The chief justice of the Brazil’s Supreme Court had quickly struck down a lower court decision that had blocked these WhatsApp messaging services nationwide for many hours, and further affecting almost 100 million users.
Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski ruled on a complaint filed by a political party yesterday seeking to throw out the order by Rio de Janeiro judge.
Early in the day, Daniela Barbosa a Judge has ordered the suspension because the social media giant Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, could further not help in police investigation.
The app was then suspended at 2 PM local time. Lewandowski had ruled after the service has been blacked out almost four hours. Telecom operators have said that, they were waiting to be notified formally so that, they could put the messaging system online in Brazil.
Jan Koum WhatsApp CEO has also said that, the company was working to get their app running again. “It is very shocking that less than two months after the Brazilian people and lawmakers loudly rejected blocks of services like the WhatsApp, history is repeating itself.”
Koum has said this on his Facebook page. Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes has also said he wanted a solution that would prevent these decisions like Barbosa’s.
It was at least the third such ruling against the WhatsApp this year in Brazil. A judge in the northeastern state of Alagoas has blocked the app over a separate investigation in the month February, and WhatsApp was then blocked in Sao Paulo for 12 hours in December by a judge in that region.
After the Barbosa’s ruling took effect, the website of the court where she usually sits went offline. The activist group Anonymous Brasil claimed it had knocked out the site as a “protest against WhatsApp being blocked.”
