Maxim Ali has provided his comments to REGNUM on Durov’s position regarding the Telegram app

On 28 July, news agency REGNUM published an article titled ‘Durov’s position does not match Russia’s laws’, which considered the issue of the potential blocking of the Telegram app.

At the present moment, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov has agreed for the app to be include in the registry maintained by Roskomnadzor (the state regulator of the media); however, he has refused to comply with the requirements of Yarovaya’s law (a controversial law regarding regulation of the internet), as he considers this “technically unrealisable”.

Senior Associate at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, who specialises in IP/IT matters, explained to REGNUM, that Telegram is considered by Russian legislation to be an organisation that spreads information, which means that it is obligated to store and provide law enforcement agencies with logs of the exchange of messages between users.

Maxim also commented that the storage of exchanged information on the company’s servers which complies with measures for security and confidentiality of the data, does not amount to a breach of the secret correspondence to which Durov refers.  Such matters are regulated by federal law, and according to the Constitution can be reviewed by the Constitutional Court.

For the full version of the article, please see the following link.