Yesterday I told you that a judge in Brazil made the decision to block WhatsApp Messenger after the company Facebook refused to help the local authorities in various criminal investigations, the reason being that all messages sent through the network are encrypted and cannot be accessed by company representatives.
The Brazilian judge did not care too much about this explanation and decided that WhatsApp Messenger should be banned for an unlimited period of time in the country, the mobile phone operators implementing the decision yesterday, of course the decision was not a final one and was successfully attacked by Facebook representatives.
Today the Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil decided to unlock WhatsApp Messenger in the country, so that all the more than 100 million citizens can use the text messaging network again, but probably only until a new judge decides to misinterpret the law and impose the blocking of access to the application.
The strained relationship with Brazil
Facebook has very big problems in Brazil with WhatsApp Messenger, the local judges being decided to ban access to the application whenever they have the opportunity, and this based on a law from 2014 which is apparently interpreted wrongly by them, or at least that supports the General Prosecutor of the country.
Brazil is so far the only country in which WhatsApp Messenger had a permanent ban from a judge, even if the decision was overturned on appeal, but no other country has imposed a more serious sanction than a temporary blocking of the service, at least not until now.
WhatsApp Messenger has over 1 billion users worldwide, and 10% of them are active in Brazil, so we are talking about a very important part of the messaging network that is affected by these decisions made by the courts, the conversation encryption system following to create bigger problems in the future.
