Russia just charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with "aiding terrorism" and put him on an international wanted list.
The FSB says Telegram failed to remove channels used by Ukrainian intelligence for sabotage and recruitment.
This is the same playbook every government runs. France arrested Durov in 2024 over similar claims. Now Russia is doing it from the other side of the same war.
The pattern is always identical. A terrible act happens. Governments point at encrypted messaging. They demand backdoors, content removal, compliance. Anyone who refuses becomes an enemy of the state.
But encryption cannot be secure for some people and insecure for others. That's not how math works. A backdoor for the FSB is a backdoor for every intelligence agency, every hacker, every authoritarian regime on earth.
Russia is simultaneously pushing its own state messaging app called MAX that openly shares user data with authorities and doesn't use end-to-end encryption. That's the endgame. Replace tools you can't surveil with tools you control.
Every government wants the same thing, a communication layer they can monitor. They just use different justifications. Russia says terrorism. France said child safety. The US says national security. The demand is always the same. Give us access.
The 60 Minutes clip from 2016 is worth revisiting. Durov said it plainly, "Encryption cannot be secure just for some people."
The FSB says Telegram failed to remove channels used by Ukrainian intelligence for sabotage and recruitment.
This is the same playbook every government runs. France arrested Durov in 2024 over similar claims. Now Russia is doing it from the other side of the same war.
The pattern is always identical. A terrible act happens. Governments point at encrypted messaging. They demand backdoors, content removal, compliance. Anyone who refuses becomes an enemy of the state.
But encryption cannot be secure for some people and insecure for others. That's not how math works. A backdoor for the FSB is a backdoor for every intelligence agency, every hacker, every authoritarian regime on earth.
Russia is simultaneously pushing its own state messaging app called MAX that openly shares user data with authorities and doesn't use end-to-end encryption. That's the endgame. Replace tools you can't surveil with tools you control.
Every government wants the same thing, a communication layer they can monitor. They just use different justifications. Russia says terrorism. France said child safety. The US says national security. The demand is always the same. Give us access.
The 60 Minutes clip from 2016 is worth revisiting. Durov said it plainly, "Encryption cannot be secure just for some people."
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