April 24, 2018
Russia’s ban on the secure messaging app Telegram hasn’t exactly been met with unquestioning obedience and support. State banking giant Sberbank sent its employees instructions on how to get around the blocking of Telegram (the bank currently uses the service for its corporate communications). Deputy Telecom and Communications Minister Alexei Volin, a state official, no less, hinted at how to bypass the ban, and admitted that he himself uses a VPN to do so. Instructions on circumventing the block even appeared on the website of Rossia, a state-run television channel, though the material was quickly deleted. Many other state officials and parliamentary deputies have refrained from publicly expressing their disapproval, but have admitted in private conversations to having installed a VPN to continue using the service. Telegram was banned by a Moscow court ruling on April 13, after the state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor filed a complaint against it because Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian creator, refused to hand over the encryption keys to the Federal Security Service (FSB).
If communication via the messenger can’t be monitored, it must be banned, Roskomnadzor argued, and started blocking IP addresses linked to Telegram on April 16. But officials and lawmakers have continued to use the messenger, as revealed by contact lists, which show the last time other users have used the app. The appearance of instructions on how to get around the ban in politicized Telegram channels and chat groups and in the media were predictable and understandable. People who take an interest in politics already know how to use a VPN or the Tor anonymity network, since many opposition websites are blocked in Russia. The ban has turned out to be something of a Rubicon both in relations between the authorities and ordinary people, and within the power vertical itself. As a rule, Russians have greeted bans by the authorities with approval or indifference. But with Telegram, everything has changed. Only one parliamentary deputy, Sergei Boyarsky of the ruling United Russian party, has demonstratively deleted the app from his smartphone. Yet it’s easy to imagine that just a couple of years ago, his entire party faction in the parliament would have done so. Now he is merely ridiculed. Unlike in previous cases, this time a significant proportion of Russian society that was previously far from opposition-minded is willfully refusing to obey the new ban.
