Snowden called Telegram and WhatsApp a tool in the hands of Western intelligence agencies

Telegram and WhatsApp messengers (part of Meta, the organization is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) are becoming tools in the hands of special services of Western states. This was announced on October 10 by former employee of the US National Security Agency Edward Snowden in an interview with NTV.

"In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about Telegram, WhatsApp and other major messengers, because they are under increasing pressure. <...> They are ready to comply with the requirements for cooperation and information transfer to the special services of Western countries," he said.

According to him, in this regard, countries that do not belong to the Western bloc find themselves in unequal conditions. These messengers pose a threat to ordinary citizens and the authorities of non-Western countries.

"Political activity on the Internet is heavily censored. People's pages are massively deleted, and they are subject to cancellation, for example, as in the case of protests in Canada during covid," concluded Snowden.

Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messenger, said on September 28 that about a year ago, the French special services contacted him and asked him to help the Moldovan authorities censor some of the platform's channels. According to him, after checking the specified channels, the Telegram team deleted only those that clearly violated the rules of the platform. At the same time, the mediator said that for this cooperation, French intelligence "will say a lot of good things" to the judge who issued the decision on his arrest in August last year.

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