A Brazilian Court Has Overturned a Ruling that Left the Country Without WhatsApp for a Day

A Brazilian appeals court has overturned a 72-hour suspension of the WhatsApp messaging service after a day in which the block triggered outrage among the application's many users in Latin America's largest country.

WhatsApp was cut off in Brazil at 2pm on Monday afternoon after a judge in the remote northeastern state of Sergipe ordered Brazil's five main wireless operators to block access to the app. This was the second such freeze in five months, apparently related to court demands that the company release information related to a criminal investigation.

The order was lifted when an appeals judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of an injunction by WhatsApp's lawyers, the court said in a statement.

The suspension highlighted growing international tensions between the privacy concerns voiced by technology companies and the efforts by authorities around the world 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, which is owned by Facebook, 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.

The company has said in the past that it does not store encrypted information from WhatsApp messages.

A São Paulo state judge ordered text message and Internet voice telephone service for smartphones be shut down for 48 hours on December 15, after Facebook failed to comply with an order, although another court interrupted that suspension after about 12 hours.

Monday's suspension angered many in Brazil, where more than 90 percent of Android devices have WhatsApp installed. Cost-conscious Brazilians are avid users of free messaging apps, and WhatsApp is by far the most popular.

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.

The suspension also came as a congressional commission on cyber crime in Brazil debates 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.

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