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Eurasia
May 4, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 25
Iranian judiciary issues blanket ban on Telegram
bne IntelliNews
The ban that tens of millions of Iranians hoped would never happen appears to have arrived. State television and a news agency affiliated with the Iranian judiciary on April 30 reported that the encrypted Telegram Messenger mobile and desk- top messaging app has been blacklisted on the grounds of protecting national security.
Telegram, subscribed to by more than half of Iran’s population of 80mn, has been attacked
by both Iran and Russia in recent months, while the UK has warned the secure messaging app
is being used by Islamic State militants in Syria. However, it is concerns such as the service’s usefulness when it comes to secretly organising anti-regime demonstrations that is thought to have unnerved Tehran and Moscow, the latter of which has demanded the service’s encryption keys
from its co-founder, self-exiled Russian Pavel Durov. Organisers of the nationwide protests that took place in Iran over December and January are known to have used Telegram.
“Considering various complaints against the Telegram social networking app by Iranian citi- zens and based on the demand of security or- ganizations for confronting the illegal activities of Telegram, the judiciary has banned its usage in Iran,” state television reported. Its report said the Tehran prosecutor was ordering internet service providers to block the cloud-based service in such a way that users would not be able to bypass the ban by using a VPN.
The order was issued one day after the app went down across several time zones on April 29. Ac-