A Brazilian court ruled, on Wednesday, to suspend the work of the “Telegram” application, after its owner company refused to provide data requested by the authorities as part of an investigation of the activity of neo-Nazi groups on this application.
The court imposed a fine on the app of about $198,000 per day for “non-compliance” and ordered the “temporary suspension of its activities,” Justice Minister Flavio Dino said in a video to reporters.
“There are groups calling themselves the ‘Anti-Semitic Front’ and ‘The Anti-Semitic Movement’ that are active on these networks, and we know that this matter is at the heart of the violence against our children,” he added, referring to a recent wave of attacks in schools.
In April, a man wielding an ax killed four children, aged between four and seven, at their school. In the same week, two other schools were attacked without causing any deaths.
And last March, a thirteen-year-old boy killed a female teacher at a school in the city of Sao Paulo, stabbed with a knife. And in November, a 16-year-old gunman killed four people and wounded more than a dozen others in two attacks on two schools in the southeastern state of Espiritu Santo.
And the “G1” news website quoted police sources as suspecting that the teenager was in contact with anti-Semitic groups on “Telegram”.
According to documents from the federal judicial authority in Espiritu Santo, investigators asked Telegram to provide them with the personal data of members of two anti-Semitic groups on the platform. However, the company only handed the investigators the data of one of the group’s managers.
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