On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. [1] The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020. [2]
The Yarovaya law, which requires telecom operators to keep all voice and messaging traffic of their customers for half a year, and their internet traffic for 30 days, went into effect in the Russian Federation on July 1, 2018. [3]
The position of Moscow's Meschansky district court is that, in accordance with the Yarovaya law, Telegram is required to store encryption keys from all user correspondence and provide them to Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, upon request. [4] [5] Telegram management insists that this requirement is technically impracticable, since keys of opt-in secret chats are stored on users' devices and are not in Telegram's possession. [6] Pavel Durov, Telegram's co-founder, said that the FSB's demands violated the constitutional rights of Russian citizens to the privacy of correspondence. [7]
On 13 April 2018 Moscow's Tagansky District Court ruled, with immediate effect, on restricting access to Telegram in Russia . [8] [9] Telegram's appeal to the Russian Supreme Court was rejected. [10]
In April 2020, the Government of Russia started using the blocked Telegram platform to spread information related to COVID-19 outbreak.
On 18 June 2020 Roskomnadzor lifted its ban on Telegram after it 'agrees to help with extremism investigations'. [2] The court ruling which was the basis of original ban is still in force, and hence the lifting is illegal.
Conflict between the FSB and Telegram began earlier than the Yarovaya law came into effect. In September 2017, the FSB filed a lawsuit on the non-fulfillment of the Yarovaya law by Telegram. In October 2017, a judgment was delivered in favor of the FSB, imposing a fine on Telegram of 800 thousand rubles. [11] [12] The reason cited was the lack of encryption keys for 6 persons accused of terrorism. According to a statement issued by one of the founders of Telegram, Pavel Durov, even if the request of the FSB was solely intended to help in capturing six terrorists, Telegram could not comply, as the mobile numbers that the FSB was concerned with either never had accounts in Telegram, or their accounts were deleted due to inactivity. At the same time, the FSB had demanded the creation of a technology that would enable them to access the correspondence of any users. [13] [14]
According to Pavel Durov, the FSB's requirements were not feasible:
In addition to the fact that the requirements of the FSB are not technically feasible, they contradict Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation : "Everyone has the right to privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraphic and other communications". [15]
If the FSB had confined itself to requesting information about several terrorists, its demand would fit in with the Constitution. However, we are talking about the transfer of universal encryption keys for the purpose of subsequent uncontrolled access to the correspondence of an unlimited circle of persons. [16] [17]
Pavel Durov put out a call on October 16, 2017, for lawyers who are willing to represent Telegram in a court to appeal the decision. [18] Two days later Durov said that he received 200 proposals from lawyers, and chosen Inter-regional Association of Human Rights Organizations "Agora" to represent Telegram in the court battles. [19]
Russia's Supreme Court rejected Telegram's lawsuit to FSB on March 20, 2018. After the court ruling, the Russian watchdog Roskomnadzor said the messaging service had 15 days to provide the required information to the country's security agencies. [20] The FSB defended its position, saying that providing the FSB with the technical ability to decode messages does not annul legal procedures such as obtaining court rules in order to perlustrate specific messages. [21]
On April 13, 2018, Moscow's Tagansky district court ruled to block access to Telegram in Russia over its failure to provide encryption keys to the FSB. [20]
Enforcement of the ban was attempted by blocking over 19 million IP addresses associated with the service. [22] However they included those used by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, due to Telegram's use of the providers to route messages using domain fronting. This led to unintended collateral damage due to usage of the platforms by other services in the country, including retail, Mastercard SecureCode, and Mail.ru's Tamtam messaging service. Users used VPNs to bypass the ban as a result. [23] [24] While many unrelated web services (such as banking websites and mobile apps) that used content from the Google and Amazon clouds were blocked, [25] [26] the government did not succeed in blocking Telegram. [27]
On 17 April 2018, Russian authorities asked Apple and Google to pull the service from their stores as well as APKMirror, however Apple and Google refused the request. [28] [29] On 28 March 2018, Roskomnadzor reportedly sent a legally binding letter to Apple asking it to remove the app from the Russian version of its App Store and block it from sending push notifications to local users who have already downloaded the app. [30] On 27 December 2018, the largest search engine in Russia, Yandex, removed telegram.org from their search results.[ citation needed ] On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to "help with extremism investigations". [31]
On April 22, 2018, "an action in support of free Internet" was held in multiple cities around Russia, timed to the seventh day of Telegram's being blocked. Residents of Russia launched paper airplanes (the symbol of Telegram) from the roofs of various buildings. The protest was planned on Telegram on the morning of April 22. Pavel Durov, one of the founders of Telegram, supported the action, but asked that the participants gather up the paper airplanes within an hour after the launch. [32]
On April 30, 2018, in the center of Moscow, an action was held in support of Telegram in Russia as a result of its blocking. More than 12,000 people participated. [33]
The System for Operative Investigative Activities is the technical specification for lawful interception interfaces of telecommunications and telephone networks operating in Russia. The current form of the specification enables the targeted surveillance of both telephone and Internet communications. Initially implemented in 1995 to allow access to surveillance data for the FSB, in subsequent years the access has been widened to other law enforcement agencies.
VK is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speakers. VK users can message each other publicly or privately, edit these messages, create groups, public pages, and events; share and tag images, audio, and video; and play browser-based games.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
Pavel Valeryevich Durov is a Russian-born French-Kittitian–Emirati entrepreneur who is known for founding the social networking site VK and the app Telegram Messenger. He is the younger brother of Nikolai Durov. As of 29 September 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$15.1 billion. In 2022, he was recognized as the richest person in the United Arab Emirates, according to Forbes. In February 2023, Arabian Business named him the most powerful entrepreneur in Dubai.
Nikolai Valeryevich Durov is a Russian programmer and mathematician with Kittian citizenship. He is the elder brother of Pavel Durov, with whom he founded the social networking site VK and later Telegram Messenger.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.
In Russia, internet censorship is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor).
Telegram Messenger, commonly known as Telegram, is a cloud-based, cross-platform, encrypted instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013. It allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers. Telegram also offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and in optional private chats, which Telegram calls Secret Chats.
Proton Mail is a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service founded in 2013 headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. It uses client-side encryption to protect email content and user data before they are sent to Proton Mail servers, unlike other common email providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com. The service can be accessed through a webmail client, the Tor network, or dedicated iOS and Android apps.
David "Axel" Neff is an American businessman, best known for his role as the former Director of International Operations of the Russian social network Vkontakte and as a co-founder of mobile messaging platform Digital Fortress, used to create the instant messaging application Telegram Messenger. Neff was a co-founder of the US based Telegram LLC, which was responsible for the creation of Telegram Messenger. He served as the head of subsidiaries for both companies, Durov LLC and Digital Fortress LLC respectively. Neff was also the director of Pictograph LLC and Telegram LLC.
Valery Semenovich Durov is a Russian antiquarian, philologist, and academic. From 1992 until 2013, he was head of the Department of Classical Philology at St. Petersburg State University.
The Yarovaya law, also Yarovaya package or Yarovaya — Ozerov package is a set of two Russian federal bills, 374-FZ and 375-FZ, passed in 2016. The bills amend previous counter-terrorism laws and separate laws which regulate additional counter-terror and public safety measures. The public names the law after the last name of one of its creators—Irina Yarovaya.
Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population. Mass surveillance in Russia includes surveillance, open-source intelligence and data mining, lawful interception as well as telecommunications data retention.
The Open Network is a decentralized computer network consisting of a layer-1 blockchain with various components. TON was originally developed by Dr. Nikolai Durov and the messaging platform, Telegram and now embraced by a global community of independent contributors.
The Telegram instant messaging service has had more than 50 million users in Iran.
The Russian internet is a part of the Internet with its main content in Russian. According to data from August 2019 and studies conducted by W3Techs, 6.5% of the 10 million most popular Internet sites in the world use Russian. In 2013, according to these studies, the Russian language became the second most popular on the Internet after English.
The Telegram Messenger application has been blocked by multiple countries.
Danila Vladimirovich Kashin, also known as DK, is a Russian video blogger, rap artist and EDM producer. On his YouTube channels he publishes videos of musical parodies and author's video clips
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