The instant messenger Telegram has formally challenged a fine imposed for refusing to obey orders from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to surrender the encryption keys it uses to protect its users’ communications.
Telegram was fined by a Moscow district court on October 16. After the ruling takes effect, Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom and Internet regulator, will have legal grounds to block Telegram in Russia.
However, according to Pavel Chikov, the director of the “Agora” human rights group which is representing Telegram, the court which issued the 800,000-ruble (roughly $14,000 at the current exchange rate) fine did not have the right to hear a misdemeanor case against a foreign legal entity.
In June this year Durov agreed for his firm to be registered in Russia after coming under pressure from the authorities to do so, but warned he will never surrender Telegram’s encryption keys to any government authorities.
As far as Russia is concerned, “we won’t comply with the unconstitutional ‘Yarovaya law’ and won’t give [the FSB] the encryption keys they want,” Durov wrote via his Telegram account last month, even if the authorities “seem to be unhappy” with that.
The young entrepreneur added on his Vkontakte page that he’s even ready to face a ban from his country. He compared Russia with Iran, where has been indicted for not sharing with the local authorities access to the data of 40 million Iranian Telegram users.
Adopted in 2016, the 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 Russia’s secret service decipher them.
