Telegram’s CEO said Thursday that the social media company will appeal a Brazilian judge’s decision to block access to its platform in Brazil for failing to hand over data on neo-Nazi activity. He claimed compliance was “technologically impossible.”<\/p>\n
In a statement posted to his Telegram account, Pavel Durov said that when local laws or unfeasible requirements counter his company’s mission – “to preserve privacy and freedom of speech around the world” – it sometimes has to quit markets.<\/p>\n
Telegram has been blocked in the past by governments, including Iran, China and Russia, while in the latter country.<\/p>\n
Kremlin partisans have employed it as a digital weapon in President Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Durov said the Brazilian federal judge who ordered the suspension Wednesday “requested data that is technologically impossible for us to obtain.”<\/p>\n
He claimed to be defending Brazilian users’ “right to private communication” but did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
Telegram users can post publicly to channels they create or join – or communicate privately.<\/p>\n
The company says “secret chats” between individual users can be encrypted.<\/p>\n
United Arab Emirates-based Telegram’s press office did not respond to questions emailed by The Associated Press or sent via the app to a company media representative.<\/p>\n
In addition ordering the blocking of Telegram, which Brazilian internet providers and wireless carriers enforced, the judge set a daily fine of about $200,000 for noncompliance.<\/p>\n
Durov did not say whether Telegram intends to pay.<\/p>\n
The ruling from a federal court in Espirito Santo state said “the facts shown by police authorities show a clear purpose of Telegram of not cooperating with the investigation.”<\/p>\n
Police are especially keen on Telegram content related to school violence.<\/p>\n
The development comes as Brazil grapples with a wave of school attacks, including one in November in which a man with a swastika pinned to his vest shot four people to death and wounded 12 in the small town of Aracruz in Espirito Santo state.<\/p>\n
Brazil’s federal government has strived to stamp out school violence with a particular focus on the supposedly nefarious influence of social media.<\/p>\n
Last year, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered a nationwide shutdown of Telegram, arguing it had repeatedly ignored requests for cooperation.<\/p>\n
After five days of blockage, Telegram apologised, claiming not to have received the court’s communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telegram’s CEO said Thursday that the social media company will appeal a Brazilian judge’s decision to block access to its platform in Brazil for failing to hand over data on neo-Nazi activity. He claimed compliance was “technologically impossible.” In a statement posted to his Telegram account, Pavel Durov said that when local laws or unfeasible requirements counter his company’s mission – “to preserve privacy and freedom of speech around the world” – it sometimes has to quit markets. Telegram has been blocked in the past by governments, including Iran, China and Russia, while in the latter country. Kremlin partisans have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}