WhatsApp Brazil Shuts Down For 72 Hours: Here's Why

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service was being shut down for 72 hours, the second time in less than six months, after reportedly refusing to hand over government-requested data needed in a criminal investigation.

The court order was reportedly issued by Judge Marcel Montalvao from the northeastern state of Sergipe telling telecom companies to block the messaging platform's service nationwide.

"Yet again millions of innocent Brazilians are being punished because a court wants WhatsApp to turn over information we repeatedly said we don't have," said WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum as quoted by CNN.

"Not only do we encrypt messages end-to-end on WhatsApp to keep people's information safe and secure, we also don't keep your chat history on our servers. When you send an end-to-end encrypted message, no one else can read it -- not even us."

The tech firm and the government, particularly law enforcement authorities and the judiciary, are locked in an ongoing dispute whether the government be given access to customers' WhatsApp data. Government officials argued that it was necessary for security reasons. WhatsApp contented that what the authorities asked for is impossible as the messages between users are encrypted.

Following the shutdown, Brazil's 100 million WhatsApp users are reportedly affected by the order. This wasn't the first time the service was blocked. Access to WhatsApp was similarly cut off for 48 hours although it was only suspended for 12 hours.

"After cooperating to the full extent of our ability with the local courts, we are disappointed a judge in Sergipe decided yet again to order the block of WhatsApp in Brazil," said a WhatsApp spokesperson in Brazil as quoted by Tech Crunch.

"This decision punishes more than 100 million Brazilians who rely on our service to communicate, run their businesses, and more, in order to force us to turn over information we repeatedly said we don't have."

For months, the pitched battles between the court and the messaging service have been very damaging especially from the users' end. Last March, one of Facebook's most senior staff member was being taken to custody after its subsidiary, WhatsApp, was accused of deliberately refusing to cooperate as far as government-requested data is concerned. But the social networking giant argued that is subsidiary is relatively autonomous from the parent company.

Telecom firms operating in Brazil like Oi SA, Telefonica Brasil SA, Tim Participacoes SA, Claro SA and Nextel will comply with the ruling as per the country's phone-company association, SindiTelebrasil. If the companies choose to ignore the order, it would cost them 500,000 reais ($143,000) a day for the fines, Bloomberg News reported.