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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#251

Post by jariel »

elsjaako wrote: post #235
jariel wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good people have a way to communicate beyond the reach of the authorities ... ... but doesn't really matter how big the poll sample was if the sample was not representative - the results don't have a lot of meaning. And it's pretty fair to say it was not representative. In fact, you don't even need remotely that size of a sample if the sample is representative. Polling is not about sample size, it's about the qu…

According to the official numbers, of the 7.8 million eligible voters, 40% voted, and 7% of those voted for Tikhanovskaya. That's 218400 people. According to the telegram poll, 1.184 million people voted for Tikhanovskaya. That's over 5x as many as according to the official numbers. The sample size doesn't matter here, were talking absolute number. It seems pretty unlikely 5x more people (absolute number, not fractio…

Your numbers don't match Wikipedia [1] which indicates that there was 85% turnout, Tikhanovskaya got 10% ~600K votes. But maybe I missed something.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Belarusian_presidential_e...

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#252

Post by hanniabu »

dmurray wrote: post #30
paganel wrote: post #9

Similar thing is happening in the States with different social media platforms (FB, Reddit until recently) which have empowered political views not reguarded as “good” by the mainstream media, but you don’t see congratulatory articles about this phenomenon, with FB even seen as Satan itself when it comes to politics.

A different interpretation is that those social media platforms keep the dissent monitorable and under control, and the powers that be are quite happy with the status quo. If that was the case, as soon as a platform that was not US-controlled gained a foothold in the US, we'd see a crackdown from the establishment. It would be painted as a tool of a foreign power and shut down or forced to be turned over to a US-base…

> If that ever happens, we'll know democracy in the US is under threat.

Not to get political or anything, but with the clear election interference with dismantling the USPS and removing sorting machines only in swing states it's clearer than ever that democracy is already currently under threat.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#253

Post by biscotti »

The Belarus protests work to unseat a President who resisted bribes to impose a strict lockdown. Lukashenko was offered a sum of USD 940M, initially by the WHO & raised by the World Bank.

It’s a foreign led insurrection that we should all oppose. That people in this thread label it a revolution just goes to show how easily truth can be perverted.

Seems to me he’s a threat to their Corona agenda, that's why he must go.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#254

Post by upofadown »

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

It's based on the concepts of OTR but it has gone in different directions to actually implement those ideas.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#255

Post by shawnz »

heinrich5991 wrote: post #199
ConsiderCrying wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages Are we sure it can't? Because WhatsApp is closed-source, its GDrive backups are unencrypted and Facebook's whole profit model is based around snooping. Unless they make the app open-source, I'm not trusting them even with a grocery list. People act like E2E is the be-all and end-all but trusting an incredibly shady company on its word is not something I'm comfortable with.

Yes, people are reverse engineering the app. You can check the discussions on HackerNews when security of WhatsApp is discussed. GDrive backups are not readable by Facebook, they're readable by Google. End-to-end, if properly implemented is the be-all and end-all. Except for metadata, which is a problem, but a different one, and Facebook definitely abuses that. But they don't/can't read the contents of chat messages…

> It's not merely trusting that shady company, but also realizing that the news of FB not having E2E-encrypted messages would definitely make the news, you'd be aware of it.

Right.. consider what your adversary would be giving up by revealing such a secret, even if it was true. That alone provides a not-insubstantial amount of security.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#256

Post by indigo945 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #231
godelski wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...…

I was pitching the following idea to a friend of mine yesterday: - the UI should hide e2e/“reallyprivate” conversations by default - as in "not visible anywhere" (edit: unless the app is in the foreground and you are chatting of course) Unless you: - do the “add a new user/conversation" - then instead of adding mail/GUID/phone you add a whatevercanberemembered number/emoji/sentence that unlocks the private conversati…

This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as they can see that the file size of the encrypted message logs doesn't match the visible content. If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all.

Security by obscurity is never a win.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#257

Post by godelski »

saagarjha wrote: post #237
godelski wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to repeat >> Sure, maybe this doesn't help you in a channel, but one on one? Or small groups? Most people don't run custom apps The bidirectional part is helpful in the non-public channel context. How does this help? Why does this matter? Well you can keep a public face and a private face. Private channels, group chats with friends, or one on one messages you can be more open and use this tool. But this is nor…

I certainly do not know what my friends are doing 24/7, perhaps not even within a day or two. And that's plenty of time for law enforcement to install a third-party client on their phone, or just read the messages. I agree that having it is better than not having it, but I would not put too much faith in it being useful against law enforcement. Perhaps retracting a mistakenly sent message, but not much more than that…

I feel like you're being needlessly dense. The threat scenario is being at a protest with your friends, not some midnight abduction. And I'll I'm arguing is that it is better to have it than not have it because there's a __chance__. When it comes down to it every aspect of security and privacy is probabilistic. Security walls aren't impenetrable, but unlikely to be penetrated in a given time-frame. If it doesn't reduce the floor on security or privacy but increases the probabilistic upper bound, why not? So my complaint to Signal is why shoot yourself in the foot by limiting this to 1 hour? (24 if you run a custom app)

There's a reason big companies/government employers want root access to your phone and will wipe data if it is lost or stolen. Because it reduces the chance that company/state secrets. No one thinks it is a guarantee. But if given the choice of "revealing a secret" vs "rolling a dice to see if I reveal a secret or not" I'm going with the latter no matter the odds.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#259

Post by throw38474 »

elsjaako wrote: post #235
jariel wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good people have a way to communicate beyond the reach of the authorities ... ... but doesn't really matter how big the poll sample was if the sample was not representative - the results don't have a lot of meaning. And it's pretty fair to say it was not representative. In fact, you don't even need remotely that size of a sample if the sample is representative. Polling is not about sample size, it's about the qu…

According to the official numbers, of the 7.8 million eligible voters, 40% voted, and 7% of those voted for Tikhanovskaya. That's 218400 people. According to the telegram poll, 1.184 million people voted for Tikhanovskaya. That's over 5x as many as according to the official numbers. The sample size doesn't matter here, were talking absolute number. It seems pretty unlikely 5x more people (absolute number, not fractio…

Do Belarusians have online voting?

Voting online is low friction.

Voting by mail is slightly harder.

Taking time off to wait in line and vote in person is time consuming.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#260

Post by aprdm »

diimdeep wrote: post #118

Telegram created Belarus language public channel. And posted poll to vote for new president with some clever restrictions. Anyone can vote, but you can't choose options with candidates if your phone number is not Balarusian. "I am not from Belarus" is only available poll option to make your vote if your phone number is not Balarusian. There is currently 736'000 votes with that option. Telegram poll https://t.me/s/tel…

Is it possible to consider that either Telegram has a vested interest on it or someone can easily obtain a telephone number in Belarus and hack the results?
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