Moscow court upholds Telegram’s blocking legitimacy

MOSCOW, Jun 14 (PRIME) -- The Moscow City Court refused on Thursday to cancel a decision to block popular messenger Telegram in Russia.

“The decision of the lower court will stay unchanged,” a judge said.

The decision is now in force, but the communications service was authorized to implement it immediately after the decision was made in the middle of April after the messenger had refused to hand over decoding keys to the Federal Security Service.

Telegram insists that control over correspondence of an unlimited number of people without any court permission “threatens people’s security.”

The communications and security services say, in their turn, that Telegram is actively used by terrorists to coordinate their attacks. The authorities do not believe the messenger is unable to share its decoding keys.

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