Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 234 posts

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#201

Post by _Algernon_ »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #107
yunohn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the Zoom definition of E2EE! /s https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/zoom-to-pay-85m-...

Kind of, but as they aren't lying about allowing private conversations not really. More saying https is end to end encrypted, but what one end does with that data isn't necessarily private.

https on its own isn't e2ee:

>End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where *only the communicating users can read the messages*. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, *and even the provider of the communication service* – from being able to access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation.[1]

If the server can read the content, it isn't end-to-end encryption.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#202

Post by autoexec »

izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

> How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal.

just so you know, Signal does permanently store sensitive user data in the cloud. They collect your name, photo, phone number, and a list of every person you contact using Signal. That data is stored in your profile on their servers.

Signal really used to not store anything, but that hasn't been the case for a long time now and if this is the first you're hearing about that, it should tell you all you need to know about how trustworthy Signal is.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#203

Post by autoexec »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #184
yunohn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about not storing any information at all? Acc to telegram: > Telegram may disclose IP addresses and phone numbers How do you propose this data is masked? You need a phone number to use Telegram (and Signal), and you need an internet connection, thus exposing your IP address. I’m not sure why you think Signal does not have this information.

Signal has been subpoena'd in the past, and the only relevant information they were able to provide were account creation date and account's last connection date. Literally nothing else. It's actually a little funny to read: https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/

That was in the past though. Now Signal is storing exactly that same information permanently in the cloud. Specifically they store your name, phone number, photo, and a record of every person you contact.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#204

Post by em-bee »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #194
zelphirkalt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience. Why do you think that? Did you lose any messages? 'cause I can scroll back months and still see all my messages there. Never noticed any loss.

As mentioned in parent comment: > Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? All your chats are gone! Switching out devices is something that happens often enough for many users that transferring history should not be an ordeal. Even the most careful users will occasionally break their phones, and sometimes people need to switch p…

just to add, telegram can NOT transfer or back up E2E encrypted chats either. unencrypted chats transfer because they are saved on the telegram server.

i think deltachat is possibly the only one that can transfer encrypted messages because you can copy the encryption keys and the messages are just mails, easy to copy (and usually stored on your mail server too)

i don't know how matrix handles this, but from the way verification works there, i am not confident.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#205

Post by nonameiguess »

kelthuzad wrote: post #103
wruza wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that corruption uses court orders of fabricated terrorism cases as regular means to abuse the system? If that’s true, Europe is screwed up regardless of how a popular messenger handles your ip. Anyway, “slippery slope” is an extrapolation and not an argument, cannot be used as such. You can naively extrapolate everything, e.g. I was too lazy to take out the trash today … and then I’ll try heroin.…

If a system can be abused, it will be abused. We have seen this play out in America and people are still not learning from these events. There are other ways to investigate suspects without sacrificing principals of privacy and spoiling it for the majority of 99.5% innocent human beings.

This is a sufficiently general argument against all law enforcement capabilities, though. Give the police any power at all and it's inevitable that someone will abuse it at some point in the future. Typically, most communities nonetheless decide on some level of rules, checks, and capabilities somewhere between "nothing" and "everything," accepting that which risks and tradeoffs are worth it might change over time. It seems to be largely only Hacker News that thinks law enforcement should never get any access to any data at all, ever.

What are these other ways to investigate suspects you're thinking that are preferable to building out networks from Telegram metadata? Bugging houses? Threatening family members to rat people out? Deep cover covert agents? Are any of those less subject to abuse?

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#206

Post by em-bee »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #196
em-bee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! telegram is the only chat app that offers Free Software clients, does not force me to share my phonenumber, is easy enough to use even for old people. matrix is ok. but element is still buggy and the ux is complex and takes some learning. another alternative is deltachat. it uses smtp as transport and works with an email account. the…

Last time I tried Telegram to see what it is like, it did automatically broadcast to all my contacts, that I use Telegram, and as a consequence people thought they could message me there, even though I was only testing the app. Also it did require associating with my phone/SIM. Do you mean, that it does not publish your phone number to other people on Telegram? I keep an eye on deltachat, hoping, that it might become…

it should have asked you about that broadcasting. i am very sensitive about that so i am careful not to allow it.

deltachat is pretty mature for the features that it has. one nice one is that the autocrypt feature works with some regular email clients, so you can exchange encrypted deltachat messages with people who don't have a deltachat client.

it handles groups, image sharing, and integrates videochat with a configurable url (so you can use any video chat that can be opened through a webbrowser)

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#207

Post by lhoff »

em-bee wrote: post #204
kitsunesoba wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned in parent comment: > Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? All your chats are gone! Switching out devices is something that happens often enough for many users that transferring history should not be an ordeal. Even the most careful users will occasionally break their phones, and sometimes people need to switch p…

just to add, telegram can NOT transfer or back up E2E encrypted chats either. unencrypted chats transfer because they are saved on the telegram server. i think deltachat is possibly the only one that can transfer encrypted messages because you can copy the encryption keys and the messages are just mails, easy to copy (and usually stored on your mail server too) i don't know how matrix handles this, but from the way v…

Signal can do that. Both on Android and iOS. What it can't do on iOS is to create regular Backups (which it can on Android).

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

I think it has something to do that Signal won't trust iCloud as Backup target.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#208

Post by lhoff »

freemint wrote: post #188
dark-star wrote: post #131

I like how they are actually asking users, and not only "privacy-advocats" (who obviously push for option 3) or similar vocal subgroups. Currently the poll stands at: * OPTION 1: 40% * OPTION 2: 21% * OPTION 3: 35% * (no opinion): 4% with 1.3 million votes so far. I like the outcome (personally, I don't think the "store nothing" approach of OPTION 3 is really necessary), although the 21% that push for even less priva…

Those numbers still hold exactly like this at 1.6 million votes.

I have a screenshot from this morning with 360k votes. It was 41%|21%|34%|4%. Kind of funny that is stays so stable.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#209

Post by yunohn »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #184
yunohn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about not storing any information at all? Acc to telegram: > Telegram may disclose IP addresses and phone numbers How do you propose this data is masked? You need a phone number to use Telegram (and Signal), and you need an internet connection, thus exposing your IP address. I’m not sure why you think Signal does not have this information.

Signal has been subpoena'd in the past, and the only relevant information they were able to provide were account creation date and account's last connection date. Literally nothing else. It's actually a little funny to read: https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/

But did you actually read that? It specifically doesn’t mention the obvious data that they do have (phone and IP), but instead focus on other sensitive metadata:

> variety of information we don’t have, including the target’s name, address, correspondence, contacts, groups, calls.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#210

Post by d0mine »

autoexec wrote: post #203
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal has been subpoena'd in the past, and the only relevant information they were able to provide were account creation date and account's last connection date. Literally nothing else. It's actually a little funny to read: https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/

That was in the past though. Now Signal is storing exactly that same information permanently in the cloud. Specifically they store your name, phone number, photo, and a record of every person you contact.

Metadata is enough to execute people (by certain country but anywhere in the world--it is immoral for Signal to position itself as secure if it provides such data).
Post reply on HN