Pavel Durov

Or some other people like Assange.

Also, at that moment, I realized there's no way to communicate securely.

I need to tell my brother what's going on.

They're probably going after him.

How do I tell him without betraying him?

Because in 2011...

Remember, WhatsApp was already there.

I think they launched it in 2009.

But it had zero encryption.

All messages were plain text in transit, meaning that even your system administrator, let alone your carrier, had access to your messages.

It was only after Telegram started this push for encryption that these other apps suddenly remembered that privacy wasn't their DNA, as WhatsApp founders famously stated.

But it must have been a dormant gene in 2011.

Yeah.

In 2011, there was no way to send a message in a secure way.

And I also told myself, if I'm going to survive this, I'm definitely launching a secure messaging app.

Somehow, it ended up not being too bad.

I was summoned to the prosecutor, answered some silly questions, fewer questions that I had to answer more recently in the French investigation case.

But it was the beginning of the end.

It was clear that there's no way I'm going to be allowed to run VK the way I wanted it to run.

and realized any day I can leave the country.