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

521–530 of 878 posts

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

#521

Post by twelve40 »

dareal wrote: post #481
poisonborz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it is much less aggressively moderated and censored than facebook, and pleasant to use, source: first hand experience.

But i have no idea if it truly has more or less crime than other platforms. So we can't really tell if he's being messed with because he can't stand up for himself in a way Microsoft or Musk can, or it is truly a criminal problem.

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

#522

Post by amanaplanacanal »

nomdep wrote: post #509
ajross wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime. Why aren't all gun manufacturers in jail then? They must know a percentage of their products are going to be used to commit crimes. A much larger percentage than those using Telegram to commit one.

The difference is knowing some percentage will be used to commit crimes, and knowing a specific individual is going to use it to commit a crime.

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

#523

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

alephnerd wrote: post #424
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

If you are a criminal lawyer who is providing defense, that is acceptable because everyone is entitled to to a fair trial and defense. If you are a criminal lawyer who is directly abetting in criminal behavior (eg. a Saul Goodman type) you absolutely will lose your Bar License and open yourself up to criminal penalties. If you are a criminal lawyer who is in a situation where your client wants you to abet their crimi…

  … client wants you to abet their criminal behavior, then you are expected to drop the client and potentially notify law enforcement.
When would a lawyer be allowed to snitch on their client?

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

#524

Post by koiueo »

whimsicalism wrote: post #362
koiueo wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment had two prerequisites: 1. If drug dealers used my backyard. 2. If I knew about it and did absolutely nothing about it. And yes, if the government knows about someone selling drugs and does nothing about it, you can sue the government . At least in theory, in countries not ridden with corruption (which probably aren't that many).

> if the government knows about someone selling drugs and does nothing about it, you can sue the government. at least in the US, there are only a few limited times the government is open to civil litigation - and nonenforcement of the law is not usually one of them

I didn't know, nonenforcement is a term. I thought it might be just negligence.

Should've left the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer.

Thanks for the clarification.

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

#525

Post by foresto »

Timber-6539 wrote: post #435
vilunov wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Show me an example of an "open source server". XMPP and Matrix services run open source software such as ejabberd

Running open source software != "Open source server"

If you bothered to look, you would find that both of the examples given are open-source servers. You might then deduce that you misunderstood the comment to which you replied.

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

#526

Post by lfmunoz4 »

pathless wrote: post #6

Telegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it. When you create something that is objectively great, everyone will use it - including bad actors.

I don't understand why anyone uses Telegram if it there is no proof that it is secure. Their code isn't open source?

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

#527

Post by ahahahahah »

zo1 wrote: post #338
znpy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted? It is supposedly end-to-end encrypted. And in a shallow way. Also the app is closed source and you can't develop your own. It's basically end-to-end-trust-me-bro-level encrypted.

I'm more disturbed by the fact that on HN we have 0 devs confirming or denying this thing about FBs internals wrt encryption. We know there are many devs that work there that are also HN users. But I've yet to see one of them chime in on this discussion. That should scare a lot of us.

There's not really much point in trying to convince flat earthers of the truth.

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

#528

Post by amanaplanacanal »

simianparrot wrote: post #212
Infinity315 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those services don't get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it. A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime. However, a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to report it is a crime.

YouTube ignored reports for CSAM links in comments of "family videos" of children bathing for years until a channel that made a large report on it went viral. Who you are definitely determines how the law handles you. If you're Google execs, you don't have to worry about the courts of the peasantry.

Google no doubt has staff lawyers whose job it is to advise them in such cases.

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

#529

Post by kobalsky »

jeroenhd wrote: post #140
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…

> So even Telegram employees can't decrypt the chats I very much doubt that. If Durov wanted to, they could decrypt all of those messages. That fancy encryption system is worthless when someone can hijack the session of any of the users in a chosen group. This is a risk in many crypto messengers, but those usually come with optional key verification whereas Telegram doesn't have that outside of encrypted one-on-one c…

> That fancy encryption system is worthless when someone can hijack the session of any of the users in a chosen group

what do you mean? user sessions are remotely hijackeable?

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

#530

Post by WickyNilliams »

asdf6969 wrote: post #503
WickyNilliams wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the telcos _cooperate_ with law enforcement. It's not whether the platform is being used for illegal activity (all platforms are to some extent, as your facile comment shows). It's whether the operator of a platform actively avoids cooperating with LE to stop that activity once found.

I know. That’s obviously true, but I hate that it happens and it makes no sense to me why more people aren’t upset by it. What I’m trying to get at is that complying with rules that are stupid, ineffective, and unfair is not a good thing and anyone who thinks these goals are reasonable should apply them to equivalent services to realize they’re bad. Cooperation with law enforcement is morally neutral and not importan…

> anyone who thinks these goals are reasonable should apply them to equivalent services to realize they’re bad

AFAIK these goals _are_ applied to equivalent services. It's just that twitter, FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, and all the others _do_ put in the marginal amount of effort required to remove/prohibit illicit activity on their platform.

Free speech is one thing, refusing to take down CSAM or drug dealing operating in the open is always going to land you in hot water.

Post reply on HN