Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had notified Telegram CEO Pavel Durov that his firm was in violation of the law for not sharing with the authorities the encryption keys it uses to protect its users’ communications.
Adopted in 2016, this 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.
“We won’t comply with the unconstitutional ‘Yarovaya law’ and won’t give [the FSB] the encryption keys they want,” wrote Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov via his Telegram account yesterday, even if the authorities “seem to be unhappy” with that.
Durov 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.
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 it would not share confidential user data with anyone.
