Brazil’s Judge Accuses X of ‘Willful’ Circumvention

Brazil’s senior judge responds after X (formerly Twitter) this week temporarily circumvented a court-ordered ban, after updating how its servers are accessed in the country.

The Guardian reported that Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes has now accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block.

On Wednesday access to X was ‘temporarily’ restored in Brazil after the update used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.. Elon Musk’s X said it was an “inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users,” and it expected the platform would “be inaccessible again shortly.”

Brazilian clash

But Judge Alexandre de Moraes is not buying this, after the Supreme Court ordered X on Wednesday not to circumvent its ruling, saying it was at risk of a daily fine of 5 million reais ($921,726.95).

“There is no doubt that X, under Elon Musk’s direct command, again intends to disrespect Brazil’s Judiciary,” Moraes wrote in his latest order, saying the platform had a “strategy” to circumvent the ban.

Moraes said that the tactic was “confessed directly by its largest shareholder, Elon Musk, in a post on X addressed to the entire country”

This was a reference to a tweet by Musk who on Wednesday posted: “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”

According to Moraes, this left “no doubt that the X platform – under the direct command of Elon Musk – intends, once again, to disrespect Brazil’s judiciary”.

The Guardian reported that Moraes also ruled that if X does not pay the fines – which occurred with the previous R$18.3m ($3,376,509) penalties applied to the platform – the obligation will fall on Musk’s satellite internet provider, Starlink.

After a day of unrestricted use, Brazil’s national telecommunications agency, Anatel, announced on Thursday that, “with the active support of Cloudflare”, it was able to identify the mechanism enabling access to X.

Legal representative

Meanwhile Reuters reported X’s lawyers as saying on Thursday that X will present a Brazilian legal representative to the local Supreme Court “very soon”.

Andre Zonaro and Sergio Rosenthal, who were recently appointed as X’s lawyers in Brazil, told Reuters the firm has already sent a document to the Supreme Court saying a legal representative will be named.

They added the representative is still in the process of been sourced.

The lawyers on Thursday called Wednesday’s update a “technical flaw” that allowed users to access the social media platform in the country.

X’s move comes after Justice de Moraes had last week lifted freezes that had been previously imposed on bank accounts in the country belonging to SpaceX subsidiary Starlink and social media platform X following the transfer of 18.35 million reais ($3.3m, £2.5m) from the accounts into the national treasury.

Musk clash

Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes had begun an investigation into Elon Musk’s X in April 2024 for obstruction of justice, after the billionaire said he would reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked.

Musk however refused to back down or appoint a new legal representative of the company in Brazil and settle any outstanding daily fines within 24 hours.

Musk called for Justice Alexandre de Moraes to “resign or be impeached”.

In August X closed down its office in Brazil “effective immediately” due to “censorship orders” by the judge, and laid off its staff in the country.

Then in early September access to X was shut down in Brazil after the firm refused to comply with a court order to appoint a legal representative in the country.