Brazil Supreme Court overturns country's Whatsapp block

Brazil's fractious relationship with messaging service Whatsapp continued to provoke controversy on Tuesday as the app was temporarily banned, before being restored again a matter of hours later.

The Supreme Court overruled a lower court's decision to ban the service from the country, citing a restriction on freedom of speech to its citizens.

It was the third time since December 2015 that the hugely popular messaging app was shut down and reinstated a short time later.

President of the Supreme Court Ricardo Lewandowski made the decision after a previous judge had said that the company had violated an order to intercept messages from a suspect involved in a criminal investigation.

Judge Daniela Barbosa Assumpção de Souza also chastised the company for replying to her questions in English, which she said showed disrespect for Brazil and its laws.

“They’re treating the country like a minor republic,” she wrote.

Whatsapp defended themselves in a written statement by saying that they did not store messages sent between people on their records, and thus could not share any evidence.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Jan Koum said it was shocking that this had happened for the third time.

“It’s shocking that less than two months after Brazilian people and lawmakers loudly rejected blocks of services like WhatsApp, history is repeating itself,” he said in a post on his Facebook account.

The app was also blocked in May of this year, and last December regarding similar incidents in which Brazilian law enforcement required information from it, but both were also overturned by higher courts.