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Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

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Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#201
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, now define those things in an unambiguous way such that countries can come together in agreement over what constitutes expression, where the lines are with respect to slander/libel, what constitutes incitement, harassment... is money expression? Are lies in advertising protected? These simple declarations of what people feel is true and right are ... I dunno, is the right expression "charmingly naive"?

Actually, it's not that hard to define these things pretty unambiguously. I hashed this out in a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35508978

I think that thread actually nicely shows how hard and how contentious the issue is.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a digital privacy dogmatist and in like general terms I agree that sometimes states have legitimate powers to wiretap or whatever. And I agree that the idea that any group of people anywhere can communicate in near perfect secrecy about whatever they want is a little scary. But technology has put us in a challenging position wherein it seems like our only two choices are living in a perfect surveillance state…

> And I agree that the idea that any group of people anywhere can communicate in near perfect secrecy about whatever they want is a little scary The problem is, short of banning encryption altogether, you cannot prevent people from communicating in near perfect secrecy. If a criminal (or neo-Nazi, or homophobic, or whatever scapegoat you want to use) organization wants to communicate secretly, they will have means of…

It is pretty easy to imagine a world where all manufactured hardware is compromised by default so that the state can access it. In some ways were close to that already. That said, you're point is good. The dedicated person can probably achieve pretty good privacy except in the most powerful regimes.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I agree that the idea that any group of people anywhere can communicate in near perfect secrecy about whatever they want is a little scary The problem is, short of banning encryption altogether, you cannot prevent people from communicating in near perfect secrecy. If a criminal (or neo-Nazi, or homophobic, or whatever scapegoat you want to use) organization wants to communicate secretly, they will have means of…

It is pretty easy to imagine a world where all manufactured hardware is compromised by default so that the state can access it. In some ways were close to that already. That said, you're point is good. The dedicated person can probably achieve pretty good privacy except in the most powerful regimes.

Even that wouldn't stop the most dedicated, which are most likely exactly the ones you're trying to stop.

As long as embedded devices exist, you can write a QR reader/writer + encryptor/decryptor on an embedded device with a camera/display, and use the compromised devices as just a transport layer for encrypted QR coded messages.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#204
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blocking" in Russia was nothing else than an internal drill by KGB to check robustness to possible blocking in the target fields of operations, e.g. Brazil. If Russia TRULY wanted to block Telegram, then Mr. Durov, who accidentally operates from and resides in Russia, would have been kidnapped and tortured until Telegram goes down or he hands the keys over to KGB. Since Durov is still alive and free... the conclusio…

Durov don't operate from Russia and wasn't operating during those "blockings", so this theory does not hold up.

Durov was seen in StPetersburg for years after the "exile" [1], and Telegram was being developed from exactly the same office it was before the "exile", one floor below Vkontakte. The story Durov tells is at the very least incomplete.

[1]: here's Durov breaking someone's phone for making his photo in a shopping centre in 2017 https://360tv.ru/news/proisshestviya/pavel-durov-razbil-tele...

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#205
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measure legislative independence, frequency of regime changes, election margins, concentrations of executive authority and so on. Sure, it's a 'political opinion' that nobody is so cool they are naturally re-elected over and over with 97%+ majorities, but you can certainly measure the number of standard deviations in election results. This book is readable and essays a rigorous approach to the topic, albeit within an…

Most of these things cannot be "measured", and weighing them to produce some kind of aggregate score is inherently a biased process. There isn't any remotely agreed upon method to determine what constitutes an authoritarian government (or even where a specific government falls on a scale between authoritarian and democracy, when compared to others). In some aspects, Switzerland is more authoritarian than Saudi Arabia…

Any evaluation process is subject to accusations of bias, including yours above:

Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?", "are they respecting universal human rights?", and "in whose interests are they acting?"

Instead of just nay-saying and trying to redirect the argument, you could try engaging with the question of what a dictatorship is as a political structure. Or not, as you prefer.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another theory I have is the CIA leaked the Jan 8 recordings to CNN. Security camera recordings that implied he and his people staged a false flag terrorist attack operation in Brasilia in order to justify censoring the internet and persecuting the opposition. They made those recordings confidential and stalled official attempts at investigation as much as possible. I actually thought they were going to just memory h…

> They made those recordings confidential and stalled official attempts at investigation as much as possible. They made the recordings unavailable to Congress because several members of Congress are being investigated for their involvement. Also, it's not a legal responsibility of Congress to investigate criminal and terrorist attacks - that responsibility belongs to the police, as the responsibility to ensure the sa…

I know they had the recordings. They just didn't release them because they obviously implicated Lula and his people.

They literally buried Lava Jato. Biggest corruption scandal in the country and they erased it all. Lula actually gets to claim he's innocent, they dropped the charges. You think I trust anything these people "investigate"? Not a chance. I'll take my chances with the court of public opinion. It's got way more credibility than these "institutions".

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#207
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> In fact, he was and is, seen numerous times in Russia. Care to add some links?

Here are some links

2014 https://tjournal.ru/52954

2015 https://m.sobaka.ru/city/city/35154

2017 https://360tv.ru/news/proisshestviya/pavel-durov-razbil-tele...

2017, a story that confirms that Telegram was still being developed in Saint Petersburg, years after the "exile" https://vc.ru/flood/26634-telegraf-gram-rozenberg

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your scenario, you’re calling this the opposite of an expansion. But aren’t the companies literally “expanding” into these countries? Otherwise, what’s the issue? Unless you’re saying they should have sway regardless of whether they’re doing business there or not? And to be clear it is “doing business”. Nobody is forcing companies to ship anywhere they don’t want to. Nobody is forcing them to allow IP connections…

If I don't have any servers in your nation, I don't see how you could possibly even begin to regard me as having expanded into your nation. Your people are leaving your nation to come to me. That seems quite factually rooted.

> If I don't have any servers in your nation, I don't see how you could possibly even begin to regard me as having expanded into your nation.

Simple — by making sales and/or servicing customers for profit in my region, your business has “expanded” into my region. Server location is irrelevant — as you’ve pointed out, the internet is everywhere.

Re: Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, he was and is, seen numerous times in Russia. Care to add some links?

Here are some links 2014 https://tjournal.ru/52954 2015 https://m.sobaka.ru/city/city/35154 2017 https://360tv.ru/news/proisshestviya/pavel-durov-razbil-tele... 2017, a story that confirms that Telegram was still being developed in Saint Petersburg, years after the "exile" https://vc.ru/flood/26634-telegraf-gram-rozenberg

Thanks! Very much appreciated.

I guess I have to admit he has been in Russia at least 2 or 3 times since 2012. (The 2017 story is low on verifiable details I think although I admit I read it through Google Translate.)

The last story however seems to be about Telegram, an anti spam company that owned a minority share in Telegram and fell out with Telegram, not the company that develop Telegram, doesn't it?

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