MOSCOW, April 23 (RAPSI) – The Moscow City Court has upheld a sentence for Maria Alyokhina, a member of the infamous feminist punk group Pussy Riot, who has received 100 hours of compulsory community service for unauthorized action against blocking of Telegram messenger, the press-service of the court has told RAPSI.
As a result, the April 18 ruling of the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow came into force.
On April 17, two other young women, Yulia Kostenko and Alina Muzychenko, were fined 10,000 ($160) and 20,000 rubles ($325) respectively for participating in the action.
All the women were found guilty of organizing a mass concurrent stay and (or) movement of citizens in a public square resulted in breach of public order.
On April 16, thirteen participants of the action came to Lubyanka Square in central Moscow where the Federal Security Service is located. They threw multicolored paper planes at the FSB building thus protesting Telegram blocking.
Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor started blocking the messenger on April 16 following a court order. Moscow’s Tagansky District Court tasked Roskomnadzor on April 13 with putting a stop to sending and receiving messages through Telegram until the messenger fulfills its obligations by providing deciphering keys. The ruling came into force immediately. According to the communications watchdog’s statement, Roskomnadzor received the ruling and forwarded the relevant information to operators.
In June 2017, Roskomnadzor requested Telegram management to comply with the Russian legislation or face blocking of the messenger. Telegram founder Pavel Durov agreed to register the service in Russia. However, he refused to abide by “laws incompatible with Telegram privacy policy,” Durov wrote on his VKontakte (VK) page in late June.
In July, Durov received the FSB requests to provide information for decoding messages of six app users. In September, law enforcement authorities drew up administrative protocols against Telegram because of law violation, as Durov failed to reply for the request.
The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow has fined the company 800,000 rubles ($14,000) for refusal to provide FSB with information on message decoding concerning several users. The messenger insists that it is technically impossible to transfer encryption keys. Telegram has been found guilty of failure to store and (or) furnish information on users and their messages to law enforcement agencies. The ruling has become effective.
In December, Telegram Messenger LLP filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court of Russia seeking to cancel the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) decree establishing the procedure for provision of information on decoding of user data. On March 19, the lawsuit was dismissed. Telegram was obliged to comply with the FSB order within 15 days. The company filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the fine, lawyer Damir Gainutdinov told RAPSI on March 22.
In early April, the Presidential Council for Human Rights called Roskomnadzor to refrain from blocking Telegram messenger in Russia and asked FSB to find other ways of legal access to the messages of users endangering the national security.
According to the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information”, organizers of information distribution on the Internet must submit information about users and their messages to the authorized governmental bodies conducting investigative activities and ensuring the state security.
