The ban was first imposed by Judge Sandra Marques in Sao Bernardo do Campo in Sao Paulo because the company had not complied with an order to provide information for a criminal investigation, which is secret. The court claimed that WhatsApp had refused to cooperate in a criminal case.
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A Brazilian court has ordered cellular service providers nationwide to block the popular WhatsApp smartphone application for two days until midnight Saturday, in a move roundly denounced by parent company Facebook.
The interruption of WhatsApp’s text message and Internet telephone service caused outrage in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country and led to a war of words on the floor of Congress.
The Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg was stunned by initial ban and posted a message (below) on his Facebook wall saying that it’s “a sad day for Brazil”. Telegram said that since the blockade, there has been a barrage of users trying to sign up for the service that it could not even send out verification codes used to sign up.
WhatsApp was slowly being made available again by mid-afternoon on Thursday. Brazilian telecoms have urged the government to crack down on WhatsApp, arguing that its free voice call service is unregulated and illegal, though officials have yet to implement new regulations.
WhatsApp is reportedly the most popular app in Brazil, with around 100 million users in the country.
WhatsApp and Facebook did not immediately respond to questions about the judge’s reasons for the ban.
A court ordered it blocked in connection with a criminal case, whose details have not yet been revealed.
In a nutshell, government officials feel out of the loop and believe tech companies like Facebook should do a better job handing over user information and proactively hunt down troublemakers.
Facebook bought the messaging app for $19 billion in 2014.
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Individually in the court case, Brazilian phone companies have encouraged the authorities to control the usage of complimentary voice over-internet services. Users in Chile and Argentina were also affected by the block.
