A judge in Brazil ordered on Monday that phone companies block Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp throughout the country for 72 hours in response to its refusal to cooperate in a police investigation.
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WhatsApp’s estimated 100 million Brazilian users suddenly found they were unable to send or receive messages in the early afternoon after Marcel Maia Montalvao, a judge in the small, remote northeastern state of Sergipe, ordered the suspension. The ruling, issued on April 26, became public today when it was served on mobile service providers. In December, a different judge ordered WhatsApp to be blocked for 48 hours after it refused to comply with a court order – that ban was lifted within 12 hours following tremendous outrage on social media.
“After cooperating to the full extent of our ability with the local courts, we are disappointed a judge in Sergipe decided yet again to order the block of WhatsApp in Brazil”, a WhatsApp spokesman said in a statement.
This is not the first time WhatsApp service has been interrupted in Brazil. In January, after the last WhatsApp shutdown, two Brazilian think tank fellows, Robert Muggah and Nathan Thompson from the Igarapé Institute, wrote in The New York Times that “the country has one of the fastest growing populations of Internet users in the world”.
Spokesmen for Facebook and WhatsApp didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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The court order is directed at Brazil’s five major wireless carriers, who have been banned from transmitting WhatsApp data for the duration of the shutout.
