WhatsApp Brazil Ban Overturned By Supreme Court

WhatsApp has been banned multiple times by lower courts in Brazil as part of an ongoing investigation only to be unbanned by the higher courts. Yesterday, the widely used cross-platform messaging service was indefinitely blocked in the country as it reiterated its inability to comply with a request for user data. WhatsApp maintains that it can’t provide the user data as end-to-end encryption even makes it unable to access that data. The ban has been overturned today by the country’s Supreme Court.

The lower court indefinitely banned WhatsApp because the company did not comply with a request for conversation data that’s required for a criminal investigation. WhatsApp maintains its inability to provide said data as it can’t access it.

Moreover, the lower court judge was irked by the way WhatsApp was responding to the court. She accused the Facebook-owned company of treating Brazil like a “banana republic,” did not like that the company responded via emails in English even though the country’s official language is Portuguese.

Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the ban it’s unlikely that lower courts will go this way once again in the future. There’s a precedent now of the highest court in the land overturning the ban despite repeated requests to WhatsApp for data that it can’t provide.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Whatsapp