the source and verifying the signature via reproducible builds.

I really don't understand the business decision process here. If they just copied Signal with OSS/FOSS code and reproducible builds they would just win outright and tech people wouldn't have anything to complain about. The value of the service is the network anyway -- why care so much about the client?


There are many ways that both WA and Telegram can be subverted/backdoored/messed up. What it really comes down to, is who do you trust? Do you trust WA or Telegram? Personally, I trust WA a lot more than Telegram since WA has Moxie on their team and Telegram says, "Trust us" and a very unreasonable security challenge. I naturally don't trust people that say "Trust us" and put up unreasonable security challenges.


WhatsApp are owned by a company that is known to cooperate with PRISM. For that reason, I can't trust them.


You can just decompile the program. Binaries aren't a magic black box. Given how much FB stands to lose by lying, is imminent l unlikely they think they can get away with hiding stuff in an Android app. As much as I despise FB, this isn't one of the reasons. (Using WhatsApp still gives them metadata and contact info.)


This.


While it is true that Telegram's clients are open-sourced, their server-side code is not. So we don't know how information is stored on the server (I do not think that it is encrypted).


Closed source servers are no problem in verifying E2E encryption if the client is open source. Whatsapp's issue is that the clients are closed source. Telegram's issue is that it's optional to encrypt your messages. That's the long and short of this whole Whatsapp versus Telegram discussion.


But... Telegram isn't E2E encrypted so is less private..?

I mean, it's not blocked so I guess it's better than nothing but it's not a plus for privacy: it's a net negative.


Telegram's secret chats are E2E encrypted.


Using an unexamined and unpublished encryption algorithm. Encryption is hard and when someone says "trust us", you know they are implementing poor encryption.


If you think everything has to be "published" in the sense of a publication in a scientific paper, hacker news is probably a disappointing place. As for unexamined, the bounty for actually cracking the encryption is still open last I heard, and I know people have been trying.

As someone professionally involved in cyber security, I fully understand and agree with the criticism that the protocol is non-standard and does not follow several best practices. On the other hand, it cannot be ignored that it hasn't been cracked yet, despite Telegram being one of the bigger messaging services in the world (especially one attracting a tech-savvy audience) and receiving a lot of attention.

The very least Telegram-haters could do is acknowledge Whatsapp's equally big problem: we cannot verify a thing. Facebok could have either open sourced the clients or published the outer shell of the wire protocol so we can verify the E2E encryption. They chose to do neither.


The title makes it sound much worse than it is -- it's actually only a 72-hour shutdown. From the beginning of the article:

> A BRAZILIAN STATE JUDGE ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours...


It is as bad as they make it sound. WhatsApp is the biggest form of communication in Brazil. It would be effectively the same as SMS and phone calls being disabled in the U.S. (or maybe just like the effect of blocking StackOverflow for all programmers ;))


Anyone know how WhatsApp is being blocked?


The judge ordered mobile operators to block it. It's on them to set up the firewall rules / null routes / etc.


IP blocking at the carrier level.


I feel a bit silly for asking, but do you have a source? There is loads of misinformation going around in this thread. Are you from Brazil and do you observe this, or did you read it somewhere?


Please, don't feel silly for asking anything! Yes, I'm brazillian and in Brazil, work with telcos and follow the surveillance/censorship subject very closely. I can point you to some legal documents if you want but they're all in portuguese (and in baroque legalese to boot!).


Okay, thanks for the response!


That should be fairly easy to circumvent. Just setup clouds of proxies. As with Tor and China. In AWS etc.


Good. Now they can all switch to Signal.


Why should that be any different? Signal and WhatsApp are functionally equivalent from this perspective. Both are end-to-end encrypted and therefore targets, and both are dependent on centralized, blockable servers and therefore vulnerable.


1) If people were to switch, it would bring more people onto a platform that is not tied to Facebook, a company that loathes privacy.

2) Signal is free software, including the messaging server (https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server). This makes it less sensitive to take-downs (anyone could set up an alternate server), and makes third-party security code audits possible.


Those are nice to have, but neither would change anything about this current situation.

Servers are nice but questionably useful when each one would be living in its own universe, in need of its own app, given Signal architecture.


I'm going to guess that this isn't only affecting consumers. Governments and businesses gradually (sometimes informally) adopt tools their employees use outside work. Tools that are convenient, consistent and prevalent are especially valuable.

If this becomes the "new normal", I'd expect to see criminals launching more burglaries and terrorists launching more attacks during the service shut-downs. If you know your target is in a weakened state, you're going to take advantage of it.


This is why we need decentralization.


And I'm sure we'll not grab the opportunity to use a descentralized messaging protocol. It's like people want somebody to exploit them.


I hope that someday someone smarter than me figures out how to make a truly free internet that isn't bound to be undermined by laws, ISPs, and hosting providers. Of course you would still be free to program censorship into your own walled garden, but the substrate would not be controllable by anyone. I used to think that the Internet was that, but it's proven not to be almost daily.


The only way is for every home to have its own node in a web so it is entirely private, but one still needs to cross the oceans and deserts.


Is telegram also blocked, I think it sounds like a good alternative that people can use now, if it's not already blocked.


A better alternative would be Signal https://whispersystems.org/

Telegram is a terrible alternative. Messages aren't even end to end encrypted by default and they're kept accessible on Telegrams servers. See the recent news on how a russian activists Telegram account got hacked giving them access to all stored messages: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2016/04/30/russia-telegram-h...

Also this:

Thomas H. Ptacek: By default Telegram stores the PLAINTEXT of EVERY MESSAGE every user has ever sent or received on THEIR SERVER.

Edward Snowden: I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram's defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it's unsafe.

https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/678065993587945472

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678271881242374144

https://twitter.com/moxie/status/678219238394298372

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/678274362609426432

And the response from Pavel where he admits that security isn't a priority

https://twitter.com/durov/status/678305311921410048


Sounds Telegram is the type of messaging system that the judge would like Brazil to use.


I agree that Signal would be a better alternative, I've been trying to convince my family to use it over WhatsApp.

But wouldn't Signal be vulnerable to this type of block too, as they are centralized?


"Sorry, Brazil! Your mobile networks can't process as many verification SMS as we're sending them. Over a million users joined, more waiting"

https://twitter.com/telegram/status/727200237308227585


Some brazil users started to - Actor (actor.im)

Disclaimer: CEO of Actor and Ex-Telegram employee.


That app looks really cool!

I was looking at the Actor Developer Hub, there is a guide explaining how to install an Actor Server. Does that mean that Actor is decentralized? How does that work?


We are working on it, right now servers are not connected together. We are planning to integrate with Matrix.org.


Any ETA on that? I would be huge.


Sorry, but not ETA yet :( If you know good scala developers that wish to join us to implement this then it will be faster.


Telegram gets hit hard every time WhatsApp gets blocked in Brazil. It's happened 2x before (at least).


How exactly are they shutting it down? Are all ISPs ordered to block it?


"Politics is the art by which politicians get money from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other" -- Oscar


Simple solution (just 4 steps).

Instal Orbot (tor proxy), run it, setup Settings->Select apps->What's up and give the finger to your censors.


I'm not saying the judge did the wrong thing but I think one could avoid this kind of problems by using decentralized services.


What I find interesting the most is that they have 100M users in Brazil, yet they don't have an office there.


Maybe this is a great opportunity for whatsapp competitors? Especially brazilian?


Makes me wonder why people aren't making a self-hostable IM system that govt can host and ask it's citizens to use. There can be a setting to switch end to end enable/disable encryption.

I am not being entirely facetious. It's after all how Cisco made a lot of money by selling IDS equipment.


I suspect that most (neoliberalist) governments do not feel that it is their job if the market is handling it. Also, people seem to trust megacorporations like Facebook more than their own government for private communication, although I am profoundly troubled by this naive majority view on privacy — I'd rather have my communications end-to-end encrypted without some huge corporation or any government harvesting my (meta)data; it's just too easy to abuse.


just a passing thought, would this happen to have anything to do with privacy and surveillance concerns? seems oddly suspicious this comes after WhatsApp announces end to end encryption


Google, Used by 1B+ Chinese, Blocked Nationwide for Years by GFW.


First its iPhone/Apple. Now its WhatsApp/Facebook.


Someone needs to create sane international e-commerce laws. I guess the question is "Who?"


and I thought only India had technically laid back judges.


this is my shitty country and his shitty law.


What most people outside of Brazil don't realize is that WhatsApp is almost universally used by Brazillians to communicate about EVERYTHING, even your doctor [0][1]. My wife is Brazillian and uses it to communicate with her family in Brazil every day. This will have disastrous consequences for Brazilians domestically and internationally. This policy is being put in place by unelected judges and cartel of monopolistic telcos - all at the expense of the people.

[0]http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap... [1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-brazilians-use...


That sounds incredibly dystopian. A proprietary communication protocol made by a foreign company dominating all communications without recourse sounds like something out of 1984.

I mean, if your doctor is using it, you know you are screwed the day Facebook does anything you disagree with, because you are wholly dependent on them at that point. That was why we even developed interoperable federated messaging protocols over 15 years ago, apparently the world forgot about how bad the 90s were.


Dystopian only in the mind of a sci-fi fan. In practice it's a free communication service that helped millions to connect. No one forced people to use WhatsApp like something from 1984, people chose it from the various alternatives.

In fact, a lot of people prefer Telegram, and a lot use neither, preferring good old cellphone conversations. Oh wait, isn't that a closed protocol that dominates all offline communications? How dystopian...


You are under the impression that people in 1984 are forced into that position. These situations don't happen by force, it's gradual change over time, like the frog you slowly boil.

What is dystopian is the amount of control corporations have on our day to day lives, as well as the freedom to study and follow our every moves and thoughts and do so for profit or other ends. That is dystopian, not the technology itself, the usage that they make of it and the obliviousness of the vast majority of its users as to what they are up to with it.


The whole point is being forced to do it or not. I do not use Facebook, any Google service or anything that could track me, because I care. There's no control here, I'm not being forced to use those services and even if I were to use them - like most people who do not care for their privacy - it's just information being voluntarily shared. It makes no difference for them, and they can stop using those services/use an alternative any time they want.


GSM (assuming that's what is used in Brazil) isn't free of patents, but at least everyone could (in theory) start their own telecom company and compete with the another ones. And I assume in reality (even in Brazil) customer could switch from a telecom operator to another if they are not happy with the service provided by the first one.

If I want to communicate to some another WhatsApp user, I need to use WhatsApp.


What does one thing have to do with another? If I want to communicate with you on HN I need a HN account. How is that dystopian or what does it have to do with protocols?

If you want to communicate with another person you can use Telegram or whatever you want.


Some people will never be happy with proprietary software


It's not without recourse. It's just a system that became a defacto standard. If WhatsApp goes away for good, surely everyone will move on to something else, maybe even considering the "centralizedness" of it, but the transition costs are there, especially on a case with such short notice.


> A proprietary communication protocol made by a foreign company dominating all communications without recourse sounds like something out of 1984.

Yes but still better than orkut, I guess...


Don't forget, a lot of diseases are hereditary, so your children are screwed as well.


That's quite an overstatement. People know how to adapt. On the first court order, people were posting on Facebook about how to connect using VPN providers. Millions others downloaded Telegram.

I, for one, think that this kind of thing is a very good example on why we should NEVER rely on closed services. Whatsapp may be doing all of the right things (creating new features, improving privacy, keeping the product free and separate from FB), but it is still closed.


What's your definition of 'closed'?


I cannot interact with WhatsApp users without registering an account with WhatsApp and running proprietary code published by WhatsApp. Compare with email, where I can email friends at whatever provider without registering with them or having to run their code.


Additionally, you can't even use WhatsApp without a mobile phone number, and effectively you need a smartphone with a supported mobile operating system of their choosing. That's pretty closed.


No, it won't have disastrous consequences. It happened last year as well

Typical authoritarian act by a lower court judge that will be reversed in 1 or 2 days

Nothing to see here


> Nothing to see here

I feel like this is an overly dismissive attitude to have, even, or especially if, everything you said is true and this is some common behavior.


Unfortunately this became common for Brazilians in the last few years. Judges are perceived as having extraordinary powers over everyone's lives. In the last few months, lower court judges have blocked actions of the president of the republic. They have also put in jail some of the richest people in the country, supposedly for corruption, but also for political reasons.


> They have also put in jail some of the richest people in the country, supposedly for corruption, but also for political reasons.

Yes, the owner of the biggest construction company in Brazil, that had a sector dedicated for paying bribes, was "supposedly" arrested for corruption.

What a joke


Depends on how you define disastrous. As pointed out several other times in the comments, several commercial activities rely on WhatsApp on several levels.

Even blocking for a few hours causes several man-hours to be spent in setting up alternatives. And lots of telephone costs, as well, since many companies - including those with technicians on the field, sometimes in another state - use that to communicate instead.


Or maybe WhatsApp could comply with the law?


Others have said they don't have the data. How can they comply, then?


Well sounds like they basically ignored the court[1]. If you don't bother turning up to defend yourself in court, you'll almost certainly lose.

WhatsApp should decide how much they care about Brazil. If they care, they could have bothered to send a lawyer. If they don't care, then they shouldn't complain about their service being cut off.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615056


"disastrous consequences"? Perhaps Brazilians should engage in some technological risk management.


It's almost like Brazil is the most technologically advanced poor-3rd-world-nation

I know from my brief time at Facebook, they use Brazil user-searches in their intro classes to tableau reporting on users' graphs - "show me everyone in Brazil who is 18 years old and posted about subject-X"


Samstave,

Just a bit of nitpick to save you some trouble in the future. Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal.

Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word. There are much better, non-pejorative terms to be used.

Brazil is a part of the BRICS or the world emerging countries. Right now it is in a huge political crisis and on the verge of a coup but it is not a poor-3rd-world-nation, it is a the world seventh economy and also dictating tendency for many emerging countries and a continental power in the south.

That being said, you are completely correct that Brazilians love technology. Our smartphone revolution and expansion is awesome and we're keen to adopt new tech. Still more than half of the country doesn't have access to net infrastructure at their home and depends on cybercafes.

If you want some real data on the technology adoption and usage in the country you can use the metrics and indicators from CETIC[0] which is the Brazilian Institute for the study of information technology usage and adoption. Their reports are awesome and will give you a much greater insight on internet usage in the country.

[0]: http://cetic.br/

PS: Sorry for the long rant, I work with digital inclusion and web literacy programs here in Brazil, unlocking new digital skills in low-income neighborhoods so I've been immersed in this type of thing for too long.


Total GDP (that is, not per capita) is completely irrelevant in determining whether a country is poor. The GDP of Africa is higher than that of Brazil. Does that mean if all the countries in Africa decided to merge into one country tomorrow, it would suddenly not be considered poor? Of course not.

HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP per capita are both much better measurements of how "rich" a country is than raw GDP. Brazil's HDI is 0.755, just below Mexico (0.756)[1]. That's good by global standards, but still "poor" by U.S. standards. Its GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, so being kind to Brazil) is $15,615. The U.S.'s is $55,805[2]

[1]: http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...


I completely agree with you. HDI is a much better index and measurement. This is actually what we use in social programs here.

The GDP comment I made is that this is not a "poor country", it is instead a country full of wealth inequality and self-perpetuating bad distribution of opportunities where poor people are being kept poor due to having no access to infrastructure and opportunities.

It is a very complex situation and all expressions such as "poor-3rd-world" or "seventh gdp economy" are all reductionist and shallow compared to what is really happening.


I agree with your comment, particularly with the fact that HDI is a good index for monitoring the "richness" of a country.

However, the parent comment was about Brazil being a 3rd world country, not only "poor" by US standards. There are 113 countries that score lower than Brazil: countries like Ukraine or China. I don't think they are the 3rd world.


>Brazil is the seventh world economy, if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal.

GDP per capita is what matters here. And GDP per capita in Brazil is a joke. I think a country full of poor people can be called a poor country.


I think it will be very hard for Brazil and India to shake being labeled as third world countries, with the amount of citizens below the poverty line, and the poor infrastructure of the areas those citizens inhabit. The United States itself is labeled as a third world country when talking about areas of Detroit for example, and the wealth inequality starting to resemble that of Brazil and India. You might take exception to the term "Third World Country" because it is primarily used pejoratively in public discourse, but I think it is fully warranted, since Brazil, India, and the United States have a lot they can be criticized about. The elite of these countries are not afraid of practicing unbridled greed, unbridled because they removed the bridle through corrupt practices, using their wealth to accumulate power over government. I say all of this as an American.


Of course countries can be criticized. There are so many wrong things here that I wouldn't even learn where to begin prioritizing the list of criticisms.

Things are getting better, we've managed to get ourselves out of the U.N. Hunger and Misery map. This is a victory, and not a small one. The past 12 years it has been the very first time in 500 years where there are no people starving to death.

Still, the problem of Brazil is not that "it is a poor country" or "it has poor areas" like others portray in a simplistic view. As you said, it brews out of a self-perpetuating wealth inequality where the gap keeps enlarging as rich get richer.

We'll always find things to criticize and still advances are made by focusing efforts on solving the very problems we surface with our criticisms.


Why would anybody pretend Brazil isn't poor?

Ok, we are not terribly poor people are starving around the streets, but salaries are very low, prices are very hard, wealth is very concentrated, and a huge share of the people live from government handouts.

That is not being rich.


Well, that way there is nothing to confront or solve because they are not poor and by inference there is no injustice.

It's like us saying, no, there is no racism in the US (or practically any place).


Your analogy between the terms 1st/3rd world country and that particular racial epithet is beyond absurd. To confirm this just try saying one or the other at work to test the reactions you get.


I am saying this because people do take offense on the 3rd world monicker. In many fields that term is considered offensive when used in public discourse. This is not a joke. What a group perceives as normal speech may be a term that in other circles is considered bad and better terms and classifications might be in place


I think only citizens of third-world countries are offended by the third-world monicker.

It is englightening to note that a false insult is usually shrugged off, and a true insult usually taken to heart.

The trick is to notice when the insult is true and modify your behaviour so that the insult is no longer applicable.


You can't just declare a common word to be offensive and get offended when people use it in a normal context and expect to have a reasonable conversation.


You don't know many 21st century identity-politics leftists, I guess. Try visiting Seattle :)


" if you count the number of nations in north america and europe, being the seventh world economy is a great deal."

This is a weird attitude.

China is the #2 world economy but indisputably has a top 5 ranking for most impoverished people with hundreds of millions of impoverished people.


It is a great deal because it shows that the money is there and the problem lies elsewhere in society. A poor country with poor GDP and HDI is in a very hard situation. A country with high GDP and poor HDI has a chance of solving its problems and rising up if it can solve its wealth inequality.

Brazil in the past decade made huge advances in that. We are a recent democracy, we've been a military dictatorship for a long time. In our couple decades as a democratic country we've managed to get lots of good things done but of course there are millions impoverished and we're not even close to solving anything. Still the new social programs, the fact that millions moved our of the misery level, this is great.

If we could solve wealth distribution and opportunity, this could be a really great place. Our problem is not the lack of money but the concentration of it and the concentration of access to infrastructure and opportunities as well.


You are continuing to confuse GDP and GDP per capita


> Brazil is not poor. Brazil is the seventh world economy

In terms of GDP per capita Brazil is 76th, bellow the world average.

Also bellow places like Uruguay, Argentina and say Botswana.

It's a poor country.


> division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today

> Its akin to saying the N-word

I'm sorry, what?

How can you even compare these two things, I can't imagine anyone finding "3rd world" offensive (After all, you don't use it to refer to people... do you?) . Especially when it's objectively true.


In many political science contexts and academies the "3rd world" monicker is considered offensive and obsolete. I am not joking, people do take offense on this term and classification scheme...


'Third world country' is an ambiguous term and a bit of a misnomer, because it originally meant 'a country aligned with neither West or East' (during the Cold War). Its use has become conflated with that of 'developing country', because the two meanings overlapped in practice. It is also considered derogatory due to its ambiguity and general connotation of colonial superiority.

It helps to be aware of those connotations if you choose to use a term like that (which can be a conscious choice to express your position). Although I agree that comparing it with racial slurs like 'nigger' is not really appropriate, there is some similarity in that these are words that are slowly moving out of the modern vocabulary appropriate for civilised discourse.

Just use 'developing country'.


Not a "coup", you know that.


> Also the division in 1st world and 3rd world is schewed upon today. Its akin to saying the N-word.

Thank you.


Great response! (Y) Nice to see people like you here.


>> on the verge of a coup

I was with you up until this line.


there is no coup in place in brazil, stop spreading fud


The only people that say there is no coup going on are people supporting the coup. Please get informed about this discussion.


The impeachment process is strictly following the Constitution and being closely monitored by the Supreme Court. The majority of the Brazilian population, the majority of deputies and the majority of senators support it. The majority of foreign watchers consider it a legitimate process. It is not a coup by any stretch of the imagination.


A valid impeachment needs to follow from legitimate charges of wrongdoing according to the constitution. The charges against the president have not been ruled as crimes, unlike what happened for example to Mr. Collor de Mello in the 90s. The charges are merely accusations, which need to be proved beyond doubt. Therefore, the whole process is illegal. The congress and the majority of the country are betting on the fact that the charges will be considered as real crimes by the supreme court, but there is a lot of questions if this will eventually happen (contrary to what the media is promoting). The government, on the other hand, is pretty sure that there is no crime involved. Because of the shaky ground of the whole process, a large number of jurists consider the whole thing to be a coup.


Se voce gosta tanto assim da Dilma, por que nao volta a morar la? Deve ser muito comodo para voce defender o governo do PT sentadinho ai em Nova York, ne? Queria ver se voce fosse um dos mais de 11 milhoes de desempregados!

Quando eu morava la e trabalhava para uma grande empresa de telecom, antes mesmo do escandalo do mensalao, eu vi o Lula roubando bem na minha frente, recebendo 150 mil reais por mes de propina disfarcados de "prestacao de servicos de consultoria" (a forma preferida de agir da quadrilha do PT) atraves da empresa do filho dele. Servicos que obviamente nunca foram prestados: a epoca, a G4 sequer tinha funcionarios!

Sinceramente, eu nao ligo se a Dilma vai ser impichada porque jogou papel de bala no chao. Ela fraudou as eleicoes, jogando a economia no lixo no processo. O PT esta transformando o Brasil na nova Venezuela. Independentemente de qual argumento formal pelo qual efetivamente consiga justificar-se, ela merece ser deposta.

Quem deveria se informar sobre tudo o que realmente esta acontecendo por la e voce. Voce fica so nas superficialidades.

Trouxa.


Tinha que ser golpista mesmo pra entrar em baixaria... procura tua turma.


Defensor de bandido. Continue assistindo tudo de longe sem se importar com as pessoas que sofrem nas maos do governo mais corrupto da historia do Brasil.

Falta uma semana so para acabar a farsa petista, para sempre.



Whenever they're not making official rulings, what judges of the STF say is just a matter of personal opinion. To validate the impeachment these judges need to rule on the validity of the charges raised against president Rousseff.


And they will rule in favor when it comes to the senate, just as they expressed in the link that they would.

Saying "there's a coup!" is cheap government propaganda. The impeachment is proceeding according to the law and the charges are serious.


By force of law, judges are not allowed to pre-judge, i.e., to express to the public what they will decide on the bench. Suggesting the opposite is the exact definition of propaganda. This impeachment will only be legal if the supreme decides so, and that can only happen when they sit to judge this issue. Until then, the whole process is proceeding in judicial limbo. It can quite rightfully be termed as a coup.


No, it's not a political limbo. It got voted in the congress just as the law requires and is awaiting the voting in the senate just as the law requires it. The president of the STF presides the hearing on the senate where testimonies are gathered, and the STF votes for the impeachment. It's not "a coup" just because it hasn't reached that state yet. Stop spreading misinformation.


You are the one not well informed. The STF allowed the process to continue because it doesn't want to interfere with the prerogatives of the congress. But in the STF hearing of 4/14, they decided that the accusations need to be analyzed by the judges for the process to be valid. This means that the supreme court can stop this process to decide on the criminal charges that have been made against president Rousseff when they see fit, and this will certainly happen before the end of the process. Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.


>The STF allowed the process to continue because it doesn't want to interfere with the prerogatives of the congress. But in the STF hearing of 4/14, they decided that the accusations need to be analyzed by the judges for the process to be valid.

This is the case for EVERY IMPEACHMENT proceeding. It's called separation of powers.

>Without criminal charges, the impeachment is invalid according to the constitution, it doesn't matter how many votes it had.

Except there are criminal charges, in this request and in the dozen other requests that are awaiting. Stop spreading misinformation.


A Dilma deveria ter sido presa em flagrante por obstrucao de justica ao nomear Lula ministro as vesperas da prisao preventiva dele ser decretada.



There's no coup, stop spreading misinformation.


Thank you very much for the information. I stated something without the whole picture, and a lot of people replied.

I will stand by my comment that Brazil is rather technologically advanced with respect to how net-savvy their population is. I wrongly stated that Brazil is 3rd-world... And as another user points out, Brazil "meerly" suffers from deep corruption.

However, in my defense, I shall contend that the simple existence of "favelas" in Brazil is perceived to be a very 3rd world to me, an isolated, white American.


Favelas are a world fenomenon. We call them by various names, chantytowns, slums, whenever there is a long-term concentration of low-income classes without access to infrastructure but requiring living quarters near middle and upper income classes due to work reasons these tend to appear.

Check out recent documentaries on Favelas, it will probably surprise you in both positive notes and also on horrible notes as well. Favelas are a cultural part of Rio in a way that most slums elsewhere are not. Favelas are intertwined with higher-income classes in the urban areas where they occupy the many hill areas of Rio. They dictate music and trends for millions of people and are a huge part of what makes Rio into Rio.

Still our corrupt governments, crimelords, militias, and consumerist culture makes those places prone to crime and violence.

Talking to you and taking you as an "isolated white american", pick some violence-prone neighborhood in your state and imagine if you could break it up into small areas and sprinkle that on top of your most prized real state area. This is Rio, where poor and rich live couple streets away from each other. In many places in the U.S. such neighborhoods occur away from higher-income regions in suburbs or far away districts, here, it is all mixed and that leads to a lot of confusion for foreigners.

Favelas are also a sympton of the lack of infrastructure. Mass transit in Rio is a joke and living/real state is very expensive. Favelas are the only solution for millions that need to work in the city but can't afford to live anywhere better. It is a self-perpetuating problem where people are born to these neighborhood and lack the access to education and opportunities that would enable life changing events that would move them and their families into better conditions.

Long story short: our governments (federal, state and city) sucks. People keep electing corrupt people. No one knows a way out of this mess.


> "No one knows a way out of this mess."

Create and promote news outlets that represent the interests of the people. This also gives a platform for non-corrupt people to run for office. That's one potential solution I've found for the problems in my own country. Do you think it would help in Brazil?


If "favelas" are sign of being 3rd world, what about homeless people, or does your "isolation" prevent you from seeing them?


The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country, even though it has quite a global influence in industries such as consumer electronics, automotive, semiconductors, and steel.

edit: Apologies, looks like I was completely wrong since the source online I looked at incorrectly defined SK as economically undeveloped (I looked further and SK is in the G20, which would clearly make it a developed nation), and I was unaware of the Cold War era designation that commenters have pointed out to me.

I was always confused why SK would be considered a 3rd world country when my own impression from its industrial strength was that it should be a 1st world country, so I'm glad that I've been corrected.


> The 1st world and 3rd world country can often be a strange one. South Korea is technically considered a 3rd world country

By both the common current common informal usage (of relatively developed economies) and the original definition (nations allied with the US in the Cold War), South Korea is a first world country.


South Korea isn't, but Switzerland and Sweden, by virtue of being neutral is a third world country in the original defintion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.


> Because it wasn't an economic criteria, you've also got countries like Angola in the First World by the original defintion.

No, you didn't. Angola was never both a country and part of the First World (Portugal was part of the First World when the term was coined, and Angola was part of Portugal then; when Angola became independent, the regime was Cuban-backed and Soviet-allied, and thus it was part of the Second World.)


SK is absolutely first world


He's probably using the technical term from international relations, according to which "third world" meant neither aligned with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Not only is that wrong (the Republic of Korea was and is about as closely aligned with the U.S. as a country can possibly be), but it's confusing, since what was clearly meant in the context of this thread was the different, colloquial meaning of "1st world" meaning "developed" and "3rd world" meaning poor.

Regardless, SK is unambiguously 1st world according to either definition.


Calling Brazil a "poor-3rd-world-nation" is really ignorant, as it has a development index similar to Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Cuba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...


São Paulo alone manages to rival New York City in scale, so it's absurd to call it "third world".

Significant parts of Brazil lag behind in terms of development, but this is true in the US as well.


Sure but all the countries you mentioned are rife with corruption. Fuck those countries. I stand by my statement then: they are 3Rd world with respect to how they treat humans.

Turkey is a corruption horror show. Mexicos death rate due to cartels is astronomical compared to every other country on earth. Cuba is still driving cars from the fifties and doesn't even have Internet, yet it houses our worst torture center that we know of (yes, all that is the fault of the US CIA) and Iran was an overthrown democracy (CIA again, thanks George) - but you cannot argue that they are not "3rd world" - we fucking kept them that way to exploit them.


Brazil is a poor third world nation. It might be developing fast but still far from reaching middle income levels.


Your comment was filled with the typical Valley arrogance and ignorance with anything outside of SoMa.

Not only is Brazil not a poor-3rd-world-nation, but other similar developing nations are by far more "technologically advanced" (e.g. China, India).


You obviously have no idea what you're talking about if you think China, Brazil, and India are all at similar levels of development.


Brasil is the 8th economy in the world.


GDP per capita is the relevant metric here, as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has. Using that metric, Brazil ranks 76th [0].

Ranking countries by nominal GDP [1] gives a lopsided view of the world's economy as you can have countries with very large populations of poor people that rank highly, such as China (#2) or India (#9).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...


> GDP per capita is the relevant metric here

Yeah, I was going to make a similar comment. Listing the wealth of nations based on nominal GDP will result in a list that's similar to ordering them by population size.


>as it's a much better gauge of how much money each person has

You've got to be kidding me.

The US has a massive GDP per capita but there are 30 million people struggling to survive without even healthcare.

GDP per capita tells you nothing about how much each person has, it just tells you how much there is and how many people. How's it's split among them is another story.


The U.S. is one of the most developed countries in the world, by any reasonable metric.

It's true that it's not doing the best in the world, or that it has no problems -- especially when you compare it to a narrowly cherry-picked set of countries in Western and Northern Europe[1], or island/pseudo-island megalopolises in East Asia like Japan and South Korea. But its massive GDP per capita lines up well with other measures of development, like its HDI.

[1]: As an aside, it's probably more fair to compare Europe as a whole to the US as a whole, and places like Norway and England to places like California and Washington.


> The US has a massive GDP per capita but there are 30 million people struggling to survive without even healthcare.

Relatively few people personally need healthcare at any given time.

In comparison to, say, clean water, food, shelter, education, and physical security, which actual third world countries seem to still have serious problems with.


> which actual third world countries seem to still have serious problems with.

If you're comparing the US to actual third world countries, you've already lost.


Perhaps the country has a large economy, but its people are being left behind. In the list of countries by average wage, they are 47th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

And for the median household income, they aren't in the top 35, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income


The first wiki link data is weird. How is that even possible ?

25 Israel $1,804 26 Russia $1,800


I'm not sure I understand what you're pointing out here. How is what possible, the Israel's average wage is $4 more than Russia's?


Brasil is not poor, is F*n corrupt.


Thanks, this is the main comment I shall reply to: yes my comment was made in ignorance. Ignorance is the lacking of knowledge of the situation.

I was not having the information I needed to make a fully informed comment, and thus I offended people, apologies.


Not unsympathetic to the brasileros affected, but this is not the first time this happened over there - surely at this point the fragility of centralised platforms, and becoming reliant on them, is well known by now?


It also points to the fragility of Brazilian institutions.


If the institutions were fragile, the Internet companies would just refuse to comply and block WhatsApp. The fact that they complied shows how strong the institutions are.


It's in the telcos interest to block WhatsApp, they're selling the SMS and phone calls that are used as backup.


I see telcos choosing to comply with the order instead of fighting back (like Apple) as a sign of fragility.


In countries with fragile democracies (or that have recently come out of a dictatorship, like Brazil since 1985), when people say "institutions are strong/weak" they are talking about Congress, the Legal system, Law Enforcement, etc. They are often trying to say that "the law means something" as opposed to elites/politicians/etc ruling the country as they wish, according to personal interests.

Telcos and App providers can contribute to make a democracy strong. And so do all citizens. But they aren't what is referred to by "institutions".

There is no widespread fragility in Brazilian institutions today. Recent events have shown they are strong as ever. Telcos and App providers have all their rights within the legal system to appeal the recent decision against WhatsApp and get their arguments heard. WhatsApp has already appealed to this judge's decision and this will be heard by an appeals court. This is business as usual in a legal system that is working.


I'm talking about the institutions that defend Brazilians' access to basic communications infrastructure in the face of any random judge trying to rule against mathematics.

Check the US for example, Apple was able to fight the government's request and prevail _before_ the government did anything about it, not after. In Brazil, Tim Cook would have been arrested right away.


If Brazil had an Apple equivalent, the situation would have been handled the same way. I wonder how many smaller companies in the US had to comply or die? See Lavabit [1]. I'm sure there are have been many other similar occurrences.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit


Skype back in the day went to great lengths to be unblockable (mostly for commercial reason, there was a time before smartphones that people actually payed lots of money for international and domestic calls). It was pre MS.

Why are not the other messengers doing the same?


I was never a big Skype user, but my understanding is that Skype relied on individual users serving as "supernodes" in a peer-to-peer distribution network for messages and calls. The Skype client's default configuration opted you into serving as a supernode, and this was a supremely unpopular move.


It was more than that- there were antidebugger measures. The node list was encrypted. Protocol obfuscated. Also people in skype network were nodes. The supernodes were dedicated servers.


Keep electing terrible politicians Brazil


In this case the decision maker wasn't even elected.


America's track record is often just as bad. The difference is people don't care and the politicians don't end up in jail.


This has nothing to do with the state of democracy of Brazil.


That's assuming there are fair elections in Brazil.


Yep we're stuck to voting machines since 1996, so there's no way to know about that


That's assuming there are civil rights in Brazil.


You are full of crap. The seventh world economy in the terms you are refering to is meaningless. By your logic, is Brazil welthier than Switzerland or Netherlands? NOT even close. GDP is MEANINGLESS if you really want to know how the average citizen lives in a country. The fact is that in Brazil the prices/inflation are through the roof, housing and goods are extremly expensive and their salaries are ridicusly low. Let alone the rampant and systemic corruption. So no, maybe Brazil as a whole concept is not poor. But the Brazilians? Yes, most of them are.

EDIT: BTW, this is a forum to discuss. If you think I'm wrong say why, don't just downvote. And no, saying "crap" in the internet is not a reason to be wrong.


> You are full of crap.

Comments like this break HN's civility rule. Please (re-)read the site guidelines and eliminate this kind of thing from your posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614911 and marked it off-topic.


I didn't downvoted you, actually, I agree with you. GDP is not the best way to measure or have this type of discussion.

GDP proves to us that the "country is rich", HDI tells us that "this richness is not distributed" which means that we have an endemic and self-perpetuating problem with wealth distribution and access to infrastructure, which I believe you'd agree.

I completely agree with your statement that we have a rampant and systemic corruption scheme in place here and that makes solving all of this mess an extremely complex problem.

Being the seventh world economy is not meaningless, it proves that with the correct measures in place, we have the economic power to move economy/jobs and wealth forward. If we could pair that with proper access to education and opportunities then we'd have a really marvelous place.

All the criticisms you made there are true and still, we're in a better place than 20 or 25 years ago, specially when we're talking about the low-income classes and impoverished. Lots of advancements there but nowhere close to solving the problem...


Oh, the EDIT wasn't targeted to you especifically, more of a general thing.

I agree with you, but I found the first comment misleading, thus my heated response. By meaningless I meant regarding the "feel" that you get as a citizen, or as a turist, or even as an outsider watching the news, which is that the country and its people are in trouble (also relative, compared to UE or US, not to central Africa for example). I completely agree that the country has a lot of potencial, resources, and great people. It has vast amounts of petroleum, the Amazonas etc etc. And I also agree that one of the problems is the distribution of the wealth. And sure, you are improving the situation.

I think a somehow similar "rich" country in a bad situation is Argentina, with lots of resources and also oil reserves. So is Russia. Bad management, corruption, education etc are some causes of it. It is indeed a very complex problem.


"saying "crap" in the internet is not a reason to be wrong"

But saying "you are full of crap" on HN is a reason to be downvoted.


I suspect you are being down voted for your tone, not for the accuracy of your comment.


Yeah ... Personally, I don't find a bit of emotion in the discussion bad as long as you provide arguments.


True, but emotion can be expressed in a civil manner, which in my opinion is more effective as well.

A lot of people simply stop reading when confronted by rudeness or profanity and just downvote and move on, because experience has proven that such comments usuaully lack proper arguments. Use civil language to prevent being classified as noise.


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