It appears that Apple is not the only tech company dealing with issues over encryption and data security. Facebook Vice President of Latin America Diego Dzodan has been detained by Brazilian police authorities after the social networking giant failed to comply with a court order demanding that the company gives authorities access to users' data on WhatsApp.

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The biggest dilemma of the situation is that WhatsApp encrypts all the messages that passes through its platform. Moreover, messages from users are volatile, which means that they are not permanently stored on WhatsApp servers.

Tech experts claim that even though investigators have physical access to the device in question, the encryption WhatsApp is using is so strong that it is very difficult to crack.

In a statement acquired by Engadget, WhatsApp said, "WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have. We cooperated to the full extent of our ability in this case and while we respect the important job of law enforcement, we strongly disagree with its decision."

The information Brazilian authorities are seeking is related to an ongoing drug trafficking investigation. Reports indicate that the Brazilian court ended up issuing the order three times. After that, the court imposed a fine of $12,600 on the company. The fine jumped to $253,000 per day in February.

On Feb. 7, following weeks of unanswered demands, the Brazilian court issued an arrest warrant for Dzodan.

In December 2015, Brazilian authorities also shut down WhatsApp for two days for undisclosed reasons.

It is important to note that WhatsApp is among the top messaging platform used by Brazilians. WhatsApp is estimated to have over 93 million users in Brazil alone. Some tech analysts agree that this massive user base is one of the reasons why Facebook is fighting to protect its users' rights in the region.

TagsFacebook, Facebook VP, Facebook news, Facebook Brazil, Facebook WhatsApp, WhatsApp