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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

#491

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…

> This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.

I'm not sure where this myth originated—perhaps from Kim Dotcom's Twitter account? I clearly remember the Megaupload case. They knew they were hosting pirated content, didn't delete it after requests[1], and shared money with the people who uploaded it because that was their business model.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/21/the-fasc...

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like, say, whistle blowers, and journalists who speak out and reveal evidence of government crimes? Like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden?

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

#493
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?

Possibly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. WORSE, you get banned for reporting CSAM to Discord, and I guarantee if you report it to the proper authorities (FBI) they tell them t…

Yep. At this point, it's clear to me that Discord is acting with malice . On top of banning people for reporting abuse on their platform, which is by itself insanity, they changed their report system [0] so it's longer possible to report servers/channel/users at all , only specific messages, with no way to report messages in bulk being provided. Reddit isn't much better. [1] [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/c…

They had a scandal where they allowed the furry equivalent of child porn, and quietly banned that type of porn from the platform later on. I assume due to legal requirements.

Edit:

I think the lack of bulk reporting is a pain too. They used to ask for more context. One time I reported a literal nazi admin (swastika posting, racial slurs, and what have you), but the post was "months old" and they told me essentially to "go screw myself" they basically asked why I was in the server.

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. WORSE, you get banned for reporting CSAM to Discord, and I guarantee if you report it to the proper authorities (FBI) they tell them t…

Yep. At this point, it's clear to me that Discord is acting with malice . On top of banning people for reporting abuse on their platform, which is by itself insanity, they changed their report system [0] so it's longer possible to report servers/channel/users at all , only specific messages, with no way to report messages in bulk being provided. Reddit isn't much better. [1] [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/c…

[deleted]

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

#496
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't open the telegram.com links, blocked at work :/ But the Arxiv paper says: "We stress that peer clients never communicate directly: messages always go through a server, where they are stored to permit later retrieval by the recipient. Cloud chat messages are kept in clear text, while secret chat messages are encrypted with the peers’ session key, which should be unknown to the server." So it doesn't appear to…

Yeah that feels pretty cut and dry. But even if it was encrypted at rest, it sounds like the server has the key to everything anyway so it’s not E2E.

[deleted]

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

#497
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…

  Nothing more, nothing less
Telegram has been operating for years and did not change recently to justify such an action yesterday. There's something more certainly. Maybe they did not comply with requests related to recent war in Ukraine or genocide in Palestine ?

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

#498
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose jurisdiction to work without judging the truth?

It is government's role to protect speech, not to censor.

It’s also the government’s role to take measures against harmful actions. Personal rights end where they start to harm others, or harm society in general. They are not an absolute, and always have to be balanced against other concerns.

However, my GP comment was against the claim that “The state has no business judging the truth”. That claim as stated is absurd, because judging what is true is necessary for a state being able to function in the interest of its people. The commenter likely didn’t mean what they wrote.

One can argue what is harmful and what isn’t, and I certainly don’t agree with many things that are being over-moderated. But please discuss things on that level, and don’t absolutize “free speech”, or argue that authorities shouldn’t care about what is true or not.

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

#499

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…

Dotcom got extradited (which was declared legal much later). Durov landed in a country that had an arrest warrant out for him. I hope his situation isn't similar to Dotcom's, as Dotcom was shown to be complicit in the crimes he was being persecuted for. Convicting the megaupload people would've been a LOT harder if they hadn't been uploading and curating illegal content on their platform themselves. As a service prov…

https://restoreprivacy.com/telegram-sharing-user-data/

> the operators of the messenger app Telegram have released user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in several cases. According to SPIEGEL information, this was data from suspects in the areas of child abuse and terrorism. In the case of violations of other criminal offenses, it is still difficult for German investigators to obtain information from Telegram, according to security circles.

https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/chat-apps-government-ties-a...

> two popular chat services have accused each other of having undisclosed government ties. According to Signal president Meredith Whittaker, Telegram is not only “notoriously insecure” but also “routinely cooperates with governments behind the scenes.” Telegram founder Pavel Durov, on the other hand, claims that “the US government spent $3 million to build Signal’s encryption” and Signal’s current leaders are “activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad.”

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

#500
post #469

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 these countries are hypocrites. Because politics, because these guys are from Russia, China. You can so obviously see there's discrimination against companies from those countries. Can you imagine France do this if it's a US company?

> Because these countries are hypocrites.

Rhetorical question: for what reason should a country be anything other than a hypocrite when it comes to situations such as this? Nations prioritize their own self-interests and that of their allies, even if that makes them appear hypocritical from an outside, or indeed, even an inside perspective. But that doesn't mean there's no legitimacy to what they do.

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