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Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

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Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#111

> jpost.com > • 5 hours ago > Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, arrested by France following warrant - The Jerusalem Post > The alleged offenses include: terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, money laundering and receiving stolen goods. For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT ENCRYPTED. They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers. All chats that are not 'secret chat' mode (single device to single device) ar…

Yeah. I have no idea how Telegram got this reputation for privacy.

I'd like to point out WhatsApp chats are also end-to-end encrypted, just like in Signal. People aren't wrong to distrust Meta but I'd like to point out that WhatsApp encryption often makes judges here seethe to the point they order nation wide blocks of WhatsApp out of spite. The fact everyone I know uses something this secure makes me very happy. It's not perfect but since network effects makes alternatives unusable I'll take what I can get.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#112
post #6

Telegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it. When you create something that is objectively great, everyone will use it - including bad actors.

You like it better than Signal? The only thing I know Telegram for is several of my girlfriend’s relatives being exposed to crazy scams and right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation on it.

This is exactly my experience as well. I have never actually used telegram as I was early a signal user and never needed it but my ex used it. All she ever used it for was conspiracy garbage she would follow. Anti covid vaccine doctors and groups mainly. The amount of misinformation she tried to show me and every time I would show her how it was fake she still would not believe me. Then she was even scammed out of $10k from telegram when she fell for a romance crypto scam. The conspiracy stuff is a main reason we broke up it was every single one from flat earth to fake moon landing to all the covid world economic forum world take over and on and on. Most of these came from telegram.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#113

> jpost.com > • 5 hours ago > Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, arrested by France following warrant - The Jerusalem Post > The alleged offenses include: terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, money laundering and receiving stolen goods. For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT ENCRYPTED. They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers. All chats that are not 'secret chat' mode (single device to single device) ar…

This is misinformation that Telegram stores chat data in plaintext on their servers. It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across the globe. Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to be subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.

It could be worth a try to extract the keys of one server with a liquid nitrogen can and a cold boot attack. Or something more advanced that isn’t documented on Wikipedia.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are certainly already on Signal, but Signal has end-to-end encryption so cannot supply information other than meta information to authorities.

This would imply that just E2EEing everything would give you a free pass not to moderate anything, which seems very naive. I doubt the judges would care about their self-imposed technological limitations.

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#115

France is arresting people for providing end-to-end encrypted communications? What could possibly go wrong!

I don't why you were downvoted. Because that is exactly what is going on. EU is generally on a open-encryption-by-warrant path and this is a great example of applying some pressuring. Should we enable the Iranian polotical refugee to communicate in secret with her family ? Should we by warrant enable the possibility to open up messages when pedofiles sell or buy children for sex ? Nasty questions.

Aren’t you advocating for a Big Brother-style system?

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?

How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?

Meta seems to shy away from saying they don't look at the content in some fashion. Eg they might scan it with some filters, they just don't send plaintext around.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#117
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misinformation that Telegram stores chat data in plaintext on their servers. It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across the globe. Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to be subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.

This is effectively plaintext, in that one entity has all of those secrets for everyone. That's one entity to subpoena. If that entity doesn't comply, governments will get upset and charge your executives with crimes if they get the chance. Different jurisdictions makes it harder to kick down the doors and get the keys, but it doesn't change the fundamental problem. "Nuh-uh, I put all those records in a box in Switze…

> This is effectively plaintext

Everything's effectively plaintext then.

Plaintext: refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. None of which Telegram does.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?

How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?

Probably government portals that Meta provides

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#119

> jpost.com > • 5 hours ago > Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, arrested by France following warrant - The Jerusalem Post > The alleged offenses include: terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, money laundering and receiving stolen goods. For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT ENCRYPTED. They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers. All chats that are not 'secret chat' mode (single device to single device) ar…

And non E2E chats by default is an intentional design desision. Pavel previously gave comments about these tradeoffs: In some sense it is better design than Whatsapp's e2e by default BUT 99%+ users have an automated backup to an un-e2encrypted storage such as Google Drive.
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