Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on
Brazilians to demand his company's WhatsApp messaging service never be
blocked again after an appeals court on Tuesday overturned the
application's second suspension in five months.
In a post in English on his Facebook page, the
U.S. billionaire and Facebook founder urged Brazilians to gather
outside Congress in the capital Brasilia at 6 p.m. local time Wednesday
to rally in favor of legislation that would prevent Internet services
from being blocked.
WhatsApp was cut off in Brazil at 2 p.m. local
time Monday after a judge in the remote northeastern state of Sergipe
ordered Brazil's five main wireless operators to block access to the app
for 72 hours. The reason for the order was not made public.
The suspension of WhatsApp's text message and
Internet voice telephone service for smartphones was lifted after about
24 hours when an appeals judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of an
injunction by the company's lawyers, the court said in a statement. Some
100 million users were affected.
"You and your friends can help make sure this
never happens again, and I hope you get involved," Zuckerberg wrote on
Facebook. He also posted a link to a petition, calling efforts to block
communication "very scary in a democracy."
The suspension highlighted growing
international tensions between technology companies' privacy concerns
and national authorities' efforts to use social media to gain
information on possible criminal activities.
The same judge in Sergipe ordered the
imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive in March in a dispute
over demands to access the company’s encrypted messaging service as part
of a drug trafficking investigation.
California-based WhatsApp had said in a
statement on Monday that it was "disappointed" at the judge's decision
to suspend its services. It said it had done the utmost to cooperate
with Brazilian tribunals, but it did not possess the information the
court was requesting.
Matt Steinfeld, a Facebook spokesman, said
WhatsApp executives were meeting this week with law enforcement and
judicial officials in Brazil to improve communication and clarify that
the company cannot see users' encrypted messages and does not store them
after transmission.
BRAZILIANS ANGERED
It was the second time in five months that
WhatsApp in Brazil has been suspended. A São Paulo state judge ordered
it shut down for 48 hours on Dec. 15, after Facebook failed to comply
with an order. Another court lifted that suspension shortly afterward.
Monday's suspension angered many in Brazil,
where the service is used by individuals, companies and federal and
local governments to send messages and share pictures and videos.
Cost-conscious Brazilians are avid users of free messaging apps, and
WhatsApp is by far the most popular - installed on more than 90 percent
of Android devices.
As some Brazilians sought an alternative
messaging system, rival Telegram said on Monday that it suffered
technical problems under the weight of demand. It said it received more
than a million new user requests.
LetÃcia Mendes, a 20-year-old shop assistant
in Rio de Janeiro, said she was frustrated by the suspension because it
could force people to use pay services.
"It's really bad," she told Reuters. "It's
just a way of getting more money out of us, when we already have to pay
for so many things."
The suspension came as a congressional
commission on cyber crime in Brazil debated changes to the 2014
legislation governing the use of the Internet.
Lower house deputy Esperidião Amin, the
rapporteur of the commission, said his proposed reform would help avoid
shutdowns of this kind by allowing the blocking of specific individuals
or IP addresses suspected of illicit activity, rather than the access of
all users.
"It's less dramatic than withdrawing the service from the whole of the Brazilian population," he told Reuters by telephone.
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