Russia to block Telegram messenger service
Moscow's Tagansky District Court has decided to restrict access to the Internet messenger Telegram on the territory of Russia. The restriction will be enforced until the encryption keys are handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian media outlet MediaZona reports.
Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) will enforce the decision of the court. The ruling of the court can be appealed within a month.
The Russian authorities claim that Telegram did not provide the FSB with the keys to decrypt the data, which would allow the special services to access the correspondence of the users.
The management of Telegram insists that the FSB requirement is technically impossible to implement. The representatives of Telegram did not attend the court hearing. The Head of the company Pavel Durov did not allow his lawyers "to legitimize the flagrant farce by their presence".
Telegram is a cross-platform messenger, created by the former owner of the social network VKontakte, Pavel Durov. The number of monthly active users of the service for March 2018 was 200 million people.