Telegram is considering a request from the SBU for 26 public pages.
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This was announced by the Chairman of the Council Committee on Freedom of Speech Yaroslav Yurchyshyn.
According to him, Telegram previously ignored the Ukrainian authorities with their requests, but after the start of discussions about a possible ban on the messenger, the administration responded to a request to consider a number of “public” pages.
In fact, the SBU monitors everything that can be interpreted as a justification for Russian aggression – these are both anonymous and personalized channels. But these 26 channels already have clear evidence,” Yurchyshyn said in a conversation with RBC-Ukraine.
In particular, he named among these channels “Legitimny” and “Resident”.
They are all quite public. In fact, the SBU monitors everything that can be interpreted as a justification for Russian aggression – these are both anonymous and personalized channels. But there are already clear arguments across these 26 channels, says Yurchyshyn.
In his opinion, such channels have a very clearly visible network – bots disseminating some harmful theses through other synchronized channels. Therefore, the Committee is now trying to establish communication with the Telegram administration.
This is now the most popular network. At the same time, we do not know the ownership system of Telegram, the probable registration, which was first in Russia, then there was an attempt to register in the USA, but this failed and the owners allegedly registered in the UAE. In addition, there is no information that Durov refused a Russian passport. He is now a UAE citizen, but this does not imply renouncing Russian citizenship. That is, there is probably some kind of control over Telegram on the part of Russia and we have no guarantee that all the information of individual people there is protected and is not given to the secret services of the Russian Federation.
There are several things that are very annoying about this particular network. For example, when the now deceased Navalny created a bot in order to collect information about the previous so-called elections in Russia. And this bot was instantly blocked. There was an argument that this is politics, and Telegram excludes politics, but even now we see hundreds of political channels on the network. Stories like this, when Telegram blocks something that is not in favor of Russia, show that Durov’s communication with the Putin regime may have remained, the people’s deputy said.
In his opinion, to block Telegram, you need to have a clear argument – the decision of the National Security and Defense Council on sanctions, for example. And for this to happen, a serious critical situation with information leakage must occur.
Earlier, the SBU stated that Telegram cooperates with Roskomnadzor and the FSB. The State Duma of the Russian Federation said that the messenger as a whole and Durov personally “always react very quickly to events”, cooperate with Russian law enforcement agencies, “including blocking prohibited content.”
The draft law on the regulation of social networks, submitted to the Ukrainian parliament, does not provide for the possibility of blocking Telegram and other social networks. Yurchyshyn previously reported this on the telethon.
The bill on regulation of social networks has nothing to do with Telegram, he said, adding that there are no technical capabilities to block Telegram, but the bill does not provide for this.
According to Yurchyshyn, according to the law, social networks must provide Ukrainian government agencies with data on the structure of their ownership.
Of course, I would like to know who is on the other side of the screen. We don’t know where Telegram’s assets are, we don’t know where TikTok’s servers are, most likely in China, so that network is in big trouble in the United States,” he said.
If the social network does not provide the requested data, then in Ukraine it will be given the status of a network with an “opaque ownership system.” Yurchyshyn explained that in this case, representatives of Ukrainian government organizations and authorities will not be able to have their accounts on Telegram.
Earlier, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Budanov, said that the messenger is “a problem from a national security point of view.”
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.