Russian Court Bans Telegram App After 18-Minute Hearing
Russian Court Bans Telegram App After 18-Minute Hearing Photo The messaging app Telegram has 200,000 monthly active users around the world. Credit Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images MOSCOW — A Moscow court cleared the way on Friday for the government to ban Telegram, the messaging app, over its failure to give Russian security services the ability to read users’ encrypted messages.
Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications and technology watchdog, had asked the court for the authority to block the app, and for the ban to take immediate effect. It took the court all of 18 minutes to grant the request, after scheduling the hearing just one day before. Telegram had ordered its lawyers to skip the hearing in protest of the hurried process.
The ruling came a month after Telegram lost a lawsuit it brought against the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., Russia’s powerful and secretive security agency, which had demanded access to messages. The Kremlin pushed through a sweep..