Facebook Inc.'s WhatsApp messaging service
resumed in Brazil on Tuesday after an appeals court overturned a
suspension and many of the application's 100 million users in the
country voiced outrage.
WhatsApp was cut off in Brazil at 2 p.m.
(17:00 GMT) Monday after a judge in the remote northeastern state of
Sergipe ordered Brazil's five main wireless operators to block access to
the app for 72 hours. The reason for the order was not made public, and
it was the second such freeze in five months.
The suspension was lifted after about 24 hours
when an appeals judge Tuesday ruled in favor of an injunction by
WhatsApp's lawyers, the court said in a statement.
The suspension highlighted growing
international tensions between technology companies' privacy concerns
and national authorities' efforts to use social media to gain
information on possible criminal activities.
The same judge in Sergipe ordered the
imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive in March in a dispute
over demands to access the company’s encrypted messaging service as part
of a drug trafficking investigation.
California-based WhatsApp had said in a
statement on Monday that it was "disappointed" at the judge's decision
to suspend its services. It said it had done the utmost to cooperate
with Brazilian tribunals, but it did not possess the information the
court was requesting.
The company has said in the past that it does not store encrypted information from WhatsApp messages.
A São Paulo state judge ordered text message
and Internet voice telephone service for smartphones be shut down for 48
hours on Dec. 15, after Facebook failed to comply with an order,
although another court interrupted that suspension shortly afterward.
Monday's suspension angered many in Brazil,
where more than 90 percent of Android devices have WhatsApp installed.
Cost-conscious Brazilians are avid users of free messaging apps, and
WhatsApp is by far the most popular.
The service is used by individuals, companies and federal and local governments to send messages and share pictures and videos.
REFORMS PROPOSED
As some Brazilians sought an alternative
messaging system, rival Telegram said on Monday that it suffered
technical problems under the weight of demand. It said it received more
than a million new user requests.
LetÃcia Mendes, a 20-year-old shop assistant
in Rio de Janeiro, said she was frustrated by the suspension because it
could force people to use pay services.
"It's really bad because some people only look
at WhatsApp on their phones, so now they take a long time to answer,"
she told Reuters. "It's just a way of getting more money out of us, when
we already have to pay for so many things."
The suspension came as a congressional
commission on cyber crime in Brazil debated changes to the 2014
legislation governing the use of the Internet.
Lower house deputy Esperidião Amin, the
rapporteur of the commission, said his proposed reform would help avoid
shutdowns of this kind by allowing the blocking of specific individuals
or IP addresses suspected of illicit activity, rather than the access of
all users.
"It's less dramatic than withdrawing the service from the whole of the Brazilian population," he told Reuters by telephone.
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