The 13-hour interruption of WhatsApp's text message and Internet telephone service caused outrage in Latin America's largest country, where the company estimates it has 100 million personal users, and led to angry exchanges on the floor of Congress and social media.
Rival messaging system Telegram said on Twitter that it received 1 million downloads in Brazil in one day due to the outage.
A judge in the commercial capital Sao Paulo had ordered the suspension of WhatsApp's services from midnight on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday) after the California-based company, despite a fine, failed to comply with two judicial rulings to share information in a criminal case.
Felipe Santos, who works as as salesman at a clothing store in downtown Sao Paulo, said the suspension had cut communication with his customers.
"They told me we will have to go 48 hours without WhatsApp, but it's terrible not to have WhatsApp. I am using my mobile phone, but it's not the same, without my contacts, without being able to talk to people, without talking to my customers… But what can I do? All I can do now is wait," he said.
Real estate agent, Felipe Constantino, said he felt lost without WhatsApp.
"I use it to talk to friends, for work, with family... It's hard to not have it (WhatsApp) because we are used to using it a lot every day, so I'm still kind of lost," he said.
After several hours of suspension, WhatsApp services were restored following the injunction from the higher court.
Judge Xavier de Souza from the 11th criminal court of Sao Paulo ruled to re-establish the service, but recommended a higher fine be imposed on WhatsApp.
The incident highlighted growing international tensions between technology companies' privacy concerns and national authorities' efforts to use social media to recover information on possible criminal activities.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg also spoke out against the court order in a post.
According to local networks, the criminal case involves a drug trafficker linked to one of Sao Paulo's most dangerous criminal gangs, the PCC, or First Command of the Capital. The trafficker allegedly used WhatsApp services while committing crimes.
WhatsApp is widely used by people, companies and federal and local governments to send messages and share pictures and videos.
Lawyer Guilherme Ieno, who specialises in Internet cases, said Brazil's new internet bill clearly defends freedom of communication.
"It doesn't matter who sent it (messages), to whom it was sent and what its content is, what matters is that there must be freedom of communication, so these messages must circulate freely within the internet. It is also not the responsibility of the content's host to -- Brazil's internet bill also makes that clear -- to be responsible for the content sent by its users. So this judge's decision was exaggerated," he said.
On the floor of Congress, lawmakers expressed their frustration at the suspension.
The suspension appeared to affect WhatsApp users outside Brazil's borders, as hundreds of in Chile and Argentina took to social media on Thursday to complain that the messaging system was also interrupted in the two southern cone countries.
Chilean telecom provider VTR, owned by Liberty Global Inc, said it had re-established service to WhatsApp for its clients by using an "alternative international link." Earlier it said that difficulty in accessing the app "originated outside of Chile," without giving details.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
