WhatsApp in Brazil First Banned then Reinstated

The Rio Court in Brazil passed a ruling on July 19, 2016 that WhatsApp should be blocked as the service no longer shared information over the mobile network regarding criminal investigations. The rule got issued from Daniela Barbosa de South, judge in the Duque de Caxias County's Second Criminal Court.

The court repeated the ruling thrice but the order remained unmet. So it adopted coercive measures such as ordering service providers to stop hosting WhatsApp in the country or pay hefty fine. This time the 5 major service providers of Brazil namely Oi, Nextel, Claro, Vivo and TIM abided with the ruling.

Actually, WhatsApp in Brazil has been refraining from circulating people's exchange of dialogs with agencies of law enforcement within the network of mobile owners. The service also noted that it didn't anymore store mobile owners' chats.

In May this year (2016), the situation had become bad because a judge from Brazil suspended WhatsApp; however, when an appeal followed, the judge decided to let the service continue.

Then on 19th July, court again prohibited WhatsApp from operating, otherwise it would have to pay $15,300 daily as fine till the time it followed the court order and shared the conversations and messages related to criminal investigations.

The development led to a hackers' attack on Rio Court's website the same day and the attack lasted for a couple of hours, but the site returned to normal accessibility at 3pm local time. The hackers' group was understood to be Anonymous because it came forward and claimed responsibility through a message it put up on its Facebook account while elaborated the reason.

According to President John Rao of Anatel, the decision to ban WhatsApp was disproportionate as all users of the service would get punished. He contended that WhatsApp's adherence to court orders was to the extent of technical conditions, so the comprehensive blockade wasn't any solution.

The hackers triumphed as just after some hours of their assault, the Rio Court, which in full form is 'Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do Rio de Janeiro,' withdrew the ban based on Mr. Rao's argument.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/25/2016