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Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

nytimes.com

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Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#61

Post by gonzo »

V-2 wrote: post #45
valar_m wrote: post #33

During the standoff with the SWAT team, which took place soon after, he wouldn’t answer the door. They went home after an hour. Wait, what? Is that what police in Russia normally do? This would never, ever happen in the United States. LAPD actually even has a "Wrong Doors Unit" which goes around repairing broken down doors when the cops raid the wrong address.[0] [0] http://www.dailynews.com/20080316/repairs-help-reb…

You are judging it by Western standards. They may have nothing on him and don't actually mean to arrest him etc., it's just intimidation tactics

In Soviet US, SWAT breaks door anyway.

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#62

Post by jmngomes »

valar_m wrote: post #33

During the standoff with the SWAT team, which took place soon after, he wouldn’t answer the door. They went home after an hour. Wait, what? Is that what police in Russia normally do? This would never, ever happen in the United States. LAPD actually even has a "Wrong Doors Unit" which goes around repairing broken down doors when the cops raid the wrong address.[0] [0] http://www.dailynews.com/20080316/repairs-help-reb…

Don't really see any grounds for comparison...anyway, corporate raids and coups are, unfortunately, quite common in Russia: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/magnitsky-verd...

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#63

Post by alex_sf »

darkhorn wrote: post #55
moxie wrote: post #34

There's been a lot of controversy over the Telegram encryption protocol. Any cryptographer that looks at it cringes, but Telegram has deep pockets and has done a decent job building hype. Beyond doubts with the protocol itself, I think the more important consideration is that most people never use it . Telegram is not encrypted by default. Users have to create a special "secret chat" with contacts that is ephemeral,…

Nice try NSA, nice try! I use Telegram, which is not related with country I live and the USA. Also I use Babel when I'm out of internet.

Do you realize who you're replying to?

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#64

Post by tonymon »

tptacek wrote: post #59
darkhorn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The communication with the server is encrypted, if you use the official apps. If you use secret chat they are not stored as plain text on the servers and you can make them auto destroy. Also you can delete your chat history. But it is better than WhatsApp because it is not part of governmental control.

Totally bogus. TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted using a widely-respected cryptographic messaging scheme. Telegram isn't. The point of serious end-to-end encryption is that it doesn't matter who runs the servers . TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp beats Telegram on a pure engineering level; we don't even need to reach politics to prefer it.

But how you can be sure about that if WhatsApp code is not opensourced? Telegram has at least iOS and Android code opensourced.

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#65

Post by zeitg3ist »

moxie wrote: post #34

There's been a lot of controversy over the Telegram encryption protocol. Any cryptographer that looks at it cringes, but Telegram has deep pockets and has done a decent job building hype. Beyond doubts with the protocol itself, I think the more important consideration is that most people never use it . Telegram is not encrypted by default. Users have to create a special "secret chat" with contacts that is ephemeral,…

> Telegram even stores plaintext copies of everyone's entire message history on the server for multi-device sync.

Really? In their FAQ [1] they state:

> ordinary chats use client-server/server-client encryption and are stored securely encrypted on our servers

What's your source?

[1] https://telegram.org/faq

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#66

Post by dntrkv »

osipov wrote: post #8
michaelhealy wrote: post #6

Pavel seems to be a great person, building a gift to society & mankind. He puts the users/people before himself, stands behind their rights and believes in strong ideals such as freedom of speech and privacy. I don't think you can say the same about many other internet companies/services. If you look at his previous company VK. It is by far a superior experience to Facebook, given how intuitive, fast and sleek it is.…

Pavel is widely seen by the Russian developer community as a sort of a douchebag who flaunts his wealth in ways that would seem crass to someone from Silicon Valley. Just look at the guy throwing paper planes made from money at a crowd of onlookers: http://youtu.be/2pxTpFqX6rI?t=25s

Do you have any other examples of him flaunting his wealth? The money planes was a dumb thing to do, but that's the only example I've ever heard anyone bring up.

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#67

Post by [deleted] »

dreamweapon wrote: post #54
tomp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view money planes as a joke. In any case, which is better, openly giving money away, or secretly colluding to keep employee wages down? Personally, I prefer his "crassness" to the crassness of the SV elite.

No one objected to his "openly giving money away"; it was that he made a public display of basically pissing it away, and watching the commoners scramble for it. And what starts with sophomore-level crassness the sort Durov made himself famous for tends to morph into the more genteel, but systematically more pernicious (that is to say: white-collar) crassness you're referring to, later on.

[deleted]

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#68

Post by sdevlin »

tonymon wrote: post #64
tptacek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally bogus. TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted using a widely-respected cryptographic messaging scheme. Telegram isn't. The point of serious end-to-end encryption is that it doesn't matter who runs the servers . TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp beats Telegram on a pure engineering level; we don't even need to reach politics to prefer it.

But how you can be sure about that if WhatsApp code is not opensourced? Telegram has at least iOS and Android code opensourced.

Source code doesn't really matter as much as you'd think. In fact, it can be deceptive in some cases. I would call source code a nice-to-have.

In contrast, observing the network traffic, debugging the application, and examining the decompiled binary will tell you exactly what's going on.

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#69

Post by darkhorn »

tptacek wrote: post #59
darkhorn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The communication with the server is encrypted, if you use the official apps. If you use secret chat they are not stored as plain text on the servers and you can make them auto destroy. Also you can delete your chat history. But it is better than WhatsApp because it is not part of governmental control.

Totally bogus. TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted using a widely-respected cryptographic messaging scheme. Telegram isn't. The point of serious end-to-end encryption is that it doesn't matter who runs the servers . TextSecure-enabled WhatsApp beats Telegram on a pure engineering level; we don't even need to reach politics to prefer it.

I cannot use TextSecure on Android because my friend uses iOS. So there is no TextSecure for me.

Re: Once Celebrated in Russia, Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile

#70

Post by valar_m »

jmngomes wrote: post #62
valar_m wrote: post #33

During the standoff with the SWAT team, which took place soon after, he wouldn’t answer the door. They went home after an hour. Wait, what? Is that what police in Russia normally do? This would never, ever happen in the United States. LAPD actually even has a "Wrong Doors Unit" which goes around repairing broken down doors when the cops raid the wrong address.[0] [0] http://www.dailynews.com/20080316/repairs-help-reb…

Don't really see any grounds for comparison...anyway, corporate raids and coups are, unfortunately, quite common in Russia: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/magnitsky-verd...

I'm not making a comparison, I'm simply pointing out the stark contrast between law enforcement tactics in Russia versus the United States.
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