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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

#481

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…

You really ask why? This isn't about serving justice - it's statuary example for anyone trying to run an unmoderated platform.

Have you used Telegram before making this comment? It is moderated. You really think this is about the company, the platform, not about politics? Well you should think again.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what if it is state sponsored propaganda? Most media is biased in some way. It shouldn’t be censored. I want to hear their side of the story too.

In this instance (RT being banned), it's Russia's quite candid strategy to undermine social cohesion in their enemies' societies, using disinformation. Margarita Simonyan and Vladislav Surkov have each bragged about its success. So yes, for social cohesion, when there's a malign external actor poisoning public discourse with the intention of splitting societies, a responsible government ought to tackle it.

The old "enemy of the people" argument.

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

#483
It's so beyond my mind that people are finding reasons and excuses for the authority to justify the arrest. Let it be crystal clear that this is purely politics motivated. There's probably 20 other ways to address the concern of the platform. Let me ask you this, will France do the same if it's a US company or the founder is a US citizen?

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

#484
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly suspect there's more to it than just running a chat system used by criminals. If that were the issue then tons of services would be under indictment. We'll have to wait and see, but I suspect some kind of more direct participation or explicit provable look-the-other-way at CSAM etc.

Or its just intimidation like FBI raid on Scott Ritter.

Usually as part of a plea agreement the criminal is required to let law enforcement search them without a warrant.

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

#485
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.

It's very bizarre to see all these comments downplaying this, or implying the lack of E2EE by default somehow makes it less attractive to the average user than something like Signal. Most people care about usability and interconnectivity first and foremost because the majority of their messaging activities are not so sensitive that they feel the need to sacrifice those things for mandatory E2EE. Call that shortsighte…

> the same usability and design as telegram

From the recent Tucker Carlson interview of Pavel Durov, Telegram has:

  - 1 PM (Durov)
  - 1 owner (Durov)
  - 30 developers
  - 0 HR, they hire contest.com winners
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41343845

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I hinted at earlier Signal does not have this issue because generally they are not aware of the underlying content. Even if Signal becomes aware of said content, it likely isn't hosted on their servers anymore as their store and forward system is highly transient. The most signal could do is be compelled to block specific users and maybe shutdown certain groups (not sure on that last one, would have to review the…

Precisely my point - moderated messaging in the modern era will ultimately be unenforceable. Which is why I don’t see why certain services should be legally penalized just because they don’t happen to be E2E encrypted. Like if Telegram was instead e2e encrypted, why should that be legal if what they were previously doing wasn’t?

I think there are two parts to this:

1) On the technical side, Telegram groups operate more like a bulletin board, content is posted and can be fetched over and over again, a bulletin board owner can be compelled to remove material and if non-cooperating considered to be facilitating. Signal is more like a conversation in the town-square or a letter box of sealed envelopes. Once the content is fetched, it's gone. If signal is made aware that certain envelopes contain material that needs to be removed, I'm sure they would do so provided they still possess them.

2) On the non-technical side, many countries have crimes that are all about who knew what and when did they know it and could that have acted (or did they have a duty to do so). Facilitating, accessory, accessory after the fact call it what you will but that's more of a legal / philosophical argument to be had about the legal system in general rather than telegram specifically. A situation were telegram was made aware of illegal activity and was hosting said content in the clear and did nothing is manifestly different from a case where those facts did not exist, in most legal systems.

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

#487
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Literally all Telegram clients are open source.

What about the server? Telegram is not strictly e2e.

Huh, I was going to point out that the Signal server isn't Free Software either, since for a while it wasn't being published, but it seems they have gotten back into publishing it.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be worth a try to extract the keys of one server with a liquid nitrogen can and a cold boot attack. Or something more advanced that isn’t documented on Wikipedia.

That is so 2009. RAM can be XOR'd with little latency with hardware acceleration with a key in a slightly - separated secure enclave that will degrade if upset too rapidly, similar to a virtual da Vinci cryptex. radio/bluetooth/em/sensitive/proximity warning switches to unmount virtualized volumes all in a quasi-state-sanctioned-"contact center" in middle Ukraine. They are trying their best to prevent the inevitable;…

[deleted]

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

#489
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.

> We have no way to know this Well, other than his arrest ;-)

What exactly do you think this tells you?

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

#490
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most jurisdictions yes AFAIK, if those services directly help an illegal activity, and you knew about the illegal activity.

Ok, like selling gasoline to the getaway car driver?

> and you knew about the illegal behavior

Your analogy is terrible and doesn’t make sense.

If you provide a service that is used for illegal behavior AND you know it’s being used that way AND you explicitly market your services to users behaving illegally AND the majority of your product is used for illegal deeds THEN you’re gonna have a bad time.

If one out of ten thousand people use your product for illegal deeds you’re fine. If it’s 9 out of 10 you probably aren’t.

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