Brazilian Federal Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes on Friday banned Telegram from operating in the country and asked the National Telecommunications Agency to notify internet service providers to block the messaging app within five days.
This follows a request from the Brazilian Federal Police claiming that Telegram is “known for its position of not cooperating with judicial and police authorities in various countries”.
The decision was prompted by Telegram’s failure to comply with court orders, according to local media reports.
While Telegram followed some court orders to block accounts used to spread disinformation on its platform, the messaging platform failed to comply with the points of the Court’s decision, including providing the Justice Department with registration information for the blocked accounts.
Federal police also said they tried to forward court orders and ask Telegram to provide registration details for suspended users through all available channels, but received no response.
Telegram’s failure to respond to requests from law enforcement eventually led to its ban in Brazil, after it was charged with contempt of justice for “failing to comply with the court order, in total contempt for Brazilian justice,” as Moraes pointed out. added.
“Ignoring Brazilian law and repeatedly failing to comply with numerous Telegram court decisions [..] including those coming from the Federal Supreme Court – is a circumstance that is completely incompatible with the current constitutional order, and furthermore contradicts expressly legal provisions,” Moraes explained in the decision.
Banned for email “miscommunication”
After Brazil’s Supreme Court decided to block the messaging app, founder and CEO Pavel Durov said Telegram was to blame and found failure to comply with the Court’s orders on “miscommunication” and missed emails.
“It seems we had a problem with emails between our telegram.org business addresses and the Brazilian Supreme Court. As a result of this miscommunication, the Court has decided to ban Telegram for not responding,” explains Durov.
“We complied with a previous court order in late February and responded with a suggestion that future takedown requests be sent to a dedicated email address. Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, as the court has kept the old generic email address on further attempts. used to reach us.
“As a result, at the beginning of March, we missed the decision containing a follow-up request. Fortunately, we have now found it and processed it, sending another report to the court today.”
Durov also asked the court to postpone its ruling for at least a few days until Telegram appoints a representative in Brazil to expedite similar issues in the future and keep the tens of millions of Brazilian Telegram users in touch with their friends. and family.
“The past 3 weeks have been unprecedented for the world and for Telegram. Our content moderation team was inundated with requests from multiple parties,” Durov added.
“However, I am confident that once a reliable communication channel is established, we will be able to efficiently process takedown requests for public channels that are illegal in Brazil.”
This post Telegram banned by Brazilian Supreme Court for missed emails
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