It looks like things are rather tense on Facebook’s side at the moment in Brazil, after one of their executives were detailed after the authorities there claimed that the social networking giant did not manage to comply with an existing court order. Said court order requested Facebook to provide data from WhatsApp, which is a messaging app that falls under Facebook’s ownership since the second half of 2014.
The reason for that request had something to do with a criminal investigation concerning drug trafficking. Sounds somewhat familiar to what Apple and the US government are going through at the moment, don’t you think so?
In the event, police in São Paulo brought in Diego Dzodan, Facebook’s VP for Latin America, for questioning earlier this morning, and right now he remains in custody. If one were to check out Dzodan’s LinkedIn profile, he joined up with the company last year, and both of his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles also point to him as the VP for Latin America at Instagram. Incidentally, Instagram is also owned by Facebook.
Facebook’s assistance is required as the suspects in the criminal investigation allegedly made use of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate between one another, planning their criminal activity through those channels. A Facebook spokesperson claimed that the detention was an “extreme and disproportionate measure.”