Third Ban In A year,But WhatsApp Comes Back Again
Brazil and whats app can be seen at odds with each other, despite that they both can’t live without each other. It was the third time that Facebook-owned app Whats App was banned in less than a year in Brazil for several hours but reinstated later by the Brazilian judicial system.
A Brazilian judge has ruled that WhatsApp is blocked forever, Reuters reports. The judge, Daniela Barbosa Assunção de Souza, ordered the country's wireless transporters to block the messaging app for supposedly not collaborating with a criminal inquiry.
"We're working to get WhatsApp back online in Brazil," WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said in a Facebook post. "It's shocking that less than two months after Brazilian people and lawmakers loudly rejected blocks of services like WhatsApp, history is repeating itself. As before, millions of people are cut off from friends, loved ones, customers, and colleagues today, simply because we are being asked for information we don't have."
The judge's conclusion was handed down after Facebook frequently refused to intercept WhatsApp messages required by authorities in connection with an unspecified criminal investigation taking place in Caxias, outside Rio. The transporters are ordered not to transmit any data for WhatsApp, and will be subject to daily fines of 50,000 real if they are found violating the order.
In a statement, WhatsApp called the measure an "indiscriminate" threat to "people's capacity to communicate, to run their businesses and live their lives". "We are developing a project so that there is a middle ground, in the sense that the company holding the information must have a registered office in Brazil, which technically allows it to provide the Brazilian information", the minister added. The company said it hoped "to see this block lifted as soon as possible.
A judge ordered WhatsApp blocked for 48 hours for failing to react to a court order, In December. At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was a "sad day for Brazil," while Koum called the decision "short-sighted." Service resumed, but in May, Judge Marcel Montalvao ordered it blocked for 72 hours when WhatsApp did not turn over histories associated with a drug investigation. That ban, though, lasted only one day.
In May, Koum said WhatsApp simply does not have access to the data Brazilian authorities want. "Not only do we encrypt messages end-to-end on WhatsApp to keep people's information safe and secure, we also don't keep your chat history on our servers. When you send an end-to-end encrypted message, no one else can read it – not even us," he wrote.
WhatsApp supported its security previously this year when it rolled out end-to-end encryption on all of its apps. Koum, who has been a spoken supporter of encryption, said at the time that encryption is "one of the most important tools governments, companies, and individuals have to promote safety and security in the new digital age."