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

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401–410 of 878 posts

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

#401
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…

> One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement. Just would like to clarify, Telegram does take down channels/bots in some cases including copyright infringement. The only bots I’ve dealt with were music downloaders so I don’t know much about other kinds of takedo…

They do it whenever the risk of Apple or Google kicking them out of their respective app stores becomes too great. That's presumably the only entities they take content moderation input from.

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

#402
post #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 br…

> 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.

What?

And how do governments of the world block websites, services or the entire external web (as in China)?

> Telegram knowingly allowed illegal content to thrive while ignoring legal obligations to assist law enforcement

What? You think Telegram must read and have the means to know the contents of all chats on its platforms?

What an atrocious take.

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

#403
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He refuses to implement backdoors as well. We have no way to know this, and (unlike Signal), Telegram doesn't give us best-effort assurances by doing things like open-sourcing its code.

What? Literally all Telegram clients are open source.

What about the server? Telegram is not strictly e2e.

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

#404

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 w…

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

Citations needed.

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

#405
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, it's the only major messenger that has an actually lightweight, well-written and full-featured desktop client rather than yet another boxed-up web browser. I might be more enthusiastic about using the alternatives if I could use the Telegram client.

Line has a fully featured desktop client that's even more lightweight than Telegram. They also have a white paper that explains their encryption which is decent enough https://d.line-scdn.net/stf/linecorp/en/csr/line-encryption-... You do need to turn off "display stickers suggestion" before the app becomes nice.

Does Line offer server based/cross-platform messaging with a similar upload allowance? I’m curious to find telegram alternatives.

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

#406
post #373
post #246

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 h…

This seems to be a blatant lie. In russia telegram is wdidely used to prosecute people and crack down on descent. KGB (today know as FSB) seem to have free access to anything not encrypted on the platform.

I have no reason to doubt that, and evidence supports that statement (i.e. the fact that it got unblocked in Russia, after previously having been blocked).

They could in any case very well be selectively applying that policy. But if they were fully cooperating with French authorities, why would there be a warrant?

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the police wiretap and get metadata from phone companies all the time, right? Not event counting Five Eyes stuff.

But why don’t they arrest them for allowing it to happen? Phone calls should be actively moderated to block customers who speak about terrorist activity.

You really should Google Snowden and PRISM at some point.

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

#408
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables and/or criminals?

Yes. If you are directly aiding and abetting without any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your services then absolutely. For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to the best of their ability and cooperate with law enforcement when it is brought to their attention. And like I have mentioned a couple times before, Telegram was only…

> If you are directly aiding and abetting without any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your service

isn't this the definition of "criminal lawyer"?

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is in a completely different category than a company that makes the fact that they’ll look the other way one of their core selling points. Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job of making James Bond style hidden compartm…

What do you mean "look the other way?" Does the phone company "look the other way" when they don't listen in to your calls? Does the post office "look the other way" when they don't read your mail?

That guy who built the hidden compartments should absolutely not have gone to jail. The government needs to be put in check. This has gotten ridiculous.

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

#410

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

In other words, they give the government a cut of the power.
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