RUSSIAN ROSCOMNADZOR THREATENS TO BAN THE TELEGRAM MESSENGER

The Russian Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) threatens to ban the Telegram if the instant messenger's managment is refuse to "cooperate." 

Alexandr Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor demanded the Telegram to provide their "keys for message deciphering," that will allow Russia's special services to read users' correspondence. Such his demand mr. Zharov explained as "counter-terrorism measures." At the same time Russian civic right defence activists pointed that such requirement not only contradicts the 23rd article of the Constitution of the Russian Federation on the right to confidentiality of correspondence, but also demonstrates the Roscomnadzor's ignorance of how communication is encrypted in 2017.

The exchange of information is contemporary messengers is built on end-to-end encryption principle, thus an internet messenger owner company simply cannot have "keys to decryption."

These keys are stored only on devices of the users themselves. Although the Telegram was a pioneer of this technology, today end-to-end encryption is used by all popular instant messengers, including WhatsApp, Viber, iMessage and even Facebook Messenger.

Clearly, that potential blockage of the Telegram will not create inconvenience for terrorists or drug dealers since there are dozens of other messengers built on the same security principles. At the same time there is a popular opinion, that the "anti-terrorism measures" is nothing more but a pretext for the Russian authorities to gain control or ban an uncontrolled area in the internet.