Telegram app back on in Brazil after judge lifts suspension
International - POSTED: 2023/04/29 11:08
International - POSTED: 2023/04/29 11:08
Internet providers and wireless carriers in Brazil stopped blocking Telegram on Saturday after a federal judge partially revised a ruling suspending the social media app over its failure to surrender data on neo-Nazi activity.
However, the judge kept in place a daily fine of $1 million reais (about $200,000) for Telegram’s refusal to provide the data, according to a press statement provided by the federal court that issued the ruling.
Complete suspension “is not reasonable, given the broad impact throughout the national territory on the freedom of communication of thousands of people who are absolutely strangers to the facts under investigation,” judge Flávio Lucas was quoted as saying in the statement.
Telegram had been temporarily suspended pursuant to a police inquiry into school shootings in November, when a former student armed with a semiautomatic pistol and wearing a bulletproof vest fatally shot three people and wounded 13 after barging into two schools in the small town of Aracruz in Espirito Santo state.
The 16-year-old is believed to have been a member of extremist channels on Telegram, where tutorials on murder and the manufacture of bombs were disseminated, the court’s statement said. Federal police ordered Telegram to provide details on names, tax identity numbers, profile photos, bank information and registered credit cards of channel members and later disputed Telegram’s claim that it could not comply because the channel had been suspended, the court statement said.