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Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

theguardian.com

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Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#251

Post by evilfred »

selivanovp wrote: post #184
alex00 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between Ukraine and Russia, Telegram is the only choice for Russia. Ukraine has many many other options. What else is there for Russians to communicate with the outer world?

The problem is not with communication with the outer world. The problem with other messengers is that everything you type there is monitored by CIA/NSA and Ukraine has access to this information. Telegram right now is the only secure messenger that doesn't leak them data on Russian citizens.

and the Russian govt has carte blanche access to Telegram. Russia invaded their sovereign neighbour Ukraine who the f cares about their forums for messaging. yawn.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#253

Post by ben_w »

wkat4242 wrote: post #205
perihelions wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU politicians did (try to) explicitly exempt themselves from their own chat surveillance laws, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063025 ( "ChatControl: EU ministers want to exempt themselves (european-pirateparty.eu)" , 202 comments)

That makes sense though. We all know all politicians are saints and would never fall prey to corruption or criminal interests. /s

/s aside, politicians need privacy for the same reason the rest of us do: they work with sensitive information and it's really important they don't get blackmailed.

Simultaneously, they need a light shone on their private lives for the same reason they want to do that to the rest of us: to make sure they're not abusing their access to sensitive information, getting blackmailed, or otherwise being nefarious.

I have absolutely no idea how to fix this apparent paradox. Perhaps it can't be done. Even if it can, tech is unstable and this is all a moving target — the way GenAI is going, I suspect that we'll all have to carry always-on cameras that log and sign everything just to prove we didn't do whatever some picture or video shows us doing.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#254

Post by hagbard_c »

perihelions wrote: post #122
roomey wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, all the politicians use WhatsApp. They actually don't want that backdoored, guaranteed.

EU politicians did (try to) explicitly exempt themselves from their own chat surveillance laws, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063025 ( "ChatControl: EU ministers want to exempt themselves (european-pirateparty.eu)" , 202 comments)

That concept is as old as politics itself, the Romans already stated quod licet Iovi non licet bovi (What's allowable for Jupiter is not allowed for cattle), the modern version of which is rules for thee, not for me or do as I say, not as I do.

BTW, install your own XMPP server and use OMEMO-compatible clients - Conversations on Android, Gajim on desktop - and you get to have access to non-surveilled [1]communications just like those politico's.

[1] assuming that your client and server devices remain uncompromised, not a given if you happen to be a high-value target. Caveat emptor.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#256

Post by [deleted] »

chad1n wrote: post #53
vessenes wrote: post #19

Not clear right now if France thinks he was actively complicit with the four horsemen listed, or if just the act of running Telegram makes him complicit in their eyes, or something in the middle, e.g. they asked for help and Telegram turned them down. This will be an interesting case to watch -- I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort -- but generally my un…

EU has been complaining about Telegram's end-to-end encryption for a long time and they want to implement some regulations to basically add backdoors into all messaging apps. I don't really see how this case will go on since at least private chats are encrypted so Telegram (theoretically at least) can't see the contents.

[deleted]

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#258

Post by gck1 »

Funny story - there were some protests in my country some months ago. We're a semi-autocratic country on the verge of becoming a dictatorship. During the protests, the government used masked 'civilians,' or what you'd call 'titushkis,' to beat up activists at their home addresses or elsewhere in public. We were also getting calls from fake numbers on our personal numbers with threats.

A channel was created on Telegram by a government propaganda journalist, where they basically dox every activist, posting their addresses, phone numbers, and other private details, at times when these details are actively used for beating people to near death. That's the only content that Telegram channel produces.

I was one of the people whose details were posted on that channel. My phone number, home address, etc., were posted there, along with the private details of tens of others. I contacted Telegram support multiple times, we mass reported the channel - not once have I gotten an answer, and the entire channel is still up, for nearly 4 months.

So, hearing that he's arrested for lack of moderation? Good. I'm very happy. Hope he learns a lesson.

EDIT: Country is Georgia

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#259

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #196
chad1n wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has been complaining about Telegram's end-to-end encryption for a long time and they want to implement some regulations to basically add backdoors into all messaging apps. I don't really see how this case will go on since at least private chats are encrypted so Telegram (theoretically at least) can't see the contents.

Except Telegram has much less E2EE than Signal or Whatsapp. It's not on by default, works only between 2 devices, they both have to be online at the same time and you can't access anything from the web. And group chats don't support it at all. Private chats are not end to end encrypted by default and it's actually quite clumsy to encrypt them so almost nobody uses it. It's really weird that Telegram is singled out li…

That was my first thought as well. There are good uses for telegram and some things work better than signal ( API comes to mind ). But just from privacy perspective, telegram is much more easily neutered than signal.

I will admit I am confused. I can only assume something else is at play.

edit: The only thing I can think of is that there some rather gruesome channels showing Russia/Ukraine, Palestine/Israel toll. I wonder if it was decided that general population should not have access to these.

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