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 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. (1700 EDT) on 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. (1300 EDT) on 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.
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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.
Letícia 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.
(Editing by Daniel Flynn and Cynthia Osterman)
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