In Saudi Arabia the evening of January 9, partially blocked access to the messenger Telegram. Wrote about this in his microblog service founder Pavel Durov.
“I confirm that the Telegram traffic is partially blocked in Saudi Arabia since last night,” wrote Durov in response to a message one of the users about the difficulties in working with the messenger. In this case the Creator of the messenger noted that the reason for blocking him is not known.
In October 2015 access Telegram has been blocked in Iran. Then, according to Durova, the Ministry of information and communication technology of Iran demanded the messenger to provide the ability to spy on users and tools for censorship of messages.
“We ignored the request of the Ministry, with the result that the Telegram messenger has been blocked”, – said Durov.
Meanwhile, calls for lock messenger sounded and in Russia. So, according to some media reports, the first Deputy head of the constitutional Committee of the state Duma Alexander Ageev appealed to the head of the FSB Alexander Bortnikov to consider the possibility to limit the access of Russian users to Telegram, if it is confirmed information about the use of this application by a terrorist group “Islamic state” (IG, is prohibited in Russia).
In turn, the Minister of communications and mass communications of the RF Nikolay Nikiforov expressed the opinion that the Telegram block is not necessary and called it ineffective measure in combating terrorism.
Putin’s chief adviser on the development of the Internet Herman Klimenko on air of TV channel “Rain” said that Telegram is used by terrorists, therefore in many countries it will ask to access codes or encryption of correspondence, or close. On this Durov said that the messenger “as not issued and will not issue” personal data and encryption keys to third parties. He explained that in Russia “the law enforcement access to personal correspondence of citizens will lead to the emergence of a black market of personal data”, and cited the example of the current situation, when, in his words, “if there are funds you can get access to phone calls to any subscriber of the Russian cellular operators”.
Durov emphasized that the threat of blocking the Telegram on one or two markets will not affect its privacy policy because it is popular among tens of millions of users in dozens of markets.
