<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Russian government\u2019s media watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the popular Telegram messaging application aimed at banning it within its borders over a dispute involving Moscow\u2019s inability to eavesdrop.<\/p>\n
Roskomnadzor, Russia\u2019s state media regulator, said in a statement Friday that it sued the app\u2019s parent company in a Moscow court seeking \u201crestrictions on access to \u2026 Telegram on the territory of Russia,\u201d citing its failure to comply with federal authorities\u2019 demand for data.<\/p>\n
Russia tightly restricts internet access inside the country, and legislation adopted in 2016 requires communication providers to give the government access to customers\u2019 conversations. Telegram lets users communicate using end-to-end encryption technology, however, rendering their messages unreadable to anyone other than the authorized sender or recipient, and spurring the ongoing feud with federal authorities at the heart of Friday\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s federal service agency, the FSB, asked Telegram last year for help deciphering messages sent between users, but the company refused to share its encryption keys and appealed to the country\u2019s highest court, decrying the request as both technically impossible and a violation of its customers\u2019 rights to privacy.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Supreme Court last ruled month in the government\u2019s favor, and Roskomnadzor subsequently gave the app 15 days to surrender \u201cinformation necessary to decode received, transmitted, delivered or processed electronic messages,\u201d but Telegram failed to comply by Wednesday\u2019s deadline and was sued by the watchdog two days later.<\/p>\n
\u201cTelegram\u2019s position has not changed \u2014 the FSB\u2019s demand to provide decryption keys for messages is unconstitutional, it is not based on law and can be fulfilled neither technically nor legally, which means that the demand to block Telegram is baseless,\u201d Telegram lawyer Ramil Akhmetgaliyev reacted Friday, Russian state-owned media reported.<\/p>\n
Messages sent using the app\u2019s \u201cSecret chats\u201d feature are end-to-end encrypted using keys specific to only the sender and recipient, meaning not even Telegram is capable of deciphering those conversations, according to the company.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Roskomnadzor said that Telegram had failed to comply with \u201cobligations as the organizer of the dissemination of information\u201d pursuant to federal law.<\/p>\n
Telegram boasted 200 million active users worldwide as of March, Reuters reported, including Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of messaging services, Telegram is a very convenient one, we have been particularly using it to communicate with journalists,\u201d Mr. Peskov told journalists Friday, Russian media reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cA law is a law, and if it is violated and no measures are taken, we will search for an alternative that would fulfill our requirements in the best possible way,\u201d Mr. Peskov said.<\/p>\n
FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov alleged earlier this week that terrorists used messaging apps during the course of attempting to coordinate over two dozen domestic attack in 2018, Russia\u2019s Interfax newswire reported.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Russian government’s media watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the popular Telegram messaging application aimed at banning it within its borders over dispute a involving Moscow’s inability to eav The Russian government\u2019s media watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the popular Telegram messaging application aimed at banning it within its borders over a dispute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[266],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}