By being developed and run internationally by foreign companies, WhatsApp and Facebook are, in a sense, not bound by local law in many countries. Even if Facebook, Inc. had a subsidiary branch in Brazil, the branch is hardly the entity developing and deploying the app.<p>This is part of the problem, in a way, and why - for example - Russia and China are developing their own versions of operating systems, so as not to have all their communications be snooped on by Microsoft and its host government&#x27;s spooks. The latest Windows is a notorious privacy hog with nary a way to opt out anymore.<p>But notice the difference: facebook and WhatsApp are centralized by design and all traffic goes through their servers. Windows, on the other hand, is installed locally and only &quot;phones home&quot; as an auxiliary feature (for now). So, theoretically, once it is set up, you can install a DNS proxy between you and servers out-of-the-country and it will still work.<p>We need MORE open source software that anyone can install, inspect and administer. Perhaps Free software in the sense of FSF. We need this kind of software to run our social networks, on our own servers under our control. There is very little reason why messages between people in an African village or a cruise ship have to bounce halfway around the world through Facebook&#x27;s satellites to its headquarters before going back. Also, a lot of document collaboration in classrooms would be faster if it used IPFS and intranets instead of Google Docs. And so forth.<p>Decentralize all the things! Then, the developers of the software would indeed not be bound by the law, but only the hosts. And the hosts would be small and distributed enough that only warrants issued to a specific host would be effective, and not general sniffing of all traffic on a social network!<p>If you want this future, we are building it: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;platform" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;platform</a>