Russia intends to block Telegram messaging service
The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, better known as Roskomnadzor, has filed a lawsuit in Moscow's Tagansky District Court to limit Telegram's access to information resources in Russia. This has been reported on the agency's website.
The initial cause of the claim is that the messenger refused to provide the FSB with the encryption keys for its user’s conversations.
On March 20, Roskomnadzor issued an official notification on the need for Telegram to implement these orders. The agency additionally threatened the messenger that, if it did not fulfill its request within the established 15-day period, it would start legal proceedings in court to block Telegram’s services on Russian territory. The 15-day period expired on April 4.
Pavel Durov, founder of the messaging application, repeatedly stressed that he would not give access to the messenger "to any special services in the world." In summer 2017, the FSB asked the instant messenger for access to messages sent from the phone numbers of six individuals suspected of terrorism. Telegram refused to comply. As a result, the FSB filed a lawsuit against Telegram in court; the messenger lost and was fined 400,000 rubles. Subsequently, Telegram filed a counterclaim against the FSB.
Durov also stressed that it is impossible to provide “decryption keys" for messages sent in the application, as the ultimate encryption methods used do not technically allow this.