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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

#571

Post by panarky »

walterbell wrote: post #558
T-A wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised to learn who's doing the pushing: https://www.wired.com/story/europes-moral-crusader-lays-down... https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/july/police-should-have...

Durov 2024 interview, https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-tucker-carlson-podcas... [text] & https://tuckercarlson.com/the-tucker-carlson-interview-pavel... [video] > Telegram has been used by protesters in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, Kazakhstan, even in Barcelona back in the day. It's been a tool for the opposition to a large extent. But it doesn't really matter whether it's opposition or the ruling party that…

Durov is full of shit.

He'd have you believe that all messages are welcome on Telegram, that no material is censored, that it's all about free expression, that they're too small to provide moderation.

But when an account is flagged for spam, Telegram rapidly responds and restricts or kills the account. So they can and do moderate content.

It's just that accounts can get flagged for CSAM hundreds of times and Telegram takes no action.

They're making a choice to provide a platform for this material. That's against the law and prison time is absolutely justified.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#572

Post by codedokode »

a0123 wrote: post #351
Oras wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my question, if messages are end to end encrypted then the company does not have access to censor, right?

That's how successful Telegram's PR has been. People believe - like you do - that it's end to end encrypted. It's not. The secret chats presumably are (if you trust Telegram). Secret chats are 1 to 1. So anything outside of those that most people on Telegram access (massive channels and groups, smaller groups, private groups and channels) is NOT encrypted.

Sorry for whataboutism, but Apple does the same thing. It claims in advertising that all cloud backups are "encrypted", but if you dig deeper, "encrypted" means "encrypted with a key that is stored in the cloud" (see the table in [1]). Apple also (exactly like Telegram) requires you to opt-in for E2E encryption of backups, it is not enabled by default and even in this case contact list backup do not support E2E encryption.

The article claims that "Contacts and calendars are built on industry standards (CalDAV and CardDAV) that do not provide built-in support for end-to-end encryption." but it seems like a weak argument. Nobody actually cares what protocol is used between a device and a cloud.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#573

Post by twelve40 »

pixelesque wrote: post #388
deadmutex wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an insanely big developing story. For people in tech

Well.... it might (unlikely, but...) have implications for the Russian military forces in Ukraine, who are widely using it for communications (even for things like targeting artillery with drone spotters). Interestingly (and understandably I guess, given the original nationality of the current CEO), the Ukrainian military are mostly using Signal, and the Russian military almost exclusively use Telegram.

> widely using it for communications

it is hosted on Dutch and Western servers, and most chats are not e2e encrypted, especially group ones where you coordinate things like that. They are just incompetent and sloppy to use it for military, which probably already suffered for it greatly, but all the data was flowing unecrypted to closed-source servers in the Western Europe this whole time, so this has no new implications for anything.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#574

Post by qingcharles »

b112 wrote: post #390
nextos wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that according to EU, or France, E2E-encrypted platforms need to "cooperate" (provide backdoors)? Or does it refer to public channels only?

It means the post office is next, followed by the phone company.

There is a legal process, though, at least in the USA.

You can get a warrant (a court order) to open a piece of mail, and the USPS isn't going to refuse to hand it over.

[technically they could, but someone would get stuck with contempt of court charges]

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#575

Post by ein0p »

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…

The main problem with Telegram is it’s not subject to Western surveillance and censorship. Best I can tell, it’s also not subject to Eastern surveillance and censorship which is why it was (unsuccessfully) banned in Russia in 2018. As of right now, this is one of the few places where you can find true information about WW3 which is currently ongoing in Ukraine. This is true of all sides of the conflict: the only truly uncensored source right now is Telegram, whether you’re in Ukraine, in Russia or in the west. People investing hundreds of billions of dollars into the war do not like this lack of control over the narrative. That is why Durov is in jail.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#576

Post by walterbell »

panarky wrote: post #571
walterbell wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Durov 2024 interview, https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-tucker-carlson-podcas... [text] & https://tuckercarlson.com/the-tucker-carlson-interview-pavel... [video] > Telegram has been used by protesters in places like Hong Kong, Belarus, Kazakhstan, even in Barcelona back in the day. It's been a tool for the opposition to a large extent. But it doesn't really matter whether it's opposition or the ruling party that…

Durov is full of shit. He'd have you believe that all messages are welcome on Telegram, that no material is censored, that it's all about free expression, that they're too small to provide moderation. But when an account is flagged for spam, Telegram rapidly responds and restricts or kills the account. So they can and do moderate content. It's just that accounts can get flagged for CSAM hundreds of times and Telegram…

In cases where there is public evidence of illegal activity, where incidents have been reported to law enforcement, does Telegram provide LE with account information (e.g. phone number) for further investigation? Similar to Apple transparency reports? https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/

https://restoreprivacy.com/telegram-sharing-user-data/

> the operators of the messenger app Telegram have released user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in several cases. According to SPIEGEL information, this was data from suspects in the areas of child abuse and terrorism. In the case of violations of other criminal offenses, it is still difficult for German investigators to obtain information from Telegram, according to security circles.

Signal and Telegram were publicly sparring in May 2024, https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/chat-apps-government-ties-a...

> two popular chat services have accused each other of having undisclosed government ties. According to Signal president Meredith Whittaker, Telegram is not only “notoriously insecure” but also “routinely cooperates with governments behind the scenes.” Telegram founder Pavel Durov, on the other hand, claims that “the US government spent $3 million to build Signal’s encryption” and Signal’s current leaders are “activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad.”

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#577

Post by utbabya »

a0123 wrote: post #314
mc32 wrote: post #117

It’ll be interesting to see if the likes of Marlinspike, Firefox, EFF, etc., rally to support this guy. It’s really chilling to see the steps EU gobs are taking against free speech. In some ways they seem more authoritarian than even China and Russia. It’s like “free world” is becoming a farce.

Durov has been shilling his crypto scams while shitting on all those services you're talking about (well, at least Signal) claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Considering how he's tarnished Signal, there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up. What will be very funny is the fact that Telegram is pretty much not encrypted (yeah ok, "secret chats", whatever sure) and now that investigat…

> there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up

If you don't uphold the principles all you have to do is wait until it bites you too.

What happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#578

Post by codedokode »

stavros wrote: post #534
codedokode wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that directive the reason why website operators do not want to implement ECH (Encrypted Client Hello) which allows to encrypt server name in TLS connection? I tried googling this, but Cloudflare blog only says that they disabled ECH without disclosing the reasons: [1] [1] https://community.cloudflare.com/t/early-hints-and-encrypted...

They never re-enabled it?

No, and other sites seem to not support it. This is a list of top 10 000 sites and it seems that virtually nobody supports this TLS extension: https://divested.dev/misc/ech.txt .

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#579

Post by roywiggins »

codedokode wrote: post #512
pajeets wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korean meth is sold in bulk on Telegram channels in South Korea. Drug abuse is out of control and crypto currency is used by NK to sell drugs to SK and use funds for its regime.

How do they get it across the well-guarded border by the way?

Probably on or under the surrounding waters, at a guess. NK smuggles all sorts of stuff in and out of the country.

https://ig.ft.com/north-korea-oil-smuggling/

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#580

Post by qingcharles »

codedokode wrote: post #482
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my scepticism, but I’m going to have to ask you for a screenshot and which country YouTube thought you were connecting from. I’m asking because, at least according to my understanding of YouTube’s ad policies, that shouldn’t be allowed: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/14009787?hl=en&r...

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvlbunSGDmU Screenshot (title has changed from what I wrote earlier or this is another ad): https://imgur.com/a/TX0xB9y Country is the one in Europe. Maybe this is not a scam and therefore is allowed? Maybe it is a joke video? I didn't watch the video, but the title and thumbnails looks like a "scam".

I don't know. I analyzed the code from below the video with GPT[0] and it flagged a bunch of stuff it considered shady.

[0] Every time I mention using AI my posts get downvoted to infinity, so take the above with a grain of salt :)

I don't know anything about coding crypto, but it looks to me like it has a bunch of functions which each return a little hex string which it merges together into a wallet address which it then transfers all your funds to. I could be totally wrong and it's all above board.

Here's the code from the video:

https://hastebin.com/share/paxisehuki.php

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