Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by vik0 » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

By all accounts, this looks to me like it's nothing else but a politically motivated decision - and it gives ever more credence to my take that there is no freedom of speech in Europe

As a side note, this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power - do what we say or burn at the stake. We should then not be surprised that no longer does technological innovation happen in Europe - at least one that's actually important or has the potential to be

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

#242

Post by mlyle » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #217

mlyle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 such an ignorant comment I am really disappointed at reading this here. Besides the protocol used by Telegram being publicly available so you can easily confirm in 5 minutes that what you're saying is completely wrong, but you're also saying that law enforcement can totally see all those plain text messages hosted by Telegram, yet they choose to be really upset about it anyway despite it being, according to y…

Yes, the data is encrypted in transit. But Telegram can decrypt the data.

We can see that's true, because when I add a new device I can get into all my group chats.

Only if I explicitly "Start secret chat" does something else happen.

Telegram is sitting on a lot of group chats where a lot of horrible things are happening that governments want to see... and gets upset when Telegram doesn't use this access to share that information in response to lawful orders.

> I can only imagine there's a concerted effort here to misinform everyone

Assume good faith-- it's in the guidelines. I have been here just as long as you. I am not part of some shadowy conspiracy to make people think that Telegram security is bad.

I feel like people just don't understand the term of art "effectively plaintext".

Alternatively, if you thought I was talking about secret chats in general-- note that we are in a subthread talking explicitly about channels and non-secret chats:

"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) are NOT ENCRYPTED (stored in plaintext on server)."

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

#243

Post by pjc50 » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

intunderflow wrote: post #78

France was the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and now you have an autocracy in a semi-democratic vest: - All protests in support of Palestine banned https://www.politico.eu/article/france-gerald-darmanin-aims-... - Head coverings banned - Run a messaging app but the French state finds stuff on it that it disapproves of? You are a Terrorist It's sad to see this backsliding in Europ…

France has never really been as liberal as people seem to think it is. The colonial history runs deep.

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

#244

Post by Almondsetat » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

saintfrancis wrote: post #70

marcinzm wrote: post #52

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?

What has E2EE got to do with it? If you catch someone who sent CP you can open their phone and read their messages. Then you can tell Meta which ones to delete and they can do it from the metadata alone.

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

#245

Post by pshirshov » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

My opinion would be extremely unpopular, but:

1) The guy was marketing an open-text messenger as an e2ee messenger

2) Because of (1) he was able to moderate it and help law enforcement with locating criminals but he was not cooperating

3) He was extremely cooperative with Russian "law enforcement", as multiple deanonymised activists with leaked chats, contact lists and location history found out

So, a hypocrite got what he deserved.

The overall trend of EU attacks on privacy is very concerning, but Tg is not a private messenger, it just was marketed as one.

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

#246

Post by lxgr » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

I can only once again quote this section of Telegram's privacy policy verbatim:

> 8.3. Law Enforcement Authorities

> If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you're a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities. So far, this has never happened. When it does, we will include it in a semiannual transparency report published at: https://t.me/transparency.

(from https://telegram.org/privacy)

And interacting with their "Transparency Report" bot yields this:

> [...] Note: for a court decision to be relevant, it must come from a country with a high enough democracy index to be considered a democracy. Only the IP address and the phone number may be shared.

In other words, they are cherry-picking the jurisdictions they are even choosing to recognize, and within those they are again cherry-picking "terror suspicions" as the only class of law enforcement requests they will honor.

If I were the CEO of a company maintaining such a position, I'd be a bit more careful on where to refuel my jet.

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

#247

Post by deniska » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

Some time ago many people in Russia wished that Russia will become a normal European country. I guess the wishes were granted, but not in a way we wanted.

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

#248

Post by Almondsetat » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:37 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #211

jsheard wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is for the most part not end-to-end encrypted, one to one chats can be but aren't by default, and groups/channels are never E2EE. That means Telegram is privy to a large amount of the criminal activity happening on their platform but allegedly chooses to turn a blind eye to it, unlike Signal or WhatsApp, who can't see what their users are doing by design. Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to…

If law enforcement asked them nicely for access I bet they wouldn't refuse. Why take responsibility for something if you can just offload it to law enforcement? The issue is law enforcement doesn't want that kind of access. Because they have no manpower to go after criminals. This would increase their caseload hundredfold within a month. So they prefer to punish the entity that created this honeypot. So it goes away…

>I bet they wouldn't refuse

Apparently, they have. Sorry for your bet.

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

#249

Post by guigar » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:37 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #49

pathless wrote: 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.

I use telegram for some group chats, but I'm not sure why tech-savvy people would like it so much – messages are not end-to-end encrypted which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp

I think it is because Telegram is a communications platform, not just another chat app. For example, it has good APIs to build apps on top of it.

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

#250

Post by whimsicalism » Sun, Aug 25, 2024, 4:38 PM UTC

vik0 wrote: post #241

By all accounts, this looks to me like it's nothing else but a politically motivated decision - and it gives ever more credence to my take that there is no freedom of speech in Europe As a side note, this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power - do what we say or burn at the stake. We should then not be surprised that no longer does technological innovation happen in Eu…

> this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power

I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've gotten older is the way in which these cultural and legalistic norms, even 100 years+ bygone, still have considerable influence on modern cultures.

Europe, and particularly France, is very Catholic, ex-Holy Roman brained. US is very protestant brained. China cribs tons of stuff from their old imperial system.