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Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

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Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#201

Post by Brakenshire »

bmelton wrote: post #172
pqdbr wrote: post #65

I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This i…

> No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. I know nothing of Brazilian law, but in America, criminals have rights, including the right to privacy. Convicted criminals and convicted felons do not, but that is an entirely different category, and your wording seems woefully imprecise. > Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have…

> I know nothing of Brazilian law, but in America, criminals have rights, including the right to privacy.

I think your post rests on uncharitably interpreting what he means by absolute rights. Your post itself is a demonstration that the right to privacy is not absolute - if the criteria you describe are met, a wiretap can be permitted. He was talking about the fundamental question of whether or not a state has the right to set and apply those criteria (at least, within reasonable limits) within its borders.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#202

Post by soneca »

A superior ranked judge ('desembargador') just revoked the ban. And said (my translation):

"In face of the constitutional principles, it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are affected in result of the company (whatsapp) inertia"

In portuguese:

"""em face dos princípios constitucionais, não se mostra razoável que milhões de usuários sejam afetados em decorrência da inércia da empresa"

The judge also said that a fine would be more appropriate.

source (in portuguese): http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2015/12/whatsapp-just...

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#203

Post by danilocesar »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #150

I'm a judge in Brazil. Your comment history says otherwise: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167143 Seem to be a run of the mill dev to me. I'm surprised you got as many credulous responses as you did.

Well, looks like he is a judge. He owns https://github.com/feliperaul. The guy who owns that vacation website he mentioned is named "Felipe Raul Benali", from Maringa, and he uses the same nickname (pqdbr) in some other websites.

There's a judge named "Felipe Raul Borges Benali", from the same city, and crossing https://medium.com/@felipebenali , http://jus.com.br/313522-felipe-raul-borges-benali/publicaco... and his linkedin account, looks to be the same guy.

He got the position last year, http://noticias.r7.com/sao-paulo/juizes-federais-tomam-posse... and the picture from medium website looks like the guy in the middle of this the news report.

So, yeah, there's a good change that this guy is actually a judge. Feels nice to have a judge with technical skills.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#204

Post by legulere »

eertami wrote: post #120
legulere wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp also lacks multi-device sync. The feature that made people adopt WhatsApp was saving money in contrast to using expensive SMS (which is the reason why it doesn’t have much adoption in countries with reasonable prices). Multi-device sync and privacy-awareness both are maybe reasons for a few individuals to switch but they both have problem with the number one feature of messengers: actually reaching other peo…

>(which is the reason why it doesn’t have much adoption in countries with reasonable prices). Huh? I don't think this is correct. WhatsApp is huge in Europe, nearly everyone I meet prefers to use WhatsApp over SMS yet almost everybody has "unlimited SMS" plans.

The unlimited texting plans came after whatsapp in most countries. In Sweden seemingly nobody uses Whatsapp. Here in Germany there are many people with unlimited texting, but it's far from everybody.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#205

Post by etiam »

moxie wrote: post #124
etiam wrote: post #2

Shame they went there instead of to Signal, but I guess it may still be a marginal improvement.

Marginal improvement in what sense? When considering privacy, Telegram is by far the worst option. They store the plaintext message history on the server of every message that every user has ever sent or received. Even if WhatsApp weren't using end to end encryption by default, they would have no way of complying with government requests like this one, because they simply don't have the messages. Telegram, on the oth…

Only in the limited sense that Telegram appears to at least have an intention of really providing private messaging and one might hope that they one day drop the delusions of grandeur and start to take seriously constructive criticism about how to do it right, as you and others have presented in other threads here.

My understanding of the Whatsapp end-to-end-encryption is that the use of the term is completely misleading, as the "ends" they are referring to are the client and the Whatsapp server (https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21864047). Unless you know otherwise, I take that to mean the communications are in the clear at Facebook, and in my estimation that's tantamount to piping them straight into the US surveillance machinery through whatever they call PRISM these days, or some more or less distant relative of it. (This arrangement would still offer protection from bad actors that don't have some form of easy access to Facebook's internal information).

Both seem like dreadful options in absolute terms, but if we're comparing I'd slightly rather have that user base in the hands of someone possibly sincere and incompetent than with someone competent but almost certainly treacherous. At least there is a sliver of hope for improvement and, who knows, maybe once they're off the paved road of Whatsapp they'll wobble their way though other alternatives to something like Signal eventually.

Since we're fortunate enough to have you here anyway, would you mind commenting on how Signal would fare under a similar blockade? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10750898

Would the service be taken down? Do you consider it a priority to try making it difficult to block in the default configuration?

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#206

Post by morgante »

pqdbr wrote: post #65

I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This i…

> Criminals, for example, simply don't have it.

At least in the US we presume innocence. Defendants are not criminals and their rights must be respected.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#207

Post by vox_mollis »

pqdbr wrote: post #75
hvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have the right to privacy ? Do you mean _alleged_ criminals? Yes, they do. Convicted criminals, on the other hand, don't have that right already.

No they don't. Your argument doesn't make any logical sense. Wiretapping is needed during the investigation phase, which you need to gather evidence BEFORE trialling and convicting anyone. And is only authorized if you have strong evidence that a crime or criminal organization is in place. If only convicted criminals didn't have right to privacy, how would you get them convicted in the first place ? Also, you really…

Thank you for reaffirming my priors on what kind of people judges are.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#208

Post by [deleted] »

lqdc13 wrote: post #42
tazjin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, and in extension the other privacy-aware messengers (Threema etc), can not replace Telegram or iMessage because they lack basic features like multi-device sync. The hard problem of messaging has not been solved yet, what people should build is a service like iMessage but with the public key pool per account publicly auditable and verifiable.

This has to be a joke. Multi-device sync? Most people don't know what that is. They just want a pretty GUI, their friends to be on it, and an easy way to send videos/photos/voicemails/whatever. Granted, I've never wanted to send videos and sending photos works well on Signal right now. But until recently the GUI wasn't very polished.

[deleted]

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#209

Post by emergentcypher »

pqdbr wrote: post #65

I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This i…

First, every person has rights, even criminals. Those rights are limited in some way after having been convicted of a crime.

But your real mistake is in the _presumption_ that somebody is a criminal. Convicted pedophiles shouldn't have a right to privacy. But we're talking about the general population. Everybody who has not been convicted does have full rights to privacy, and you cannot violate that right simply to "check" if every person has committed a crime or not... that is the literal definition of a police state.

I doubt that you're actually a judge.

Re: Telegram gains 1M users after Whatsapp ban

#210

Post by pjc50 »

bmelton wrote: post #172
pqdbr wrote: post #65

I'm a judge in Brazil. Even tough I'd pray to not be the one that had to give such an impopular order (affecting more then 100 million Brazilians - WhatsApp is really a hit here), we have laws in this country and we must prosecute criminals. Mark's talk about privacy is, in my opinion, totally misplaced. No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. This i…

> No right is absolute, and that includes the right to privacy. Criminals, for example, simply don't have it. I know nothing of Brazilian law, but in America, criminals have rights, including the right to privacy. Convicted criminals and convicted felons do not, but that is an entirely different category, and your wording seems woefully imprecise. > Do you guys think that pedophiles, terrorists and drug dealers have…

The US does not have a general right to privacy; the 4th amendment is very limited, and does not apply to information held by third parties.

4th amendment litigation is full of really questionable reasons for "probable cause" for warrantless searches, and then there's things like the FBI fake base stations and the NSA listening programme.

The EU has a general right to privacy .. with a law enforcement exception.

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