Brazil court blocks WhatsApp for 48 hours

RIO DE JANEIRO A Brazilian court on Wednesday ordered telecommunications providers to block all access to the WhatsApp phone-messaging application for 48 hours throughout Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, the court said in a statement.

The shutdown order came after the Sao Paulo State Justice Tribunal in São Bernardo do Campo determined WhatsApp had not complied with two earlier court orders issued this summer, Reuters reported.

Brazil has blocked Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging app, preventing users in the country from connecting to service or sending messages.

“We are working hard to get this block reversed”, Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page.

Ninety-three per cent of the net public in the country’s use WhatsApp, as stated by the TechCrunch web site, with poor Brazilians and many young taking advantage of internet telephone service and its own free text message. “Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online”, Zuckerberg said in a statement, urging a reversal.

“I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision”, he said.

The advantage of this ruling was to rival messaging system Telegram wherein it received 1 million downloads in Brazil in one day due to the outage as per the company’s official Tweet.

According to the 24-hour Band News TV network, the case involves a drug trafficker who allegedly used the WhatsApp service in the commission of crimes.

According to the court, WhatsApp failed to go along with a legal order forwarded on July 23. But Telebrasil, the organization that serves a bridge between the Brazilian government and the telecoms, lamented that the court’s actions were not in the interest of the telecoms, particularly as they would be blamed by customers for the lack of service.

Koum also noted that nine in ten Brazilian doctors used WhatsApp to talk to their patients. The app, which operates on just about every mobile platform, was acquired by Facebook a year ago for $19 billion.