[updated] Telegram is now banned in Russia. Government organisation blocks itself in attempts to block Telegram. [NEW] It is not about surveillance!

[Denis Rakhmanov]

Probably the most extensive English source: https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-04-18/russia-s-war-on-telegram-expands-to-google-amazon-battlefields

 

[UPDATE 18th of April] source links:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/in-effort-to-shut-down-telegram-russia-blocks-amazon-google-network-addresses/

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/telegram-plays-down-russia-block-claiming-no-significant-impact-yet/

 

Original:

Previously The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB in Russian) demanded encryption keys from Telegram messenger so it could monitor private activities. Telegram filed a lawsuit explaining that such demands are unconstitutional by Russian laws that should support Secrecy of correspondence. Telegram lost such lawsuit and was given 15 days to give up their encryption to FSS. Head of Telegram LLC Pavel Durov is saying "Threats to block Telegram unless it gives up private data of its users won't bear fruit. Telegram will stand for freedom and privacy."

 

 

 

russian source:

https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5ab0e3b99a79477cf2540d32

Thanks  @jj9987 for english source:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142482/russia-orders-telegram-hand-over-user-encryption-keys

 

Quote

FSB’s position is that access to encryption keys doesn’t violate users’ privacy since they do not contain information about an individual

 

This is scary, if FSS demanded encryption keys from Telegram, it should probably asked other popular messengers in Russia as well (whatsapp, viber). And the fact that we are not hearing about them being banned in Russia makes me think that they have already provided all the information Russian government asked.

 

Update from 16th of April from the sinking ship:

 

Telegram is now officially banned in Russia, but this had no effect on users because app pushed an update to activate the inapp setting allowing to bypass blocking:

 

After that Russian government desided to block any affiliated IPs, affecting google services, Amazon Cloud, other messenger app(Viber) and some online games (e.g. Guild Wars 2, Splatoon 2). Number of blocked IPs in russia exceeded 1.8 millions

 

And all this measures haven't affected most of telegram users. 

 

Sources: 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/privacy-is-not-for-sale-telegram-founder-says-after-being-banned-in-russia/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/russia-bans-18-million-amazon-and-google-ips-in-attempt-to-block-telegram/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/17/russia_blocks_google_aws_ip_addresses_to_get_telegram/

 

and more importantly, government spent more than 8.5 billion roubles to do this, and still couldn't block Telegram.

 

Russian government also asked Google Play and App Store to remove the telegram app from access. But decided also to restrict access from third party app repositeries, like APK mirror:

https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/17/russia-apple-ban-telegram-app-store/

 

All heil Freedom.

 

Update on 17th of April

Number of blocked IPs surpassed 2.5 million. Telegram still working.

Some rumors suggests that new batch of IPs affected MasterCard, though it is still not proven. i'll try to find suitable source when it is proven or disproven.

 

Update

16 millions IPs now. How did i get this information? News channel in Telegram:

 

 

AAAAAND IT HAPPEND

Regulatory organisation RosKomNadzor even blocked itself. Telegram still works just fine:

Russian internet publishers got access to the letter from RosKomNadzor to ISPs explaining that they added their own IPs to the list of banned IPs and asked ISPs to unblock them. I don't know if you will be satisfied with Russian source: https://geektimes.ru/company/nag/blog/300073/

 

 

Pavel Durov(owner of Telegram) said in his official telegram Channel:

Quote

For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason is our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise.

Despite the ban, we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for the rest of our users. 

Thank you for your support and loyalty, Russian users of Telegram. Thank you, Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft – for not taking part in political censorship.

Russia accounts for ~7% of the Telegram user base, and even if we lose that entire market, Telegram’s organic growth in other regions will compensate for this loss within a couple of months. However, it is personally important for me to make sure we do everything we can for our Russian users.

To support internet freedoms in Russia and elsewhere I started giving out bitcoin grants to individuals and companies who run socks5 proxies and VPN. I am happy to donate millions of dollars this year to this cause, and hope that other people will follow. I called this Digital Resistance – a decentralized movement standing for digital freedoms and progress globally.

In order to support so-called Digital Resistance he is willing to spend millions of his own money to donate to proxy and VPN providers.

 

[UPDATE 20 of April] It is now known that real reason behind banning telegram was not the fact that it declined to cooperate with russian government but the fact that Durov is planning to launch his own cryptocurrency (it already gathered more than billion dollars in ICO). Russian government is afraid that it can disrupt the market. Once again i am deeply sorry for providing russian news source, i'll try to post English source as well when i find one:

https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/20/04/2018/5ad8c53a9a7947ec8d8c1ed5?from=main

 

Quote

Коллеги, да история вообще не про это, как вы не понимаете! История не про ключи и терроризм

FSB contact says that "Story not about it at all, how can't you understand! It is not about keys or terrorism"

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funny meme: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/394517831364116481/435745104351854592/video.mp4

[ItsMitch]

4 minutes ago, Denis Rakhmanov said:

Previously The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation  demanded encryption keys from Telegram messenger so it could monitor private activities

Should we be shocked that Russia is doing shady shit again?

[jj9987]

The Verge posted yesterday - https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142482/russia-orders-telegram-hand-over-user-encryption-keys

Telegram is being used for a lot of malicious purposes (which the team is constantly fighting it), therefor I understand them being the target.

[hobobobo]

8 minutes ago, jj9987 said:

The Verge posted yesterday - https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142482/russia-orders-telegram-hand-over-user-encryption-keys

Telegram is being used for a lot of malicious purposes (which the team is constantly fighting it), therefor I understand them being the target.

Hydra, the biggest Russian darkweb drug market place, got shittons of bots on telegram through which you can buy anything from weed to heroin)

[Delicieuxz]

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

Should we be shocked that Russia is doing shady shit again?

Wrong-headed, but also up-front and in the open. If that's "shady" (which it might be), than is it shady as opposed to... who?

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/26/australian_govt_promises_to_push_five_eyes_nations_to_break_encryption/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180111/12215438987/fbi-says-device-encryption-is-evil-threat-to-public-safety.shtml

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/15/microsoft_irish_emails/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/blackberry-can-sell-encryption-tools-to-us-government/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/us-says-it-does-not-need-courts-to-approve-encryption-backdoors/

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/10/12/us-government-calls-for-responsible-as-in-breakable-encryption/

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n83g/senate-fisa-702-warrantless-surveillance-nsa

http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-leaks-timeline-2016-9

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/?utm_term=.5ed1b3bcf9d2

 

It looks to me like the government's of Russia, China, and some of the West are on pretty similar pages, where encryption is concerned. Though, the US regularly just takes what it wants via hacking and backdoors, which they create with or without the developer's knowledge - yet is also opposing encryption publicly.

[mynameisjuan]

Its Russia, im surprised they even bothered with a law suit. It seems like laws dont matter in Russia and they would have just threatened Telegram.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Denis Rakhmanov said:

whatsapp

Whatsapp isn't and has never been private, Facebook can and does read all your messages. Telegram is supposed to be different.

[AlTech]

19 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Whatsapp isn't and has never been private, Facebook can and does read all your messages. Telegram is supposed to be different.

no?

 

WhatsApp collects Meta Data about who you message and at what time . Other than that they don't afaik.

[Delicieuxz]

50 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

no?

 

WhatsApp collects Meta Data about who you message and at what time . Other than that they don't afaik.

Though, Veritas' undercover videos of Twitter staff caught them saying that there are Twitter teams of hundreds of people that actually read Twitter users' private DMs, looking for marketable content (and ideas to steal, I'm sure).

 

I would err on the side of expecting that Facebook, Microsoft, WhatsApp, and other companies in the same business are doing the same.

[Sauron]

36 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

no?

 

WhatsApp collects Meta Data about who you message and at what time . Other than that they don't afaik.

Yes they do, messages are encrypted between you and the server, not between you and the receiver. They SAY they don't, but we all know how consistent facebook has been with its users privacy...

 

Either way they definitely could read them and show them to the Russian government without making any changes, which is what matters here.

[AlTech]

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

Yes they do, messages are encrypted between you and the server, not between you and the receiver. They SAY they don't, but we all know how consistent facebook has been with its users privacy...

 

Either way they definitely could read them and show them to the Russian government without making any changes, which is what matters here.

Then how is Signal secure?

[AnonymousGuy]

Quote

the FSB’s position is that access to encryption keys doesn’t violate users’ privacy since they do not contain information about an individual, and any data collected using keys would still require a court order.

Ummmmm, except we pretty much know to-a-certainty that once they have those keys they're going to violate the ever loving shit out of them, without a court order.

 

Please please please someone develop end-to-end blind encrypted chat that uses p2p and various anonymizing and obscuring to make it impossible to block.

[2FA]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Then how is Signal secure?

Signal uses open source protocols that actually uses E2E encryption when sending messages.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, 2FA said:

Signal uses open source protocols that actually uses E2E encryption when sending messages.

WhatsApp uses the same E2E encryption protocols as Signal.

[2FA]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

WhatsApp uses the same E2E encryption protocols as Signal.

WhatsApp's implementation is far less secure than the official implementation. The Signal app won't send or receive messages if someone has changed their "identity," such as buying a new phone until you confirm that person is who they say they are. WhatsApp puts priority on making sure messages are received regardless of change in identity. That's just one documented and verifiable difference between the implementations, there are of course of others.

[Sauron]

17 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Then how is Signal secure?

End to end encryption, the server doesn't know your private key.

[Blake]

16 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

Should we be shocked that [insert literally any government] is doing shady shit again?

FTFY.

[yian88]

We need an encrypted blockchain messenger, hopefully someone can make it happen soon, that cant be blocked unless you block all users.

[Greys0n]

that's why I like Telegram network, it's stll private

[Guest]

I don't get it, why don't they just read the telegrams when they are in the postal service?

Its morse code shouldn't be too hard, but its nice that its still encrypted. 

[Denis Rakhmanov]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Especially when there are so many people claiming otherwise and actual photo/video evidence of not just one case but multiple. 

There were webcams in almost every voting place in Russia where people could see everything. For some reason site with camera feed was only accessible from russian IPs. On the certain telegram channel i follow people posted clips from that site with different violations, starting with members of voting commission placing several ballots in, to group of boxers trashing the place and pitting a lot of ballots in and voting commission covering the camera itself.

[Denis Rakhmanov]

I want to hear "John from LMG"'s opinion on

Quote

FSB’s position is that access to encryption keys doesn’t violate users’ privacy since they do not contain information about an individual

Can i mention him in a post?

[Denis Rakhmanov]

To all still interested in this, i updated the topic.

[Denis Rakhmanov]

24 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

did they just block a fraction of the internet

Yes, they did. Some banks had troubles providing online services. One Convenience store chain couldn't operate at all. and people couldn't log into some online games, examples i provided in main post. I heard even Star Sitizen was affected(or still is).

[Denis Rakhmanov]

RosKomNadzor still trying to block telegram. Just can't do it.

Many other services are affected or not working properly.

What about Telegram? Desktop version can't work without proxy settings. Phone version is still working