On January 12, 2022, German Interior Minister Nancy Feser stated that the Telegram messaging service could be blocked in the country. This will happen if the messenger, which is popular among far-right groups and people who oppose coronavirus restrictions, does not comply with the requirements of German laws and does not begin to promptly remove prohibited content.

Feather explained that blocking Telegram would be a last resort, and first the country's authorities would still try to negotiate with the management of the messenger. She added that Germany is discussing with its EU partners how to regulate Telegram and limit the distribution of prohibited content there.

On January 10, Germany demanded that Telegram appoint an official representative in the country to quickly remove banned content due to anti-COVID protests gaining momentum. The representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs explained that currently the German authorities send all requests to the UAE, where Telegram is headquartered. Moreover, most of the appeals about the calls of COVID-dissidents distributed in the channels to “kill” politicians and scientists do not reach the only known Telegram mailbox in Dubai at all.

The former director of special areas of one of the Telegram structures, Anton Rozenberg, explained to Izvestia that if Telegram is blocked, which will most likely be done by IP addresses / autonomous systems at the BGP protocol level, no action will be taken by the messenger to create circumvention mechanisms so as not to receive millions of fines in the EU.

According to Rosenberg, Germany can quickly get Telegram removed from the App Store and Google Play for German users and block push notifications for them. According to him, in the worst-case scenario, the country's authorities could also remove Telegram traffic from one of the world's largest traffic exchange points DE-CIX, located in Frankfurt and having subsidiaries around the world.

bbabo.Net