Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

decripto.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 878 posts

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

#471

Post by danielovichdk »

jimbob45 wrote: post #115
danielovichdk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not at all. I wish the iranian political refugee can communicate with her family without the state to intervene. That's great.

But at the same time I wish a court order can open up encryption when it's needed.

But the balance is difficult. As we see all the time.

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

#472

Post by fire_lake »

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…

Those platforms are more cooperative with authorities.

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

#473

Post by matheusmoreira »

1oooqooq wrote: post #186
matheusmoreira wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

basing your assurance that whatsapp is secure because meta didn't care about a Brazilian judge misconstrued wiretap request is wild.

It's not really an "assurance". I don't fully trust them. I do trust them a lot more than others that haven't been put on trial.

The point is moot anyway. Everyone in Brazil uses WhatsApp. They will not use anything else. I'd be ostracized if I refused to use it.

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

#474

Post by logicchains »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #467
logicchains wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eliminating child pornography and organised crime is a societal rather than 'government' interest. Empirically speaking, governments have had absolutely zero success at this, but their attempts to do so have gotten them the kind of legal power over your life that organised crime could only dream about.

Huh? The traditional mafia is almost non-existent in the US today. RICO and its application has been highly successful at taking down the mafia. You could certainly argue that RICO was too powerful and is often misapplied, but I've never before seen anyone argue that it has been ineffective.

Are you implying that after the Italian mafia there were no more organised crime gangs in the US? There's a huge number of organised crime gangs nowadays; who do you think is distributing the drugs responsible for America's massive drug problem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gangs_in_the_United_St... . A policy isn't a success if it kills one crime group only for it to be replaced with more, and the overall drug consumption/distribution rate doesn't decrease. More people are using illicit drugs than ever before: https://www.ibanet.org/unodc-report-drug-use-increase

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

#475

Post by marcinzm »

fallingknife wrote: post #409
Aurornis wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the police tell them illegal activity is happening and give them a warrant to wiretap and they are capable of doing so but refuse then yeah they’re looking the other way. That’s not even getting into things like PRISM.

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

#476

Post by tialaramex »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #408
alephnerd wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

TV drama tends to give people the wrong idea. Your lawyers aren't allowed to aid you with doing any crimes, they're just advocates.

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

#477

Post by salawat »

neilv wrote: post #257

I was talking with someone VC-ish, about my frustration with all the endpoint hardware and communication software being hopelessly insecure for various real threat models. But that, even if I somehow managed to pull off a successful superior solution, as a startup or an open source/hardware project, I didn't want to see all the worst criminals flock to my service. Also, I didn't want to be in an adversarial relations…

News flash: they do. They just see their users as $$$ or don't give a damn. And their users don't care/don't know because they just want piece of mind or legal risk transferrance.

Legally speaking, if you get right down to it, privacy is de facto illegalized, and the old aphorism about "if you make a country where witchhunts are illegal, the population will be 3 civilly minded libertarians, and the rest witches" applies.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here; or just realize your dream is effectively only realizable for the exact type of people you don't trust to have it. Then find another line of work.

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

#478

Post by ajross »

kyleee wrote: post #371
Aurornis wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

If you know your services are going to be used to commit a crime, then yes, that makes you an accessory and basically all jurisdictions (I know basically nothing about French criminal law) can prosecute you for that. Crime is, y'know, illegal.

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

#479

Post by liotier »

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…

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do ?

Because they crossed the line from common carrier to editor - an entirely different set of obligations.

Also, even such common carrier as telcos must abide to state injunctions against their users.

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

#480

Post by ASalazarMX »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #144
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #106

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…

> WhatsApp's cryptography has made judges in my country foam at the mouth with rage

Oh wow, they need to get that checked, could be pulmonary edema.

Post reply on HN