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

511–520 of 878 posts

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

#511

Post by [deleted] »

whatnotests2 wrote: post #492
thomassmith65 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#513

Post by ipaddr »

whimsicalism wrote: post #290
archerx wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is on it’s way to becoming a dystopia so not the best argument…

maybe, but i don't think sealed warrants are the reason

There purpose is to hide charges as longas possible to deceive or trick which is against a fully transparent process

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

#514

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#515

Post by ipaddr »

ajross wrote: post #478
kyleee wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shouldn't gmail be closing as they know a percentage will be used for crime?

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

#516

Post by Illotus »

whimsicalism wrote: post #454
devman0 wrote: post #439

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?

So essentially what you are saying that because we couldn't catch the smart criminals who use e2e encrypted services we shouldn't catch the dumb ones either?

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

#517

Post by axus »

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? Specifically, these service providers?

https://xkcd.com/538/

Someone wants the service to stop, and has the influence to make it happen, the users are not a concern.

Now that Telegram is compromised, what's the next chat app people trust?

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

#518

Post by yehat »

usrnm wrote: post #94
mpeg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use telegram for some group chats, but I'm not sure why tech-savvy people would like it so much – messages are not end-to-end encrypted which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp

Same reson people choose macbooks for work over running Linux, it's just a nicer product

Where's windows than?

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

#519

Post by thomassmith65 »

dotancohen wrote: post #377
thomassmith65 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do [...] maybe I'm just being naive? In this case, the comment does strike me as naive. Back in the 1990s the tech community convinced itself (myself included) that Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy it enabled. In reality, law in a society is supposed to serve that society. The tech community talked itself into believing tha…

You can go ahead and encrypt messages yourself, without explicit E2E support on the platform. In fact, choosing your own secure channel for communicating the key would probably be more secure than anything in-band.

I doubt that will upset the public the way Signal and Telegram eventually will. Most people, including criminals, struggle with tech. If they want E2EE badly enough, and use one of the big messaging GUI apps they can succeed. If they can only do it via less user-friendly software, they'll need help or to do research, and likely will leave a trail behind them. That is more useful to law enforcement than if they simply had downloaded one of the most popular App Store apps. It's hard for a news story about a CLI utility to gain traction.

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

#520

Post by alibert »

slim wrote: post #497
devman0 wrote: 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 ?

The initial investigation which triggered the arrest was made by the OFMIN ("Office spécialisé dans la lutte contre les violences faites aux mineurs" basically the government branch tracking and fighting CSAM).

Supposedly, Telegram (and by definition of the french law, the CEO) did not respond to requests for takedown of harmful content (or not enough or faster?) from the the OFMIN. This triggered another investigation looking globally at how Telegram handle content moderation on the public part of Telegram (Channel) which lead to all others charges of complicity.

This is basically the CEO taking the fall because the (unreachable by french law) Telegram company is not on french soil and he made the mistake on landing here.

Post reply on HN