Brazilian Court Of Appeal Cancels Ban On Telegram, Fines Still Valid

JAKARTA - Brazil's appeals court dismissed a ban on Telegram's encrypted messaging app on Saturday, April 29, which was previously brought down this week for not complying with information sharing about extremist and neo-Nazi groups using the platform.

Flwavio Lucas, a judge of Brazil's Second Regional Federal Court, stated in his decision that the full suspension of Telegram services was "unreasonable" due to its impact on the freedom of communication of thousands of people unrelated to ongoing investigations.

However, the judge maintained the application of a daily fine of one million reais (IDR 3 billion) to the company for failing to provide the requested data.

Federal police requested an order to terminate after Telegram failed to comply with previous court decisions to submit data on two neo-Nazi groups on the app accused of encouraging school violence.

Telegram promotes itself as a message application that focuses on speed and privacy and claims secret chats in particular using end-to-end encryption that is not stored on its servers.

Telegram has not commented on this, when asked by Reuters.