Opinion – Ronaldo Lemos: Telegram shows failure of institutions

Imagine an application that is used by 50 million people in Brazil. This app has access to all the most intimate information a person can have: their photos, videos, messages, network of contacts, name, as well as their real-time location.

In addition, it saves all your sent messages, photos, videos and documents on its servers. In that same app, there are reports of gun sales, drug trafficking, disinformation campaigns and even pedophilia.

The app’s name is Telegram, and it has a problem: it’s outside the scope of Brazilian law. Even with so many people in the country increasing their numbers of users (and billing), the attitude of the company and the individuals who maintain the service is to solemnly ignore any authority in the country.

For example, the app has been ignoring a court order issued by the Federal Supreme Court for six months to remove illegal content. Not only did it not remove it, but it didn’t give any satisfaction about this inertia.

The fact is that, with so many users, the application has access to a real-time X-ray of everything that happens in the country, including public authorities. Even though STF judges are not users, it is certain that many of the 2,800 Supreme Court employees use the app, enter the Supreme Court building every day with it installed and share information obtained from their work in court.

In other words, Telegram doesn’t care about Brazil or the Federal Supreme Court, but gladly accepts the information collected and generated by the employees who work on it.

The Telegram case clearly shows that existing institutions in today’s world have failed to deal with a problem that is new, complex and global in nature.

The Judiciary and the laws of the countries have not evolved to deal with the deviant behavior of an app like Telegram.

This problem is not just Brazilian. Germany is right now grappling with the same issue. Telegram has been used to plan attacks in the country, including a plot to assassinate a state governor.

Faced with this challenge, Germany is discussing at least two solutions. The first is to block Telegram, ordering internet connection service providers to exclude addresses that allow access to the service. In practice, this would make the service unavailable to most people in the country.

The other solution studied by Germany is to order private companies such as Google and Apple to remove the app from their app stores, making it unavailable for new accesses. In the world, it is worth remembering that at least 11 countries have already blocked Telegram, including India and Russia itself, the country of origin of the application.

However, they all share the same observation: institutions need to evolve to cope with new challenges of this nature. An application of a few megabytes installed on the cell phone can today put in check the historically constructed power of national states.
Hegel would need to review part of his work if he were alive.

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It’s overDoing nothing in the face of Telegram’s inertia

AlreadyGermany discussing various methods of blocking Telegram

It’s comingBrazil discussing what it will do with Telegram