What Happened Last Time Brazil Shut Down WhatsApp?

A judge in Brazil ordered

Facebook IncFB

to shut down its messaging app WhatsApp - again. As of 2:00 PM ET on Monday, WhatsApp's users in Brazil no longer had access to the popular messaging app. According to

CNN

, Facebook failed to release data to the government as part of an ongoing drug trafficking investigation. Facebook claims that its data is heavily encrypted and the company itself doesn't keep any records of chats. The app will be blocked for 72 hours in Brazil. WhatsApp's founder Jan Koum posted a status update on Facebook which expressed his frustration. "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," he said in his status update. "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. While we are working to get WhatsApp back up and running as soon as possible, we have no intention of compromising the security of our billion users around the world. WhatsApp was

previously banned in Brazil back in December 2015 for a similar reason. Facebook refused to turn over data as part of a criminal trial. A federal judge ordered at that time a 48-hour ban of WhatsApp. However, the ban only lasted 13 hours and was overturned by a second judge who stated that it could be possible to force the company to hand over the requested data without cutting off service to its people. At the same time, only 1 of Brazil's telecom carriers, Oi, went to court to try to stop the ban.

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