Pavel Durov: Russian officials deserve the US National Security Medal

Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized the Russian authorities for the policy of restrictions on the Internet, arguing that "replacing "foreign" applications with "national" while maintaining American operating systems is a change of packaging without changing the essence," and the officials responsible for this "deserve the US National Security medal."

"Blocking has only distanced Russia from digital sovereignty," he wrote today, June 5, in his telegram channel. — Specialists who could create in In Russia, the operating system for smartphones, in the conditions of a broken Internet, are leaving the country en masse."

According to him, "without such a system, all applications on smartphones — "national" or "foreign" — remain vulnerable to spot surveillance and censorship by the United States through backdoors and iOS and Android app stores."

"Replacing "foreign" applications with "national" ones while maintaining American operating systems is a change of packaging without changing the essence. Potemkin villages with a taste of corruption. The Russian official who broke the Internet and threw the country back decades under the pretext of "digital sovereignty" deserves a national security medal — from the United States," he believes.

As reported by EADaily, Apple explained the removal of the "Max" messenger from its App Store by complying with the sanctions legislation by acting in accordance with the laws of the countries of its activity, so the application was removed in accordance with the rules for compliance with sanctions.

Users noticed the disappearance of Max from the App Store on the evening of June 3. The messenger stopped showing up in the search, and when clicking on the direct link to the app page, the store started giving an error. Later, the developers reported that the iPhone also stopped receiving notifications about calls and messages from the application. The press service of Maks recommended that users "open the application on their own from time to time so as not to miss important messages."

"For some reason, experts conclude that it was deleted forever. Although, if the sanctions are lifted, they may be allowed to install on iPhones again," the Z-bloggers of the telegram channel "Two Majors" believe.

We also recall that the FSB of Russia announced the operation of foreign intelligence services to spy on high-ranking Russian employees with the help of espionage Software in phones in order to obtain sensitive information. The programs allowed listening to conversations and conducting unspoken audio and video monitoring.