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Monday, May 02, 2016

WhatsApp back up in Brazil after court-ordered outage causes social-media chaos

WhatsApp back up in Brazil after court-ordered outage causes social-media chaos - The Globe and Mail: "The shutdown order was issued by a judge in an industrial city in Sao Paulo state, in an attempt to force the company to provide user data as part of a criminal trial. The case is sealed and the court would not provide further information, but Brazilian media say prosecutors are seeking access to messages exchanged on WhatsApp by the accused.

 The judge who overturned the ban said it should be possible to force WhatsApp to comply without cutting people off, and suggested a massive fine instead.

 Mr. Steibel said the ban was beyond comprehension, within Brazil or beyond its borders. “It’s very hard to understand, how you could have one court make a ruling that affects the whole country on this scale,” he added, saying it “says a great deal about technology and society in Brazil in 2015,” and how institutions have been slow to catch up with how people really live.

 The country’s telecom carriers scrambled to enforce the ban; only one, Oi, went to court to try to stop it. There is no love lost between WhatsApp and the big telcos, who see it as an Uber-like intruder that doesn’t play by the rules, not paying the same taxes or fees they do. In recent months, telecom firms have been heavily lobbying Congress to regulate the app." 'via Blog this'

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