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]
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 business executive and entrepreneur serving as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Telegram since 2013.
Nikolai Valeryevich Durov is a Russian programmer and mathematician. 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, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 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 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, Windows, macOS and Linux (beta) desktop apps and 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.
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 Nikolai Durov who is also known for his role in creating the messaging platform, Telegram. Telegram had planned to use TON to launch its own cryptocurrency (Gram), but was forced to abandon the project in 2020 following an injunction by US regulators. The network was then renamed and independent developers have created their own cryptocurrencies and applications using TON. Toncoin, the principal token of The Open Network is deeply integrated into the Telegram messaging app, used for paying rewards to creators and developers, buying Telegram ads, hosting giveaways or purchasing services such as Telegram Premium.
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia was briefly blocked in Russia in August 2015. Some articles of Wikipedia were included into various censorship lists disseminated by the government. Further threats to block were made following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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.
The blocking of Meta Platforms in Russia is the process of blocking access and subsequent banning of Meta Platforms' social networks in Russia due to allowing Facebook and Instagram users to wish the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, as well as to call for violence against Russian servicemen participating in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
KibOrg is a project of journalists and IT professionals who operate under the name of "Legendary Cyborgs" in opposition to Russian media and IT spaces. The project was founded in early 2022. The only public member to date is journalist Maksym Dudchenko.
On 24 August 2024, Pavel Durov, a co-founder of the Telegram messaging service and the social network VK, was arrested after landing at Le Bourget Airport. The arrest was part of a preliminary investigation by the French National Judicial Police. On 28 August, Durov was indicted on twelve charges, including complicity in the distribution of child exploitation material and drug trafficking, was barred from leaving France, and was placed under judicial supervision.
