The famous and common social media app and site, WhatsApp, was shut down in Brazil yesterday. This marked the third time the messaging app has been banned in the country since last December.
The ban revolved around Facebook’s refusal to hand over WhatsApp chat logs related to a criminal investigation.
The company continues to argue that as the messages are end-to-encrypted, it simply cannot comply with the courts’ requests.
Judge Daniela Barbosa Assunção de Souza in the state of Rio de Janeiro said the most recent blackout “will only be lifted once Facebook surrenders data.” She added that the company was treating Brazil like a “banana republic,” and criticized its decision to respond to the court in English, “as if this was the official language of this country,” according to Globo.
But Brazil’s top court overturned the decision just a few hours later. Federal Supreme Court President Ricardo Lewandowski called it”scarcely reasonable or proportional.”
WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum posted his opinion on the app’s seemingly never-ending issues in the South American nation.
“We’re working to get WhatsApp back online in Brazil. It’s shocking that less than two months after Brazilian people and lawmakers loudly rejected blocks of services like WhatsApp, history is repeating itself,” he wrote on Facebook Post.
“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,” added.
Brazil’s 100 million WhatsApp users were shut out of the service for 24 hours in December after it failed to respond to a court order to hand over messages linked to a criminal organization, techspot wrote.
The ban was due to last 48 hours, but the intervention of another Judge saw it return after about 24 hours.