WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge
I'm here to defend the judge's ruling, a position very unpopular among all my friends here in Brazil.Brazilian law regarding regarding privacy of users of internet services is very recent and clear: if a judge order the company to share a specific user data, the company must comply. You can disagree with the law, but the law is there.Now, the judge ordered Whatsapp to share a particular user conversation (a suspect murderer - edit: drug dealer). But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil. The order was sent to Facebook, who ignore as Whatsapp is another company. So, without any executives in Brazil that could be held responsible for disobeying the law, the judge fine the company. They continue to disobey the order (for months). The judge suspends Whatsapp activity (for 24h a few months ago, but that order was suspended itself after a few hours). Now Whatsapp continue to disobey the judge's order until this day. The  judge suspend the company again.All arguments I hear against the judge is in the line that Whatsapp is "too big to fail". That's not a valid point in my opinion. If they disobey the law, it must have consequences, no matter how big and important to brazilian society they are. If they had operations and executives in Brazil this would never had happened at the first place. They would have lawyers fighting against the decision to share the user data and this would be solved by the justice system (never coming to have its activity suspended).
But Whatsapp simply ignored brazilian justice system as if it was above the law.It is very unfortunate that it came to this point, but it is not like a judge decided yesterday that Whatsapp should sufer for whatever reason. They got a lot of months of warning for this. And he is acting completely according to the law. For me, all of this is Whatsapp fault.