Brazilian authorities yesterday arrested Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice president for Latin America, on charges of non-compliance with a court order issued last year.
The arrest stems from a court case in the state of Sergipe in northeastern Brazil in 2014. The judge there had ordered Facebook to help local police identify drug trafficking suspects.
The court order required Facebook to disclose the data of users who were suspected. This data actually belonged to WhatsApp, a company that Facebook bought in 2014.
For four months, Facebook ignored the court order. Police fined it 50,000 Brazilian reais (about $12,700) for each day it failed to comply. Over the past month, the daily fine had risen to 1,000,000 Brazilian reais ($250,000).
Seeing that the company has no intention of following the court order, the judge issued a warrant for Mr. Dzodan's arrest on the grounds of non-cooperation with a police investigation.
Facebook's response through a spokesperson was that the company is unable to provide the information that has been ordered. Facebook and WhatsApp are still separate companies, and so it is technically impossible for it to hand over the information the police were seeking.
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, to which Facebook likely does not have access.
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.
