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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

#291

Post by axegon_ »

mazambazz wrote: post #29

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…

The difference is that this is not an isolated case on telegram(you said it yourself: "some amount", which implies "limited"). At the same time, you can literally open up the app and with 0 effort find everything they are accusing them of - drugs, terrorist organizations, public decapitations, you name it. They also provide the ability to search for people and groups around you, and I am literally seeing a channel where people are buying and selling groups "800 meters away" from me and another one for prostitution, which is also illegal in my country. Meanwhile, see their TOS[1]. They have not complied with any of the reports or requests from users (and governments by the looks of it) to crack down on them. While 1:1 chats are theoretically private and encrypted(full disclosure, I do not trust Telegram or any of the people behind it), telegram's security for public channels and groups is absolutely appalling and they are well aware of it - they just chose to look the other way and hope they'd get away with it. You could have given them the benefit of the doubt if those are isolated("some") instances, sure. But just as in the case of Kim Dot-I-support-genocide-com, those are not isolated cases and saying that they had no idea is an obvious lie.

2000/31/EC[2], states that providers are generally not liable for the content they host IF they do not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or content AND upon obtaining such knowledge, they take action and remove and disable access to that content(telegram has been ignoring those). Service providers have no general obligation to monitor but they need to provide notice and take down mechanisms. Assuming that their statement are correct, and they had no idea, they should be in the clear. Telegram provides a notice and take down mechanism. But saying that there are channels with +500k subscribers filled with people celebrating a 4 year old girl with a blown off leg in Ukraine and no one has reported it in 2 and a half years after it was created is indeed naive.

[1] https://telegram.org/tos/eu

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/31/oj

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

#292

Post by negus »

Infinity315 wrote: post #47
mazambazz wrote: post #29

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…

Because those services don't get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it. A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime. However, a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to report it is a crime.

> get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it.

How do you know this is the case?

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

#293

Post by croes »

tail_exchange wrote: post #44
psychlops wrote: post #26

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.

But that would mean killing E2EE completely.

There's a difference between breaking the encryption of a single target after a warrant or handing over previous data which would need some kind of backdoor in the encryption.

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

#294

Post by mlyle »

ec109685 wrote: post #279
mlyle wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes, again, it all comes down to your threat model. No one can kick down the door and get to the keys. But Telegram can get to all the keys, and thus can be legally expected to . The data is effectively plaintext to Telegram. > Is MTProto 2.0 Cloud Encryption plaintext? No. Just to note: "effectively…

Browsers should be interacting with the OS to require something (like your system password, Touch ID, etc.) to have unlocked the vault before being allowed to auto complete.

Yup, in the best case you have a truly secure container of keys somewhere. That takes things away from being effectively plaintext.

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

#295

Post by thomassmith65 »

331c8c71 wrote: post #200
1oooqooq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you comment strikes me as naive in the same lines as "i have nothing to hide"

It's worse than this. The author argues that backdoors are necessary rather than simply being willing to share his/her data for inspection.

Yes, that is my position. E2EE back-doors might not affect my communications or yours, but have serious and undesirable repercussions for some journalists and whistleblowers. The thing is, regular people aren't going to tolerate a sustained parade of news stories in which E2EE helps the world's worst people to evade justice.

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

#296

Post by StrLght »

whimsicalism wrote: post #273
StrLght wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the key part: Telegram doesn’t have E2EE enabled by default. Group chats and channels aren’t encrypted at all. The only E2EE in Telegram is called "secret chats" and they're 1-on-1.

frankly, even with unencrypted chats, any law/precedent requiring that platform providers have to scale moderation linearly with the number of users (which is effectively what this is saying) sounds like really bad policy (and probably further prevents the EU from building actual competitors to American tech companies)

Seems like other platforms without E2EE are managing to do that without any issues whatsoever (e.g. Discord)

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

#297

Post by game_the0ry »

Kim Dotcom being extradited and this one now coming out of left field...Shit just got real.

I suspect this is just the beginning. Western governments are losing control of their "narratives" and no one is buying the propaganda. This is deeply unsettling for those in authority, so it is only logical that they would go after social media that they cannot directly coerce/control for their agenda. But not just the companies, their owners in particular.

Also likely this is a message for Elon and others - comply or go to jail.

Its hard to argue this is tinfoil nonsense when Meta has been accused of child exploitation [1] yet Zuckerberg never went to jail - bc he complied. [2]

Its time to get our collective heads out of the sand and acknowledge that governments are NOT democratic anymore - they serve only to preserve themselves, not us!

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/facebook-content-enabled-chi...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532

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

#298

Post by lxgr »

itohihiyt wrote: post #64
Infinity315 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those services don't get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it. A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime. However, a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to report it is a crime.

I don't think it's a crime not to report a crime, at least not where I live. But facilitating a crime, which is something you could accuse telegram of is.

> I don't think it's a crime not to report a crime

That heavily depends on the jurisdiction. It's explicitly a crime in Germany, for example: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__138.html

On top of that, if you can be shown to benefit from the crime (e.g. by knowingly taking payment for providing services to those that commit it), that presumably makes you more than just a bystander in most jurisdictions anyway.

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

#299

Post by loa_in_ »

Retr0id wrote: post #9

I really hope this doesn't become an "encryption bad" cudgel. > The main accusation by EU authorities concerns Telegram’s encrypted messaging services, which were allegedly used to facilitate organised crime. One investigator stated that ‘Telegram has become the number one platform for organised crime over the years’, underlining the perceived link between the platform’s privacy features and criminal activities. It's…

For centuries snail mail was used to facilitate organized crime, yet nobody prosecutes post offices.

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

#300

Post by jacooper »

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.

It's also the least private one (compared to whatsapp and signal.)
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