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Court Rules to Block WhatsApp in Brazil for 72 Hours

05/02/2016 - 13h45

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JULIO WIZIACK
FROM SÃO PAULO

A Brazilian Court has ordered both landline and mobile phone service providers to block the WhatsApp instant message service throughout the country for 72 hours.

The measure will be enforced at 2 pm on Monday (2). The April 26th decision comes from Judge Marcel Montalvão, from the district of Lagarto, in the state of Sergipe.

The five service providers -TIM, Oi, Vivo, Claro and Nextel- already received the order and said they would cooperate. If they do not abide by the terms, they will be subject to a daily fine of R$ 500,000 (US$142,000).

Judge Montalvão is the same one who, in March, called for the arrest of Facebook Latin America's Vice-President, Diego Dzodan. At the time, the decision was made after the company refused to cooperate with Federal Police investigations in regard to WhatsApp conversations in a drug trafficking case.

A measure from the beginning of April should make cooperation between Justice and the mobile application even more difficult.

WhatsApp adopted "end-to-end" cryptography (where only the people participating in the conversation can read the messages –even the service providers can't access the exchanges) for all of its applications, messaging and storage.

In December, WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil for 48 hours due to a criminal investigation. At the time, the court order caught service providers by surprise, but the measure did not last 48 hours.

The block was the court's retaliation against WhatsApp for refusing to break data confidentiality for exchanges pertaining to criminal investigations. The application is owned by Facebook.

In February, a similar situation arose in Piauí, when a judge also motioned for a WhatsApp block in Brazil, with the intention of forcing the company that owns the application to collaborate with state police investigations related to pedophilia cases.

The decision was suspended by a judge from a court of Piauí state.

Translated by SUGHEY RAMIREZ

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