Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has warned citizens against circumventing a new ban on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app disfavored by Russian intelligence officials.
“[T]hese measures will be enforced,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to TASS, a state-run media outlet.
Telegram has been banned pursuant to court order, after the FSB — the successor to the KGB of the Soviet era — demanded that the messaging service provide the government with a key to decrypt messages sent over the secure service. Russia maintains that the ban is necessary to reduce the risk that terrorists’ will exploit the encrypted service.
“It is not a game of hide-and-seek or catch-up,” Peskov said of attempts to continue to use the service.
Security officials around the world, including the United States, worry about the potential for terrorists to exploit encrypted messaging services to plot attacks and stymie investigators. But Telegram has been banned most recently for political reasons, as in Iran, where dissidents used the app to organize protests in late December and early January.
“Obviously, our neutrality and refusal to take sides in such conflicts can create powerful enemies,” said Pavel Durov of the Iranian ban. Durov founded Telegram, which now has about 200 million users world-wide., and thinks Russia is trying to curtail free speech.
“It is telling that authoritarian governments (e.g. Russia) are trying to block Telegram over encryption, but are more relaxed when it comes to other encrypted messaging apps,” he tweeted Monday.
“The demand for providing the codes necessary for deciphering messages is fair … Behind it there is no wish to see every single exchange of messages,” Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Russian Liberal Democratic Party, said Saturday. “If today’s communication systems, IT systems are capable of turning the whole world upside down, then restrictions must be imposed, of course. Otherwise we will keep many millions of people in a state of stress.”
