Today the Tagansky District Court in Moscow ruled to block “immediately” access to instant messenger Telegram from Russia, following its refusal to provide remote access to their systems to the FSB.
Adopted in 2016, a new Russian legislation (dubbed ‘Yarovaya law’ or ‘Big Brother law’) requires messenger apps and other “organizers of information distribution” to add additional coding to transmitted electronic messages so that the the FSB, Russia’s secret service, can decipher them.
Telegram agreed to register its service in Russia, but refused to cooperate with the secret service under “laws incompatible with Telegram privacy policy.”
Roskomnadzor, the Russian Internet and telecom regulator, requested the court to ban Telegram, since “extremism and terrorism” may be contained in the information distributed on Telegram.
Such information “could threaten Russia and all its citizens, including users of the messenger,” Roskomnadzor representative Maria Smelyanskaya told the court, as reported by Mediazona.
The trial lasted less than 20 minutes, according to media reports. It took place in the absence of Telegram’s defense team, with Telegram founder Pavel Durov refusing to “legitimize” with their presence what he considers to be “an open farce.”
Impatience to ban
Russian law technically gives Telegram the chance to challenge the ruling in an appellate court, noted online publication Meduza. According to this procedure, the verdict would not take effect until after that court upholds the initial decision. Roskomnadzor would then issue a final warning. If Telegram ignores it, Russian ISPs would be ordered to block access to Telegram, and Google and Apple could also be told to remove Telegram from their app stores in Russia.
But Roskomnadzor asked the court to skip these last steps and sanction the blocking of Telegram right away.
Just after the ruling, Roskomnadzor stated that it would begin implementing the court decision “in the framework of the law.” Roskomnadzor’s head Alexander Zharov declined to specify when exactly the ban would be implemented. “I won’t say when I’ll strike,” the Russian busines daily Kommersant quoted him as saying today.
The ECHR in the running
In late March, Telegram filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against an 800,000-ruble fine (around $13,000 at the current exchange rate) imposed on the company for refusal to provide information on user messages decoding to FSB, according to the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI).
Meanwhile earlier this month, as reported by Russian business daily Vedomosti, two journalists, Oleg Kashin and Alexander Plushchev, filed a lawsuit against the Russian government in the ECHR. They argued that the FSB’s demands violate their rights to privacy and free expression guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to the Internet rights group Roskomsvoboda, several dozens of Telegram users are preparing similar appeals with the Strasbourg court “in the next few weeks.” These users tried in vain to challenge the FSB’s demands in Russian courts.
