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Russia’s Supreme Court did not issue a new, direct order to Telegram on 9 August 2018. It rejected Telegram Messenger LLP’s appeal and left in place a lower-court judgment upholding the procedure for an FSB demand for information to decode messages linked to six users. Telegram said it could not provide the keys; that was the company’s position, not an independently verified technical finding.

What Russia’s Supreme Court decided

On 9 August 2018, the Supreme Court’s appellate panel rejected Telegram Messenger LLP’s appeal, leaving its 20 March 2018 judgment in place. The ruling upheld the procedure used for the FSB’s order; it was not a finding that Telegram had technically handed over keys. Source

The underlying request concerned information needed to decode messages associated with six users, according to a communication by UN Special Procedures. The same account says a Moscow court had earlier fined Telegram 800,000 rubles for refusing to provide the requested information. That amount is a reported penalty in this case, not a general measure of Russian fines. UN Special Procedures communication

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Why Telegram said it could not hand over the keys

In an April 2018 response reported by Interfax, Telegram distinguished cloud chats from secret chats and said it could not provide keys for decoding. The report records the company’s explanation; it does not independently audit Telegram’s architecture or establish whether disclosure was technically possible. Interfax report

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How the court treated correspondence privacy

Deutsche Welle’s account of the published appellate determination says the court treated decryption keys as outside constitutional protections for the secrecy of correspondence. It reportedly reasoned that access to correspondence information occurred through operational-search measures based on a court decision. This describes the court’s reported rationale, not an uncontested interpretation of privacy law. Deutsche Welle report

Why the ruling drew privacy and expression concerns

Columbia Global Freedom of Expression’s analysis identifies concerns for privacy and freedom of expression when governments legally demand decryption keys. Those concerns highlight the tension between state access for investigations and the confidentiality users expect from private communications; judicial authorization is part of the issue, but it does not by itself resolve questions about scope, safeguards, or independent oversight. Columbia Global Freedom of Expression analysis

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A later European Court of Human Rights judgment, Podchasov v. Russia, provides broader human-rights context concerning demands for decryption. It was not an appeal of Telegram’s Russian case and did not reverse the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision. European Court of Human Rights judgment

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What the 2018 ruling does—and does not—establish

  • It establishes that the Supreme Court rejected Telegram’s appeal on 9 August 2018 and left the lower judgment standing.
  • It records a dispute over an FSB request related to six users’ messages and Telegram’s stated inability to provide decoding keys.
  • It does not independently establish Telegram’s technical capabilities, nor does it establish the current status of Russian access to Telegram data or the company’s present technical practices.
  • It should be read as a historical ruling, with the legal reasoning attributed to the court as reported and later human-rights analysis treated separately.

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