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Telegram Loses Supreme Court Appeal In Russia, Must Hand Over Encryption Keys (bloomberg.com)
Telegram has lost a bid before Russia's Supreme Court to block security services from getting access to users' data, giving President Vladimir Putin a victory in his effort to keep tabs on electronic communications. Bloomberg reports: Supreme Court Judge Alla Nazarova on Tuesday rejected Telegram's appeal against the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB spy agency which last year asked the company to share its encryption keys. Telegram declined to comply and was hit with a fine of $14,000. Communications regulator Roskomnadzor said Telegram now has 15 days to provide the encryption keys. Telegram, which is in the middle of an initial coin offering of as much as $2.55 billion, plans to appeal the ruling in a process that may last into the summer, according to the company's lawyer, Ramil Akhmetgaliev. Any decision to block the service would require a separate court ruling, the lawyer said.
Putin signed laws in 2016 on fighting terrorism, which included a requirement for messaging services to provide the authorities with means to decrypt user correspondence. Telegram challenged an auxiliary order by the Federal Security Service, claiming that the procedure doesn't involve a court order and breaches constitutional rights for privacy, according to documents. The security agency, known as the FSB, argued in court that obtaining the encryption keys doesn't violate users' privacy because the keys by themselves aren't considered information of restricted access. Collecting data on particular suspects using the encryption would still require a court order, the agency said.
Putin signed laws in 2016 on fighting terrorism, which included a requirement for messaging services to provide the authorities with means to decrypt user correspondence. Telegram challenged an auxiliary order by the Federal Security Service, claiming that the procedure doesn't involve a court order and breaches constitutional rights for privacy, according to documents. The security agency, known as the FSB, argued in court that obtaining the encryption keys doesn't violate users' privacy because the keys by themselves aren't considered information of restricted access. Collecting data on particular suspects using the encryption would still require a court order, the agency said.
It's interesting how people in power assume that they are immune to the negative consequences of the same mechanisms they create or force to subdue others. It will be interested to see what happens when all these backdoor backfire on Putin's regime and how they try to downplay it when it happens.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
on his election 'victory'. I don't like McCain, but at least he called Trump out on it.
It genuinely frightens me that we're so quick to support dictatorships. Everybody's looking the other way because they want Russia's gas & oil. Then again I've got to drive to work every day the same as everybody else...
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Telegram is not secure by default, but requires you to start a secure chat separately. Which requires both users to be online and enable it at the same time. Something that I never got going with anyone. So it was already pretty useless, as compared to Signal.
Also, its own custom security protocol was more than a little sketchy to me. I don't trust any random person to get security properly right. There are far too many caveats for me to trust somebody with their custom solution. It would have to be proper experts, and audited by other proper experts too.
Don't get me wrong, I like Telegram due to the amount of features it has.
But I'd rather wish they would integrate those features into Signal (Usage optional, of course.), and use their servers merely as an alternative to Google's push service. (I'd even pay for my share of the server costs, as long as it's non-profit.)
erm...Signal...ever heard of it?
So assuming the Russians are like the NSA and have recorded much of the traffic for the past few years. How would that go for everyone who discussed Putin and his friends in the past over Telegram "secure" chat? How does Telegram handle the keys, can Putin and friends now just go and get the keys for all the past conversations and send in some accidents to everyone who disagrees with anything?