Brazilian court restores WhatsApp service after blackout order
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A Brazilian judge has overturned the country's blackout of the WhatsApp texting service, restoring service to over 100 million people in the country. The reversal comes just one day into the mandated blackout period, which was initially scheduled to last for 72 hours. The blackout order specifically targeted Brazilian wireless carriers, which were forbidden from transmitting WhatsApp data for the duration of the blackout period. Any carrier found violating the order would have been fined 500,000 reals, or roughly $140,000.
The blackout began yesterday, after a long fight over an order served to WhatsApp by Brazil's civil police. Because of WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption system, the company has no records of what users say within the app, and cannot fulfill warrants requesting that information. In a Facebook post yesterday, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum defended the system saying, "we have no intention of compromising the security of our billion users around the world."
- SourceReuters
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