I don't see either how Facebook would be "protecting themselves". They have little to gain and much to lose by not cooperating with the government. It's not about publicity because it wouldn't have made the news at all if they complied.
Now, even mentioning the following may be going into conspiracy theory territory, but telephone companies were trying to get WhatsApp banned not long ago. I wouldn't be surprised if this event would further their goals.
http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html
Or read the google-translated version into Portuguese
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=pt&js=y&pr...
It explains very well why this is no trivial issue to Americans nor to tech people.
Also, your drugs should be legalized or decriminalized, anyway. It would put all the bad guys out of business and bring the entire drug market back within regulation. Portugal did it and it's considered a success, why can't Brazil?
And I say that as a Brazilian, you're comparing an European country with 10 million people (that's less than what my hometown of São Paulo has, now sitting at 11.8 million as of 2014 census) to a country of 200+ million of mostly uneducated people.
Sorry to tell you but you don't change a whole society way of thinking in less than a generation, much less when there's no politicians' desire for that.
Yeah, anyway it should be decriminalized (as it's for users right now) or legalized, but if you want to be real about it, come up with a plan, because realistically speaking there's no way to do it in the next 10~15 years.
http://lixo.org/blog/2013/08/05/privacidade-protege-pessoas-...
> For many people, privacy is a fundamental right - they see no reason why a government should be meddling in my affairs without a more specific reason than a blanket search for possible terrorism.
... this is not about blanket searches, and:
> I'm not saying that privacy is an absolute. Foiling criminal activity often means breaching privacy - a database of phone calls can be helpful tool to investigate a criminal network.
(Sorry for my poor english, it isn't my first or second language.)