The current trend in claims of social messaging applications being used for terrorist activities is the talk of the town. In March 2017, these claims gained hike as the social interaction application WhatsApp was believed to be used by terrorists in London attacks to have end to end encrypted chats with their facilitators.
This incident which left many dead and dozens injured left a question mark on the platforms that these social messaging applications might provide for negative activities. It has eventually led to an investigation into the integrity of many applications by many governments and this is why Russia threatens to block telegram messaging app.
After probing into the April attacks in Saint Petersburg that left 15 people dead, Russian intelligence and law enforcement agencies claim that the Telegram messaging app was used to facilitate the terrorists by its encrypted messaging service. The point where Russia threatens to block telegram messaging app is after the lack of cooperation shown by the founder of Telegram app Pavel Durov. He didn’t agree to sign to the latest data protection laws imposed by the country which led to a hard line being taken by the Russian authorities against this app.
The new data protection act asks all messaging app owners to comply with the rule of saving private chats and user data for at least six months and be able to share this private data with intelligence agencies when required. Head of communications regulator Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov said that they are still waiting for the company to comply to the new data protection act and in case of incompliance, the company will be banned until further notice.
This probable ban is much like the Russian ban on LinkedIn which failed to comply with Russia’s data protection laws. Owner of Telegram app took it to the social site Twitter arguing and complaining about how the encryption of their messaging application is being asked to “forcefully compromise” for sake of new laws. Decision still awaits about the future of this messaging app in Russia.
