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Showing posts from May, 2016

Amid Second Ban, Psiphon Keeps WhatsApp On in Brazil

In December, Psiphon blogged about a previous blocking event in Brazil, available here . Psiphon use surged again in Brazil in response to another nationwide suspension of WhatsApp messaging service. On May 2nd, Brazilian state judge Marcel Maia Montalvão issued an order to block WhatsApp for 72 hours . The judge is seeking user data from WhatsApp as part of a criminal investigation. The five main mobile operators were ordered to block the messaging service, beginning at Monday at 2 p.m. local time. In response to the recent suspension of WhatsApp services, company CEO Jan Koum posted a message to Facebook stating, “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. 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 rea