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Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#221

Post by [deleted] »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #176
AnonC wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! Any reason? I’ll give you some serious ones. Signal sucks really bad on user experience and features. If you try both for a week or two and learn about the features, you’d be able to conclude the same. Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? A…

Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience. When you’re knee deep in conversation with someone you’re probably not going to say, “oh hey we should switch to email so we can keep a record of this”. It might not even occur to you that the conversation could ever be of value. There’s been several occasions when my l…

[deleted]

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#222

Post by mw888 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #205
kelthuzad wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a system can be abused, it will be abused. We have seen this play out in America and people are still not learning from these events. There are other ways to investigate suspects without sacrificing principals of privacy and spoiling it for the majority of 99.5% innocent human beings.

This is a sufficiently general argument against all law enforcement capabilities, though. Give the police any power at all and it's inevitable that someone will abuse it at some point in the future. Typically, most communities nonetheless decide on some level of rules, checks, and capabilities somewhere between "nothing" and "everything," accepting that which risks and tradeoffs are worth it might change over time. I…

This is a strange place to end up; you make a convincing argument against the somewhat unsophisticated and very common capstone of digital privacy. But if you really want to be private online, there are always ways, if not existent, possible, and if not possible, likely being worked on or a product of some future innovation. We end up at the “well you can’t stop it anyways,” point.

Do we only then use digital services to spy on those not savvy enough or careful enough to be private? What if everyone achieves Signal level privacy, or better? We end up having to answer the same question as before: what other methods are possible.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#223

Post by afiori »

Forbo wrote: post #119
bigfudge wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Signal, but in some jurisdictions government request for data can be accompanied by gagging orders with serious penalties for breach. I'm not sure that list can be considered complete.

Does the design of Signal's applications or server infrastructure change because of the jurisdiction? Does the information they gather or store change?

With signal can you join public/private channels without disclosing your phone number?

The last time I checked (a few years back) I only saw private groups and no way to hide phone numbers.

If that is still the case then there are less reason to have a warrant for you phone number as it is easier to access.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#224

Post by boruto »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #29
traspler wrote: post #4

Is there anything special going on in Germany atm to prompt this? I‘m slighlty confused why they would do such a poll…

Telegram is considered a platform for people, which do not respect the basic values of democracy like groups far right expressing xenophobia and groups which think (and express loudly) of the COVID measures as repression by some elite against the common citizen. Most of them whish for a autoritarian government. Groups which act against the constitution are observed by the Verfassungsschutz, an authority to protect th…

I am a telegram user, I use it download my native language telenovelas for watching over weekend. Friday evening is the only time I open telegram.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#225

Post by wruza »

mw888 wrote: post #222
nonameiguess wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sufficiently general argument against all law enforcement capabilities, though. Give the police any power at all and it's inevitable that someone will abuse it at some point in the future. Typically, most communities nonetheless decide on some level of rules, checks, and capabilities somewhere between "nothing" and "everything," accepting that which risks and tradeoffs are worth it might change over time. I…

This is a strange place to end up; you make a convincing argument against the somewhat unsophisticated and very common capstone of digital privacy. But if you really want to be private online, there are always ways, if not existent, possible, and if not possible, likely being worked on or a product of some future innovation. We end up at the “well you can’t stop it anyways,” point. Do we only then use digital service…

What if everyone achieves Signal level privacy, or better?

They get banned of it eventually, exactly the reason why this thread exists (telegram evaluates an idea of staying in Germany by relaxing some privacy rules, remember? It’s not their decision, but Germany’s). When reality changes, so do rules, they are not set in “capstone”. A couple of demolished buildings and the general public starts asking: why do we have so much of when it’s clearly dangerous.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#226

Post by eimrine »

formerly_proven wrote: post #82
neverrroot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the surface you are correct, this is especially the painted picture by the mass media and at least partially by the government (who also sought banning Telegram entirely in Germany). If you go deeper, you get to see that also a lot of human rights activists and NGOs are using it. Have been using Telegram since 2015, and in the meantime, most of my IT buddies use it and/or Signal.

With the invasion of Ukraine it seems like 95 % of the information out of Ukraine flows through Telegram (I'm not a user myself but the watermark and screenshots of the app are everywhere). Telegram also has some ~700 million monthly active users - it seems unlikely to me that there are even 700 million alt-right people in the entire world.

Ukrainian here. Almost 100% of war videos goes through Telegram, possibly because Youtube does not like videos with blood and murders, and 0% goes from something like torrents or self-hosted.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#229

Post by globalise83 »

gzer0 wrote: post #158
globalise83 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a secret CIA subsidiary hand over data for a routine civilian court request? If anything not doing so would make their covert surveillance tool even more trustworthy and effective.

The only information Signal can provide is [1]: * Time of account creation * Date of the account’s last connection to Signal servers. That is all. If you want, the link below is the grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California, in full. [1] https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/

That's my point, if Signal were a CIA front with some kind of secret backdoor, it would probably not reveal that in response to a request from a Central District of California grand jury.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#230

Post by zoobab »

boboralice wrote: post #159
meijer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Telegram requires a phone number, too.

It asks for a phone number when you sign up, but you don't have to share the phone number with people you want to add as a contact/share it in groups. For a lot of people, Telegram does a good job of being "less evil than Facebook Messenger", and private in ways that matter to them. I'm more worried about some nutcase from a video game meetup group getting hold of my phone number than I am law enforcement finding out…

Let's see if Telegram gives the data to courts:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/08/31/2210240/court-orders...

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