Telegram is blocked in Russia

The Tagansky District Court of Moscow decided to block the Telegram messenger in Russia for refusing to provide the FSB with encryption keys

Photo: Dadaviz

On June 28, 2017, Roskomnadzor included Telegram in the register of information distribution organizers. This gave the FSB reason to demand encryption keys from the management of the company. They did not do this in Telegram. On October 16, for the refusal to provide the keys to Telegram, 300 thousand rubles were fined. On March 21, the Russian Supreme Court rejected the TELEGRAM lawsuit against the FSB - the messenger demanded that the department order to recognize the order of transmission of encryption keys. After that, Roskomnadzor sent a notification to the company about the need to transfer the FSB to encryption keys. In response to this, the company said that "the requirements to transfer access to private correspondence of users are unconstitutional, not based on the law, and not legally fulfilled legally."

The founder of Telegram Pavel Durov forbade his lawyers to represent the company in the Tagansky district court, as he did not want to "legitimize the frank farce." According to the decision, the messenger must limit access to the performance of duties on transferring the encryption keys of the FSB.

The meeting on the claim of Roskomnadzor lasted about 20 minutes. Soon after the verdict, the head of the Agora information department, representing the interests of the messenger, Dmitry Kolbasin said that the court decision would be appealed.

“We regard the behavior of the Moscow Court as a disrespectful attitude to the participants in the trial, which directly contradicts the standards of judicial ethics. The position of Telegram is unchanged: the requirements of the FSB provide access to personal correspondence of the messenger users do not comply with the constitution and are not based on the law. In addition, these requirements cannot be technically fulfilled. The requirement of blocking is unreasonable and illegal, ”said Kolbasin.

The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, refused to speak when exactly the messenger would be blocked.

“I will not tell you the exact time of starting the Telegram. This is a bomb for journalists. My work is technically done impeccably. We are talking about days, maybe about hours, maybe about minutes. "

The deputy head of the Ministry of Communications Alexei Volin assured the journalists that Telegram blocking would not damage users, as they will use other resources or bypassing the blocking.

At the same time, the popular channels in the messenger have already begun to inform their readers where they can be found. So this was reported by Mash and Meduza. “Dear my 56 162 subscribers. I will still lead my TGK here. You will find a way to read it. I will observe, ”wrote the editor -in -chief of Echo of Moscow Alexei Venediktov.

The fact that they leave Telegram reported in the Investigative Committee and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The presidential adviser on the Internet, German Klimenko wrote that he had already deleted Telegram and left ICQ, Skype and Whatsup.

“I sincerely hope that Pavel will not kill telegrams and make the right choice,” Klenko added.

Dmitry Peskov wrote in Telegram to journalists after a court decision on blocking that he had not yet found an alternative to the messenger. Whether he himself will use the VPN - it is still unclear.

In Innopolis in Tatarstan reported that they would look for other communication methods to replace Telegram. The messenger was the main means of communicating residents with local self -government.

The press service of the Yabloko party announced that she would continue to use Telegram, despite the ban on the messenger in the territory of the Russian Federation, as there are quite a few ways to circumvent blocking.

Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the Moscow PPC Eva Merkacheva told reporters that the decision to block Anti -Constitutional.

“There are all signs of violation of the right to freedom of communication, the secret of correspondence. It also seems that this whole story with Telegram is a purely matter of principle. Because I myself witnessed, as social activists and conscious ITSHNIDS brought data to law enforcement agencies, for example, pedophiles that were caught on the Internet, asked them to calculate the addresses and detain them, but no one began to do this. The funny thing is that Telegram was used by many special services and recommended to call and write to them exactly because he is the most protected, ”Merkacheva said.

Finally, the founder of the messenger Pavel Durov said that the service will use the built -in methods for bypassing locks that do not require actions from users.

“In the first hours of blocking, third-party VPN/Proxy services can be overloaded and is likely to work slowly. Regardless of the availability of blocking, Telegram will save the opportunity to centrally send notifications to all Russian users, informing about the development of the situation, ”Durov said.

He urged not to delete or reinstall Telegram in case of link problems and download updates in a timely manner.