Whatsapp in Brazil prohibited by the judge, but it still works – PianetaCellulare.it

Written by Simone Ziggiotto, the 02/27/15

A judge of a Brazilian court ordered the suspension of the nationally popular instant messaging system WhatsApp. The suspension was ordered on 11 February after WhatsApp has apparently refused to help the police. However, the service continues to run as the ruling was immediately appealed by WhatsApp, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paul , or reported.

The judge did not want comment on the details of its decision, because it is an ongoing case , but a press officer of the Department of Public Safety of the State of Piaui said that the case was related to the “sexually explicit photos of children shared through the app. ” He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing internal regulations.

WhatsApp did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the media. WhatsApp does not have an office in Brazil so the judge’s order was delivered to the mobile operators, who have been asked to prevent the operation of the service.

SindiTelebrasil , the association that represents operators, said on its website that the suspension could have “huge losses for millions of Brazilians” using WhatsApp for personal and professional reasons.

WhatsApp is property Facebook , which last year paid about $ 22 billion for the acquisition of the mobile messaging service.

The judge argued that WhatsApp is legally required to hand over information about users or their conversations when required. Important thing is that the service seems to function normally within the country. “We are not currently suspended in Brazil,” he confirmed a representative of WhatsApp to The Verge.

Because of the end-to-end encryption used by WhatsApp users only have access to encryption keys for the ‘access to private conversations, and the company can not actually deliver the transcripts even when legally compelled to do so.

However, the judgment appears to have been a fortune for competing services, probably because of some news wrong who reported that the application was successfully blocked. Telegram, another service that provides the end-to-end encryption, recorded 2.5 million new users, with 100 registrations per second in the hours after the first news about the order of block Whatsapp have appeared online.

At the moment, therefore, WhatsApp is working in Brazil, and it was not until the appeal judgment to know what will the messaging service in the country.