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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

latimes.com

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#201

Post by postmodernbrute »

shawnz wrote: post #194
skyyler wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you've brought up Signal, they're completely different platforms. Signal focuses on secure communication, Telegram has a secure communication feature... But also a social network of group chats and channels that link to each other; and that's the focus of this article.

It was just an example of a product which could be touted as enabling protestors. The other use cases of Telegram could be serviced by other apps. There are plenty of non-E2E social networks available just like Telegram. EDIT: Unfortunately postmodernbrute I am not able to reply to your comment. But I am not trying to deny that Telegram has caught a wave of popularity among Belarusians and others. What I am saying is…

But there wasn't another communication tool that was similarly popular and trusted among the Belarus people. And that, is the difference. Their choice in this protest matters much more to the reporting than your opinion as an outsider.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#203

Post by godelski »

wintorez wrote: post #82
rectang wrote: post #44

Should the revolution fail, the digital trail left by these messages will give the government everything they need to hunt down every last activist. We saw it with the Green Revolution in Iran. We've seen it several times since. So long as messages are not encrypted, messaging apps are much more naturally suited as tools of oppression than tools of revolution.

Telegram has a feature that I really like. It allows you to delete your messages from other people devices as well.

I have been frustrated with Signal on this. I pitched that it is a good idea because of a scenario:

> You're protesting with people. Cops pick them up, but not you. You can delete their messages and it is likely that you are able to do so before the police can clone your phone or copy the messages (screenshot, whatever).

I got a few strange responses back:

- Deleting messages doesn't mean they can't be saved (yeah... this is probabilistic privacy, not guaranteed)

- My device, my data (okay?)

- Some people run custom apps that save everything (how does that apply here? Funny enough, a sibling comment said something similar)

- Just own up to your typos (-_____-)

- Don't use Signal for communication then because you can't be guaranteed privacy (great, I'll use smoke signals with my friends to organize)

To be fair to Signal, the devs did not get into the forums. To also be fair, Signal is taking the same position and is going to only allow deletion an hour after a message was sent. As much as I love Signal, it is my preferred messaging app, I think they are not in touch with the needs of people. We should look at why people are turning to Telegram when protesting. What can we do to better preserve the privacy of people protesting in HK, Belarus, America, etc? Everything is probabilistic security and privacy when it comes down to it. But what tools would help these people the most? I would argue that bidirectional deletion to reduce the chance of self incrimination is one of them. The other is group messaging, channels, and anonymous messages (so your phone number isn't visible in channels). Emojis are nice and fun for day to day use, but it is getting more and more important to push these other features (yes, I know they are extremely difficult to do and actually preserve privacy to the standard Signal currently does. I think many would be fine if it was an incremental increase in privacy with these newer features).

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#204

Post by d0mine »

huhtenberg wrote: post #128
HPsquared wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair though, Telegram users aren't exactly an unbiased sample.

2.3M voted in a poll, 59% from Belorussian phone numbers. That's 1.36 M or 17% of the eligible voter pool. 51% of these are for the secondary candidate. This doesn't reconcile with the official numbers regardless of how you massage them.

Sample size is not everything "Literary Digest poll was also one of the largest and most expensive polls ever conducted, with a sample size of around 2.4 million people" The large size by itself does not guarantee correctness https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.h...

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#205

Post by dang »

throwaway4747l wrote: post #89

Ctrl-F "Signаl": 10 instances Seriously, it'd be nice if we could have one thread about Telegram without S-advocates showing up and complaining about "security". Yes, we know Telegram isn't as secure, yadda yadda yadda. Now if only Signal provided half the features Telegram does, maybe non-cryptonerds would have heard of it.

The problem with a comment like this is that it adds to what it is complaining about.

While I have you: Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#206

Post by godelski »

iso8859-1 wrote: post #130
wintorez wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has a feature that I really like. It allows you to delete your messages from other people devices as well.

But there is an open source client. So it should be trivial to not actually delete, but instead log every attempt to delete.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Sure, maybe this doesn't help you in a channel, but one on one? Or small groups? Most people don't run custom apps and you're probably going to know if your friends do. The biggest use I see of bidirectional deletion is if you see your friends be picked up by a nefarious actor and you can delete the messages. This reduces the chance of self incrimination because you can probably delete the messages before the phone is cloned or the messages are saved in some way.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#207

Post by BTCOG »

_-david-_ wrote: post #181
jetzzz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official election results give Tikhanovskaya 500k votes, Telegram poll - 1M votes, 2x more.

We don't know how many people who voted in the Telegram poll actually voted. Maybe only a quarter of the people in the Telegram poll actually voted. Its possible that some of the people in the Telegram poll are not eligible to vote (due to age or whatever). There could be other issues like people changing who they voted for in the election after previously voting in Telegram.

Well, maybe that's simple enough to explain. Maybe scared citizens don't want to go and publicly vote for fear they're going to get the shit kicked out of them?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#208

Post by saagarjha »

godelski wrote: post #206
iso8859-1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is an open source client. So it should be trivial to not actually delete, but instead log every attempt to delete.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Sure, maybe this doesn't help you in a channel, but one on one? Or small groups? Most people don't run custom apps and you're probably going to know if your friends do. The biggest use I see of bidirectional deletion is if you see your friends be picked up by a nefarious actor and you can delete the messages. This reduces the chance of self incrimination because you can…

It has everything to do with this when the conversation is if the government is going to use your messages in the unencrypted channel to come after you. If your friends are picked up by a nefarious actor, you would have to know that they were–and also, you'd have to ensure that Telegram isn't keeping some sort of deletion log.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#209

Post by godelski »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #171
diimdeep wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is Signal's protocol is not "roll their own" ? Sorry I don't know.

The Signal Protocol[0] is based on OTR, a technology which had already seen a number of implementations and informed scrutiny by the time Signal came along. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

Also an important aspect is that it is open sourced, meaning others can audit it. I'm a little untrusting of people that say "trust me" but also "no, you can't look at it." (unless there is a good reason to hide it, which in this case I do not believe there is)

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#210

Post by suby »

commandlinefan wrote: post #88
rectang wrote: post #44

Should the revolution fail, the digital trail left by these messages will give the government everything they need to hunt down every last activist. We saw it with the Green Revolution in Iran. We've seen it several times since. So long as messages are not encrypted, messaging apps are much more naturally suited as tools of oppression than tools of revolution.

So disappointing that true anonymous communication is technologically feasible but is only unavailable due to government intervention and public apathy.

D
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