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Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

theguardian.com

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#351
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has public and private groups. They probably want to jail him for not pre-moderating every posted message.

That’s my question, if messages are end to end encrypted then the company does not have access to censor, right?

That's how successful Telegram's PR has been. People believe - like you do - that it's end to end encrypted. It's not.

The secret chats presumably are (if you trust Telegram). Secret chats are 1 to 1. So anything outside of those that most people on Telegram access (massive channels and groups, smaller groups, private groups and channels) is NOT encrypted.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#352
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the thing. If your app is known to be uses heavily by criminals ranging from Pedo's to drug dealers. You are liable. You run a carrier service. Much like the owner of omegle found out, yes you do have a duty of care. You can't just provide a service that knowingly provides a platform to criminal activity and do jack shit. You live in fairytale land if you think you can.

I upvoted your comment so that it has a bit of visibility because I know some people think this, but I disagree with it, very strongly. First, your analogy is broken -- roads, telephones, pen and paper, motor vehicles all fit your description just as aptly. Second, you propose your preferred moral economy as one that only curtails harms. In fact, you create another harm implementing what you think is right. Reasonabl…

>First, your analogy is broken -- roads, telephones, pen and paper, motor vehicles all fit your description just as aptly.

and they're usually public property and policed. Routine police inspection on a road and in particular control of borders and key nodes in your transportation infrastructure isn't exactly controversial. (unless you're part of some extreme political faction). You know a lot of countries where people can drive without a license plate?

Private communication is important but it has always had limits, this crypto mentality of companies exercising no compliance, having no borders, ignoring the law and national security doesn't have a precedent. Historically people communicated say in the US using an American telecommunications network which without a doubt complied with legal requests. It's not at all self evident that we should tolerate telecoms infrastructure operated by a Russian out of Dubai that is primarily used by an enemy we're effectively at war with.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram allows to report illegal posts; I suggest that France arrests those who saw the posts but didn't report them instead.

To be fair, anyone that has used Telegram for a while know that this is just a mock option to fool regulators. You can report all you want; zero action is taken. There are dozens of accounts that joined groups I'm in to spam CSAM. We've reported them, kicked/banned them from the group. Months later you can look them up and they're still there and still active. They even post CSAM in their public (visible for everyone…

I tried to market something very small on Telegram and was surprised how fast my account got restricted.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not, if they already got backdoors?

If Apple hypothetically agreed to iMessage backdoors, why would you trust the Telegram app updates served up by Apple's app store? Western government's can pretty much hack into any device they want - the only reason for backdooring messaging apps would be for dragnet surveillance, and I don't see big tech having the appetite for the bad publicity and lawsuits that will result when that inevitably becomes public

Apple already has a kind of "backdoor": they store the keys for encrypted cloud backups in their cloud as well. They advertise that cloud data are encrypted but prefer not to mention that they also have a key to decrypt it. Even with the highest level of security [1] your contacts list in Apple Cloud are not encrypted. Why? Probably someone asked for this.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#355
post #314
post #117

It’ll be interesting to see if the likes of Marlinspike, Firefox, EFF, etc., rally to support this guy. It’s really chilling to see the steps EU gobs are taking against free speech. In some ways they seem more authoritarian than even China and Russia. It’s like “free world” is becoming a farce.

Durov has been shilling his crypto scams while shitting on all those services you're talking about (well, at least Signal) claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Considering how he's tarnished Signal, there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up. What will be very funny is the fact that Telegram is pretty much not encrypted (yeah ok, "secret chats", whatever sure) and now that investigat…

> well, at least Signal

Basically only Signal + Whatsapp.

> claiming they don't do anything for privacy.

Well, Signal is kind of a scam in that regard.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#356
post #323
post #303

We changed the URL from https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/info-tf1-lci-le-... to an article in English. If there's a better article in English, we can change it again.

One detail that's missing from the English article is why he got arrested. The French article mentions: Why was he under threat of a search warrant? The Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes him an accomplice to drug trafficking, child-crime offenses and swindling.

Just because he is the CEO doesn’t mean he is directly liable. The company is a separate entity. I don’t see anyone arresting Elon or other CEOs because of “not enough moderation.” Most actions are to block platform access. There must be something else for sure.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#357
post #32

[flagged]

[flagged]

I really have no idea why you think this is worth noting; they've only posted a few times, and haven't once said a negative thing about Ukraine or Ukrainians.

Also, you don't have to tell people to take the opinions of anonymous strangers with a "grain of salt." It's weird.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#358

While on the subject of Telegram, check this out: https://github.com/simplex-chat

"100% private" claims always make me incredibly suspicious since it is impossible to achieve that. Security is a matter of threat modeling against an expected adversary and nothing protects against a serious interest from a state level actor. This is why I don't really care that Telegram doesn't do E2EE by default. Most of my chats aren't that interesting and in my threat model it's good enough.

I don't disagree. It's just another messenger. Just a 'check it out' - I stick with the simple things. No need for 324823494234 different things that try to solve the same problems, and never do. The telegram jpg/file exploits recently with the inline imaging just go to show security is theater until the next CVE

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#359

3 of his kids are in Moscow. Under Putin’s control. Pavel Durov tries to play the “victim” to create a legitimate image for himself and Telegram.

Self-admittedly he has over 100 children. OTOH, Telegram's DCs are in: the US, the Netherlands and in Singapore [0] and he was just arrested in the EU.

So I don't follow how you've made a connection between Putin and (Putin's?) "(fake?) victim" Durov.

[0] https://docs.pyrogram.org/faq/what-are-the-ip-addresses-of-t...

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#360
post #326
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that every social media/forum/messaging app should be banned then and every CEO in jail. Bad actors will use anything they can.

The Telegram fanatics for some reason are unwilling to hear it but we'll say it again: the reason why we still have an Internet in 2024 is that all those services at least attempt some form of moderation. With more or less success, sure, but they can at least say there is an attempt and they do take down stuff. Durov pretty much brags about not doing the bare minimum. It's that simple.

Telegram allows to report illegal content to moderators. Jail those who saw the content but didn't report it.

I am sure all those claims in the media about "cooperating with terrorists" is just a lie. Probably it is something related to not implementing fingerprints for copyrighted material.

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