Brazil court has asked to ban WhatsApp, Could India do it anytime?

Judge Luiz de MouraCorreia, from the state of Piauí, has ordered the mobile app WhatsApp to be suspended in Brazil.

He has declared that the aim of the decision is to demand the company that owns the app to contribute with the State Police in investigations.

WhatsApp is allegedly not helping in investigations that date back to 2013 and which may be linked to crimes against children and teenagers – the judge does not confirm the kind of crimes, which in he claims to be “severe”. Correia demanded that the internet and mobile connection providers suspend the use of the app, like telephone operators.

The reason, according to the lawyer, is that the company has denied complying with police “diligence”, which means that the investigations come to a halt.

The magistrate gives an example of what the authorities could be asking for. “Until very recently we made phone interceptions, but nowadays nobody uses the phone [to speak], they only use WhatsApp. So that we can know what criminals have said, where they are, it is only by monitoring mobile apps”, he says.

He also says that the decision to request the ban to telecommunication companies, instead of to the American company, was carried out after WhatsApp denied sharing this type of information, supposedly saying it did not need to comply with Brazilian law because it does not have an office in the country.

 Can India force the US to Co-operate?

  India in the past had requested the US help to decrypt the messages but has not received any satisfactory cooperation from the side of US.

In many instances, hate speeches on various sites have created communal violence within India. Even in such important matters, service providers have refused to remove contents from their servers blocking the same from public viewing citing the legal provisions of the country where their servers are based

India has a reason for fear – and with good reason – that terrorists and anti-social elements could well be using these chatting services in order to chalk up their plans and hatch conspiracies.

It’s to be noted that the presence of their web servers is required in India for legal interception of the communication, but neither that is available which makes it difficult for the authorities when investigating a cyber-crime.

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