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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

latimes.com

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#521

Post by crondung »

phs318u wrote: post #448
crondung wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cool and all, except everyone in that country had 2 sim cards with 2 numbers. They don't have free long distance over there, nor are plans for cheap text+data the same plans as cheap calls. So I take this information to mean this poll was useless. Everyone who voted could vote twice, and felons and kids voted too.

Unless you’ve got some info to show that the distribution of people with 2 sims, or with kids, isn’t the same across different voting populations across the country, what you’re pointing out is irrelevant to the ratio of votes between the candidates, and only pertinent to the absolute numbers.

the distribution is everyone, as i've observed by being in russia and belarus for years.

the ratio? you need a source to show you young people use telegram on a phone and old people use real telegrams, in belarus? you need a source to show you old people vote for ussr-time dictators?

it's up to you to give the source, since you claim this telegram statistic to be a valid representation of votes. me, i know first hand it's not.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#522

Post by crondung »

ric2b wrote: post #496
bennysonething wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the human rights front? Compared to most of the rest of the world they are extremely developed. At least free speech is protected which is more than can be said for most common of Europe now.

Can you share some examples of large infringements on freedom of speech that happened in well developed European countries? Given the examples of police brutality related to protests that I've seen in the US just this year I doubt you'll be able to provide any examples that are more worrying than that.

[dead]

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#523

Post by uzakov »

mcsoft wrote: post #442
eitland wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E2E-encryption is really nice but not anymore necessary for most users of Telegram than for - WhatsApp before they implemented it - GMail (or any other mail service) - Matrix (by default, until recently?) - IRC - SMS - Letters in the mail For some reason this has a tendency to boil down very quickly to - E2E-encryptet === good, no further information needed - anything else === bad, no further information needed Which…

Since E2E encryption is not enabled by default in Telegram, I believe it's used by 2% of their users at most. Messages of the rest can be read by Telegram team. https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&q=are+telegram+cha...

Does anyone know of good extension to use PGP on top of Telegram Web? So that whenever you chat with person X, if thats persons public key is saved, all messages with that person are PGP encrypted

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#524

Post by afiori »

maqp wrote: post #479
eitland wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think me and you agree to a large degree :-) > Firstly, there is no proof of this happening. I've been looking for the documentation and/or source code for this for more than five years now, and it's never been published. I haven't found anything more either. See also below. > Secondly, even IF it was happening, the server that strips the in-transit encryption has access to the plaintext, and can copy the message t…

Theoretically, couldn't the client send the message to one server and the keys to a different set of servers? Clients would request the encrypted messages from one server and the keys from another? That would imply client-side encrypted cloud backups, with external key management which isn't the case in Telegram, if it were it could be shown from client-side code. Also, even if that would be the case, it would just n…

I always took the claim of routing keys and messages in different jurisdiction to be about not writing them to storage in those jurisdiction, not about not having them in RAM.

the idea being that there can be an internal policy to shut down the server and wipe the ram but it is harder to do with drives.

I also have a question since you probably can answer: can E2E offer a similar user experience to what normal telegram chats offer?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#525

Post by moltar »

loxs wrote: post #518
moltar wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that approach is that it’s clearly biased towards the younger generations who are tech savvy. But it’s mostly the older people who would’ve voted for Luk. Note, I don’t support Luk in anyway, just pointing out the bias. Altho it does uncover the fact that the results are fabricated. But it’s not like anyone was doubting that anyways.

Come on... I don't believe this. My whole extended family below 90 is using actively some varying portion of these: Viber (most used), WhatsApp, Facebook messenger. They are mostly spread in Turkey, Bulgaria and (to a lesser extend) the rest of Europe and some in the US. Grandmas use Viber regularly to share pics of their great-grandchildren with their first cousins (other grandmas). They send holiday wishes, news et…

I’m from Eastern Europe myself. Yes older folks have accounts, but they aren’t active users. They wouldn’t join groups. They wouldn’t vote in the app. My parents in law are a testament to that. They too have all of those apps, yet they can’t even tell the difference between WhatsApp and Viber. We ask them to call us on WhatsApp and they’ll try to call on viber or Skype and then wonder why we are not answering and if there’s anything wrong with us :)

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#526

Post by airstrike »

maqp wrote: post #426
airstrike wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media != instant messaging

Both are thought + location + picture + file + link sharing platforms. Perhaps you're not publishing to as wide audience, but still, they're extremely similar.

As similar as an antelope and myself have two eyes, one nose, molar teeth and four limbs.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#527

Post by maqp »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #502
maqp wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the E2EE encryption itself is flawed. I'm saying it's not being used at all by default. And I'm saying it's not possible to use it for groups or desktop clients. That's _the_ travesty, and the proof that this is the state of things is so obvious people don't realize how serious it is. And my concern is that will lead to a tragedy.

Yeah, it’s true that not having E2EE makes Telegram a bad choice for the purposes of the protesters. Convenience and inertia wins out though. And when you have groups of hundreds of thousands of people, there aren’t too many choices in the first place.

The expectation of privacy loses it's meaning when the group size grows. It's more likely what you said remains private when you say it in a group of five people than if you say it in a group of 50, 500, 5000, or 500,000 people. IMO supergroups and channels don't need E2EE, normal groups in Telegram definitely do. It's not an all-or-nothing thing. E2EE where expectation of privacy can be assumed from group size isn't a problem.

Also, Signal has no upper group size limit but E2EE would make group with 100,000s a bit sluggish. But that's a problem that reduces with Moore's law.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#528

Post by maqp »

shawnz wrote: post #486
maqp wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's claimed that. Open source is not panacea for verifiable security, it is however a requirement of it.

No, it is not necessary _or_ sufficient. That is what I'm saying. You can audit a closed-source app, and there also might be open-source apps which are impractical to audit despite them being open source.

If you have your closed-source app audited, everyone needs to trust the audit company. And I've seen some shit audits in my life that told absolutely nothing about the actual security.

Open source means anyone can audit and verify nothing was done after audit.

Moxie more or less audited WhatsApp's Signal protocol implementation, and people are right to be concerned about whether changes have been made since FB bought the app.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#529

Post by maqp »

jitbit wrote: post #490
maqp wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they go to great lengths to prevent that information from becoming available." Where's the documentation for this? Without documentation your assumption that there's any security is just blind faith.

Telegram has been sued over and over in many countries for refusing to provide that info, and kept fighting (both legally and technologically - via smart proxy-server rotation, addresses distributed over Apples/Google's push notifications etc.). Here's the case for Russia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_Telegram_in_Russia (eventually the govt has blocked over 20 million (!) IP addresses, including Google's a…

Schneier was very vocal after the Snowden documents on how the NSA has multiple methods to get hold of the data. If it's not via judicial means, it's via extra-judicial means. NSA considers Telegram's servers outside US fair game (i.e. hacking them is not a problem). GCHQ considers servers inside the US fair game. The two agencies exchange intel which allows them to bypass constitutional protections. This is old news.

As for Russia, China, Israel etc. The servers are outside their borders, and mostly they don't give a flying fuck even if it was domestically hosted.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#530

Post by upofadown »

uzakov wrote: post #523
mcsoft wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since E2E encryption is not enabled by default in Telegram, I believe it's used by 2% of their users at most. Messages of the rest can be read by Telegram team. https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&q=are+telegram+cha...

Does anyone know of good extension to use PGP on top of Telegram Web? So that whenever you chat with person X, if thats persons public key is saved, all messages with that person are PGP encrypted

It would probably be easier to just get that person a XMPP client that supports PGP.
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