The Brazilian authorities arrested Diego Dzodan, Vice President of Facebook for Latin America yesterday, for allegedly failing to comply with a court ruling issued last year.
The arrest stems from a court case in the northeastern Brazilian province of Sergipe in 2014. The judge there had ordered Facebook to help local police track down suspects for trading drugs.
The court order required the Facebook to reveal the details of users who were suspicious. This data actually belonged to WhatsApp, a company which Facebook bought in 2014.
For four months, Facebok ignored the court order. The police imposed a fine 50.000 Real Brazil (about $ 12.700) for each day that was not compliant. During the previous month, the daily fine had risen to 1.000.000 Real Brazil ($ 250.000).
Seeing that the company has no intention of following the court decision, the judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Mr Dzodan on the grounds of not cooperating with police investigation.
Facebook's response through a spokesperson was that the company is unable to provide the information which have been ordered. Facebook and WhatsApp are still different companies, so it's technically impossible to hand over the information the police were looking for.
However, it is unknown what exactly the police are looking for. It could be simple user details, but also the content of private, possibly encrypted, conversations that Facebook probably does not have access to.
For Brazil, WhatsApp is the most widespread social network, and Brazilians, in general, are avid consumers of social media, with most Brazilians having accounts on both Facebook and Twitter.
