Brazil govt. arrests Latin America Vice President of Facebook

Brazilian police arrested Facebook’s vice-president for Latin America for repeatedly ignoring judicial orders.

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]B[/dropcap]razilian police arrested Facebook’s vice-president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan for not complying with previous judicial decisions.

The federal police stated in a press release that Dzodan had been arrested in Sao Paulo on Tuesday.

An arrest warrant was issued by a judge from the state of Sergipe, after Facebook allegedly did not release messages, sent by WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, which concerned a drug trafficking investigation.

Xinhua quoted the press release as saying that, “The arrest was made for the federal police of Sergipe, considering the repeated ignoring of judicial orders…concerning organised crime and drug trafficking.”

[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]F[/dropcap]acebook has maintained that WhatsApp is operated independently and that it has no staff in Brazil and does not store messages, making it impossible to comply with the court order.

In December, another Brazilian judge ordered the WhatsApp service to be blocked nationwide for 48 hours after the company refused to provide information as part of an investigation into a user of the app.

At the time, the judicial decision provoked a wave of criticisms in Brazil and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, stated that he was “stupefied” and called it “a sad day for Brazil”.

Mexico’s Drug War

Here is an excellent post on Mexico’s Drug War: A New Way to Think About Mexican Organized Crime.

Notes:
1. IANS