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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

#151
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did not. He stopped his jet to refuel in France, and they issued it in the mean time

Do you have any reference for this?

This shows the strength of the five eyes "CARTEL"

They grounded a Presidents plane because they thought SNOWDEN was onboard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers FYI, this is a totally misleading and false claim. Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud algorithm for non-secret chats[1][2]. In fact, it uses a split-key encryption system and the servers are all stored in multiple jurisdictions. So even Telegram employees can't decrypt the chats, because you'd need to compromise all the servers at the same time. Telegram's algorithm…

> Compared to other apps like WhatsApp with claims of E2EE and no body of verification and validation. We do have at least some empirical evidence that WhatsApp is properly encrypted. WhatsApp's cryptography has made judges in my country foam at the mouth with rage so hard they ordered retaliatory nation wide blocks of the service at least twice. People are right to distrust Meta but I for one am glad that everyone I…

> We do have at least some empirical evidence that WhatsApp is properly encrypted

so do we. Telegram's MTProto 2.0 has been audited multiple times by independent researchers, compared to WhatsApp's closed-source claims of E2EE.

I'd rather trust a company with a proven track record of no security incidents and fight for user privacy than a corporation which lies through its teeth time and again.

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

#153
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

See my comment above about the unencrypted backup. It's basically a UX tradeoff: You can not promote default E2E + no autobackups -- people in mass are not ready to lose their data when losing the device. Nor they are ready to store the key separately in a confidential manner. Nor they are ready to manually transfer the key among different devices. All this UX situation is defined by Moxie (the author of Signal and W…

Backups are encrypted now. Looks like they improved it.

I get it. I'm a privacy and free and open source software enthusiast. It's not perfect. It certainly is better than alternatives though. We know for a fact that it pisses off judges and authorities. That's a major sign that its working. You should be concerned when they stop complaining about it, it means they got in.

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

#154
post #99

A lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less. The comparisons to other providers is off base because either other providers are cooperating more when they possess actionable, unencrypted information and taking s…

> Nothing more, nothing less. A lot more and a lot less than that. Arresting this CEO in France is largely a political decision, not a politically neutral enforcement action against the Telegram platform. They don’t perform the same enforcement against other entities they could go after.

He holds French citizenship, apparently broke French laws, and got arrested on French soil. How is that a political decision?

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

#157
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data that is transmitted or stored along with the keys is effectively plaintext, which Telegram does. The data is effectively plaintext on my device, at Telegram, and on the group members' devices, even if it is not plaintext in-between. Data I send to a website over TLS is effectively plaintext on my computer and on the other side; in transit, it is not. It all comes down to your threat model. Encryption does not pr…

> stored along with the keys It's not. They use a split-key encryption system so it's not exactly the same as storing the keys where the data is. > It all comes down to your threat model. Encryption does not protect information from entities who hold the keys to decrypt that information. I agree, which is why I'll say that the bottom line is: Are auditable E2EE algorithms stronger in security than cloud encryption? Y…

[deleted]

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

#158
Many defend Telegram by likening it to a neutral platform, akin to TCP, claiming it merely provides a service without responsibility for the content. However, this comparison fails because TCP is a simple protocol with no ability to control or monitor content, whereas Telegram holds keys for most data and is capable of content moderation. Unlike E2EE platforms like Signal, which cannot comply with requests without breaking encryption protocols, and whose jurisdictions often prohibit forced backdoors, Telegram's refusal to cooperate, despite having the ability, shifts it from being unable to act to willfully aiding or sheltering criminal activity.

In this context, Durov's arrest isn't unjust - Telegram knowingly allowed illegal content to thrive while ignoring legal obligations to assist law enforcement. Refusing to provide data when you can, under lawful requests, is tantamount to facilitating or even protecting criminal activity. This dismisses the complexities of cross-jurisdictional law enforcement, but the general concept remains valid.

By the way, I’m not a fan of censorship, but I do believe that a platform’s baseline for moderation should be compliance with the current laws in each jurisdiction, rather than the founder’s personal moral judgment.

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

#159

This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again. Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything. Hell, then there's the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery s…

  Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do
  [...]
  maybe I'm just being naive?
In this case, the comment does strike me as naive.

Back in the 1990s the tech community convinced itself (myself included) that Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy it enabled. In reality, law in a society is supposed to serve that society. The tech community talked itself into believing that the only valid arguments were for Napster. In hindsight, it's less cut-and-dry.

I have never believed E2EE to be viable, in the real world, without a back-door. It makes several horrendous kinds of crime too difficult to combat. It also has some upsides, but including a back-door, in practice, won't erase the upsides for most users.

It is naive to think people (and government) will ignore E2EE; a feature that facilitates child porn, human trafficking, organized crime, murder-for-hire, foreign spying, etc etc. The decision about whether the good attributes justify the bad ones is too impactful on society to defer to chat app CEOs.

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