{"id":25088,"date":"2016-05-04T02:33:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T02:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/brazil-s-whatsapp-ban-affects-100-million-users\/"},"modified":"2016-05-04T02:34:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T02:34:14","slug":"brazil-s-whatsapp-ban-affects-100-million-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/brazil-s-whatsapp-ban-affects-100-million-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil’s WhatsApp ban affects 100 million users"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Court orders 72-hour shutdown of messaging service but reasons remain unknown due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case.}<\/p>\n

A Brazilian judge has ordered mobile-phone carriers to block access to WhatsApp for 72 hours throughout the country, the second such move against the messaging application in five months.<\/p>\n

Monday’s decision affects WhatsApp’s 100 million-plus users in the country. The reason for the order is not known due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case in the court.<\/p>\n

It is the second time since mid-December that WhatsApp has been the target of a blocking order.<\/p>\n

The service was shut down for 48 hours on December 15 last year after Facebook failed to comply with an order, although another court interrupted that suspension shortly afterward.<\/p>\n

Judge Marcel Maia Montalvao of Sergipe state is the same judge who in March ordered the imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive for failing to comply with an attempted block on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

He was jailed and subsequently freed.<\/p>\n

Twitter user Acaua Tavares reacted with the Portuguese acronym “PQP”, roughly equivalent to “WTF?” in English, an agency reported.<\/p>\n

“WhatsApp blocked again, PQP! That’s Brazil,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Many commenters reacted with a single question: “Again?”<\/p>\n

Officials blamed the company of continuously failing to share information on WhatsApp users for an investigation into drug trafficking and organised crime.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, was “stunned” by the “extreme decision”.<\/p>\n

In a statement, WhatsApp said the company is “disappointed at the decision” after doing the utmost to cooperate with Brazilian tribunals.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Google too found itself under fire. The search engine giant’s top Brazil executive was accused of breaking election laws when he refused to remove YouTube videos that were critical of a mayoral candidate in Mato Grosso do Sul state.<\/p>\n

Reported non-cooperation from media companies is not that uncommon.<\/p>\n

Last year, Apple refused to cooperate with the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a mass killing by a couple in San Bernardino, California.<\/p>\n

\"WhatsApp<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Court orders 72-hour shutdown of messaging service but reasons remain unknown due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case.} A Brazilian judge has ordered mobile-phone carriers to block access to WhatsApp for 72 hours throughout the country, the second such move against the messaging application in five months. Monday’s decision affects WhatsApp’s 100 million-plus users […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25088"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25088"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}