Russia Goes Full Dictatorship With ‘Telegram’ Messaging App

The Russian government is often thought of as a dictatorship hiding behind the veil of a pretend democracy where Vladimir Putin reigns supreme. In a recent attempt to ban the encrypted messaging service Telegram for refusing to share user data, the country’s leaders seem to have given up all pretense and simply embraced the categorization.

As The Verge notes, Telegram is a lot like WhatsApp, but without the usual fare of user data collection that is sent to Facebook. This means that users can talk about virtually anything using the messaging platform and absolutely no one else will be able to know about it. Naturally, Russia is taking issue with citizens having so much privacy.

Because of Telegram’s refusal to give the Russian government the keys to unlock its encryption any time it wants, a court decided to ban the service in the country. What’s most troubling and perhaps unsurprising about this development is that the messaging service was created and marketed as a means to specifically avoid the scrutiny of Russia’s spy agencies.

Now, it’s worth noting that due to the highly encrypted nature of Telegram, it has gained something of a sordid reputation for being the messaging platform of choice by terrorists and criminals. After all, those are the kinds of people who need secrecy the most, along with politicians and oligarchs. However, Russia is clearly more interested in emulating China’s policy of taking away its citizens’ rights to any kind of privacy.

In an effort to effectively ban Telegram in the country, it seems Russia has also started targeting Amazon, Ars Technica reports. The messaging service basically started using the merchant giant’s servers to bypass the order of Russian authorities to block access to its servers from local IPs. The country’s government didn’t like that at all, so it’s blocking Amazon in retaliation.