MOSCOW: A court here today ruled to block the popular messaging app Telegram in Russia, after it refused to give state security services access to private conversations.
The ruling follows a long-running battle between authorities and Telegram, which has a reputation for securely encrypted communications, as Moscow pushes to increase surveillance of internet activities.
The Roskomnadzor telecoms watchdog, which brought the case, had earlier demanded the service be blocked as soon as the verdict was announced.
Telegram was found to have breached a law that requires social media sites that use encoding to give the key to security services to decode messages.
The app’s maverick creator Pavel Durov wrote on social media that “Privacy is not for sale, and human rights should not be compromised out of fear or greed.”
Dubbed Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg, Durov has amassed a fortune of $1.7 billion (1.4 billion Euros) at 33, according to Forbes magazine. He banned lawyers representing Telegram from attending the court hearing so as not to legitimize the case.
