27 June, 2017
Russia's principal security agency, the FSB, has got its sights set on mobile messenger app Telegram after believing it was used by a terrorist suicide bomber.
On Monday, June 26, the Federal Security Service reported that Telegram was used by terrorists in preparation of explosion in the St. Petersburg subway on April 3.
Russian authorities may have a new inroad to bring down a popular messaging service developed in the country - called Telegram - following the investigation into a suicide bombing that took place back in April.
Similar to WhatsApp, Telegram enables groups of up to 5,000 users to send fully encrypted messages, documents, videos and pictures for free and boasts around 100 million users worldwide. "The encryption of these services either equally protects all users or all puts them all at risk", Durov wrote on his VKontakte page.
The FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, added to that pressure on Monday, releasing a statement which said Telegram provided "terrorists with the opportunity to create secret chat rooms with a high degree of encryption". While launched with the idea of making it very hard for governments to spy on its users-Telegram allows heavy encryption of its messages-the app is also popular among terrorists, according to reports.
Several internet companies have been criticised beyond Russian Federation for allowing jihadists to spread material about bomb-making and incitement. Once the app is on the official government list of information distributors, it would have to store user information from the past six months on Russian servers.
"Throughout the course of operational and tracking activities to detect hidden cells of global terrorist organizations, the Russian Federal Security Service records mass usage of online messengers by their members to carry out secret communication between each other and their supervisors from overseas", the FSB statement said.
Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zharov publicly appealed to Durov on Friday, asking him to hand over data in order to register Telegram in a state-controlled database. He left Russian Federation shortly afterwards. In case of its acceptance, bypass of the block of Telegram and other websites or messengers will be considered as illegal. "Let's ban physics and chemistry", quipped one Tweet.
