First modification:
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – A Brazilian judge reversed this Saturday the suspension of the Telegram messaging service, determined last week in the framework of an investigation into violence in schools and neo-Nazi groups that operate on the platform, a federal court reported.
The magistrate of second instance Flávio Lucas considered that the suspension of the application throughout the country “is not reasonable”, since it affects “the freedom of communication of thousands of people absolutely unrelated to the facts investigated”, but maintained the daily fine of one million reais (USD 198,000) imposed on the company in the first instance, the Federal Regional Court-2 (TRF-2), based in Rio de Janeiro, reported in a statement.
The Federal Police and the Brazilian prosecutor’s office had asked Telegram for the personal data of all the members of the “Brazilian Anti-Semitic Movement” and “Anti-Semitic Front” channels, which the authorities associate with attacks on Brazilian schools in recent months.
Last November, a 16-year-old teenager shot dead four people and injured more than ten in two schools in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo (southeast).
The young man “would be a member of extremist groups on Telegram, where neo-Nazi apology material was shared (…) with the dissemination of murder tutorials and the manufacture of explosive devices, and videos of violent deaths,” detailed the TRF-2.
According to the first judicial instance, Telegram only delivered “partially” the requested data.
The Dubai-based company, registered in the British Virgin Islands, said in a statement on Thursday that the requested information is “technologically impossible to obtain” and announced that it would appeal to the courts.
“No matter the cost, we will defend our users in Brazil and their right to private communication,” its executive director, Pavel Durov, said at the time.
The message service, which began to show instability for Brazilian users after the blocking order on Wednesday, continued to not work properly on Saturday afternoon, AFP found.
Telegram was already subject to a suspension order in Brazil in March 2022, when a Supreme Court judge determined its blocking on the grounds that the company repeatedly failed to comply with court orders to combat disinformation in an election year, and did not cooperate with the authorities in the repression of other crimes.
Alarm for attacks in schools
In recent months, Brazil has registered a series of attacks on educational centers that shocked the country and set off alarm bells for the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
At the beginning of April, four children between the ages of 4 and 7 were murdered in a nursery in the state of Santa Catarina (south) by a man who broke in armed with an axe.
In the days that followed, the country recorded two new attacks on schools, with no fatalities.
Following the episodes, the government announced measures to force social networking platforms to block content and profiles that propagate or advocate attacks against schools.
In addition, he intensified his campaign for a new law to regulate the activity of the platforms, currently under debate in Congress.
“It is necessary that technology companies understand that cyberspace cannot be a free territory, a different world (…) with its own rules, created and administered by the agents that exploit it commercially,” defended judge Flávio Lucas in his brief, cited by the court.
