Brazillian judge orders WhatsApp ban

The judge, Daniela Barbosa Assunção de Souza, ordered the country’s wireless carriers to block the messaging app for allegedly not cooperating with a criminal investigation.

WhatsApp has been blocked – and quickly unblocked – in Brazil by a judge for the third time in less than a year. “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”.

The long-running dispute pits Brazilian authorities’ insistence that they need access to communications between alleged criminals against Facebook’s argument that it is protecting privacy and freedom of communication.

A political party filed a motion with Brazil’s Supreme Court in the capital of Brasilia seeking an order restoring WhatsApp, and Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said he wanted a solution that would prevent decisions like Barbosa’s.

In May, a judge ordered a 72-hour ban on the service for failing to hand over data in a police investigation and arrested a Facebook VP. WhatsApp representatives reportedly stated that encrypted messages sent through the app aren’t stored on company websites, which means that the company can’t actually access it. WhatsApp implemented end-to-end encryption in its app back in November 2014. “Indiscriminate acts like this one threaten people’s ability to communicate, manage their business and live their lives. We hope to see this block lifted as soon as possible”.

Lewandowski ruled after the service had been blacked out nearly four hours. This time, however, the court has ordered telephone companies to block WhatsApp indefinitely.

WhatsApp’s co-founder and Chief Executive Jan Koum expressed surprise at the ban earlier Tuesday on his Facebook page.

What makes things worse is that the judge in this case took offense at the way WhatsApp responded to the court’s demands.

“WhatsApp is blocked across the whole national territory”, a spokesman for the court in Rio de Janeiro said. Apparently, the company was treating Brazil like a “banana republic”.