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.
"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.
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.