Roskomnadzor's lawsuit against Telegram starts on Thursday, April 12

Pretrial preparations in a lawsuit by Russia’s federal censor against the instant messenger Telegram will get underway on Thursday, April 12. Six days earlier, Roskomnadzor asked Moscow’s Tagansky District Court to block Telegram for refusing to surrender encryption keys for all user correspondence.

The messenger insists that this is technically impossible because the software’s architecture doesn’t store these keys centrally. Russian lawmakers say Telegram must redesign its software, if it’s not currently capable of complying with the country’s new “anti-terrorism” laws.

On Tuesday, April 10, Telegram’s lawyer circulated a photograph of a letter to the Federal Security Service where CEO Pavel Durov offered up two physical “keys,” mocking the government’s demands.

After the Tagansky District Court announced that Roskomnadzor’s lawsuit would begin on Thursday, Telegram’s representatives told the website Znak.com that they’d yet to receive a copy of the censor’s claims against the company. Telegram only learned about the court date from news reports, the company’s lawyer said.