Privacy-focused messaging app Telegram today was banned in Russia for once again refusing to turn over its encryption keys to government authorities.

Telegram Messenger LLP, the company behind the app, has been fending off the Russian Supreme Court for several months, but the court rejected Telegram’s final appeal in March. The court argued that Telegram’s end-to-end encryption poses a risk to national security, and it ordered the company to give its encryption keys to the Federal Security Service or FSB, the modern-day successor to the KGB.

The Russian court told Telegram that it would ban the app if the company did not comply with its demands, and now the court has followed through on that threat.

“The ban on access to information will be in force until the FSB’s demands are met on providing keys for decrypting user messages,” said Judge Yulia Smolina, according to the official Russian news organization TASS. Telegram still has the opportunity to appeal the ban, but given the court’s rejection of the company’s last appeal, it may not make much of a difference.

Telegram Chief Executive Pavel Durov has repeatedly condemned Russia’s efforts to compromise the app’s security and privacy features, and he said last month that the court’s threats “won’t bear fruit.” Despite today’s ban, Durov once again said that Telegram has no plans to turn over its keys to the Russian government.

“The power that local governments have over IT corporations is based on money,” said Durov. “At any given moment, a government can crash their stocks by threatening to block revenue streams from its markets and thus force these companies to do strange things (remember how last year Apple moved iCloud servers to China). At Telegram, we have the luxury of not caring about revenue streams or ad sales. Privacy is not for sale, and human rights should not be compromised out of fear or greed.”

Durov said that Telegram users in Russia may be able to circumvent the ban using some of the app’s built-in systems, but he added that users may need to use a virtual private network to access Telegram in the country.

Russia isn’t the only issue dogging Telegram. It’s apparently an open secret, according to The Outline, that for years the service has been host to thousands of groups and channels for illegally sharing apps, movies, music and other content.

Photo: microsiervos via photopin (license)