On the heels of a Telegram being banned in Brazil, founder Pavel Durov has said the app may pull out of the country altogether.
A court in Brazil banned Telegram over neo-Nazi groups using the app or communication. The groups have engaged in violent behavior, much of it against children. Authorities wanted Telegram to hand over information on the groups’ members but accused the company of only providing data on a single administrator for one of the groups.
In response to the ban, Durov says the company may throw in the towel in Brazill:
Telegram’s mission is to preserve privacy and freedom of speech around the world.
In cases where local laws go against this mission or impose technologically unfeasible requirements, we sometimes have to leave such markets. In the past, countries like China, Iran and Russia have banned Telegram due to our principled stance on the matter of human rights. Such events, while unfortunate, are still preferable to the betrayal of our users and the beliefs we were founded on.
In Brazil, a court requested data that is technologically impossible for us to obtain. We are appealing the decision and are looking forward to the final resolution. No matter the cost, we will stand up for our users in Brazil and their right to private communication.
As we pointed out in our previous coverage, Telegram does not enable end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default, leaving it to users to enable the option if they want it.
The fact that Durov said that it “is technologically impossible” to give the court the data it wants would seem to indicate that the groups did have E2EE enabled. If so, Telegram is facing the same issue Signal, Apple, and other platforms using E2EE have faced.
Only time will tell how the issue in Brazil plays out, but Telegram users may soon be out of luck.