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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

#651

Post by twelve40 »

kome wrote: post #555
sangnoir wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if it's just uninformed grassroots mistrust of big tech, or the result of astroturf PsyOps to get more people to use the app with weaker encryption.

Encryption is really not the main issue here. I think nerds may not fully grasp Telegram's security model: it's essentially stateless, not tied to any particular country. Its infrastructure is distributed across various jurisdictions, with no official representation in many countries—no subsidiaries, nothing. As a result, it doesn't respond to authorities because it doesn't have to. However, this approach is unsustai…

> not tied to any particular country

I don't think that's accurate. Like any other business, he collects money from the Western users, so that's one easy choke point. He is also fully accountable to Apple, otherwise he can forget about 1.5 billion Iphone users forever. (apparently, he also just seems to enjoy visiting France and other countries he decided to go against)

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#652

Post by anigbrowl »

perihelions wrote: post #69
mdhb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe just wait a moment for things to come out through the natural course of justice rather than getting yourself all worked up here. The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.

- "probably reasonable to assume" Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions doesn't exactly have a great track record. I remember when the GoF tried to blackmail a Wikipedia admin with prosecution threats, to coerce them to censor Wikipedia entries it didn't want people to read, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ( "French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Articl…

Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#653

Post by twelve40 »

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…

> It's really weird that Telegram is singled out like this.

wasn't he bragging that he operates with like a dozen people or something. I can also see him just punting on many kinds of moderation (outside of the kind that helps running the service), because it's a lot of subjective, dirty work and an army of people.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#654

Post by hnfong »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #470
codedokode wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I open Youtube via an EU proxy, I see "a crypto scam" video at the front page, the first one. The title is "+35 ETH generated last month by effectively using the contract bot for trading" and the account name is "Web3 developer", and the label says "Sponsored". The thumbnail displays a happy bearded man's face resembling that famous Youtuber who gives away money, a fire emoji and words "+35 ETH in July perso…

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...

I can corroborate GP's claim. I've used AdBlock at home, but at work my Youtube main page has a persistent ad that's like what GP described. Location: Hong Kong with an office network that presumably VPNs to USA.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#655

Post by croes »

vdqtp3 wrote: post #613
anigbrowl wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is not something they value. Individual rights aren’t valued. Nonsense. Of course Europeans value those things, but they're also mindful of the fact that such freedoms can be abused, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

When you support literally jailing people for speech you don't like, you don't support free speech. The clear-cut example I usually pull out - there's PLENTY more. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...

So he wasn't jailed.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#656

Post by croes »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #380
ren_engineer wrote: post #90

the EU is becoming a parody >we've got to save democracy by restricting free speech and enforcing laws and regulations created by unelected officials

[flagged]

Can you clarify a little bit who you mean by Europeans?

The citizens of the EU or Europe?

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#657

Post by anigbrowl »

13415 wrote: post #159
gtvwill wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well of you provide a service and it's knowingly used by criminals and you just implement features to benefit the criminal activity but make no effort to curb it. Yes, your an accomplice.

Your characterization fits basically any encryption program, including PGP and SSL connections by a web browser.

No it doesn't. If you set up PGP or SSL you'll be able to encrypt things and might even misuse this capability for crime, but you won't have installed a platform where crime is openly advertised.

I like Telegram, a lot, but if you're ignoring the fact that large parts of it openly function as a mall for criminal services (and it's 100x easier to find that stuff than via Tor, for example) you're not being honest with yourself. A lot of people here are just reflexively assuming its mean cops vs encryption because that's an issue tehy personally care about, and ignoring any other context.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#658

Post by croes »

ein0p wrote: post #575
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 trul…

And how to you find the true uncensored information between all the propaganda on telegram?

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#659

Post by hnfong »

sourraspberry wrote: post #341

People comparing to WhatsApp/Signal etc. are missing the point. The lack of E2EE is actually what has got Telegram in trouble. The same stuff that happens on Telegram also happens on WhatsApp and Signal - but because it's E2EE, it's harder for the police to find it, and when they do find it, WhatsApp and Signal have no way to comply - they can't see the chats! That said, they will provide details to LE that they do h…

Which law enforcement?

I've always been under the impression that as long as your country has your back, you can refuse law enforcement requests claiming their government or their laws are bad so you don't have to comply.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#660

Post by anigbrowl »

cypress66 wrote: post #275
gck1 wrote: post #258

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 Telegra…

What you call moderation is also a tool dictatorships use to censor people. It goes both ways.

  > help I'm being harassed online [detailed description of how]
  > tsk tsk, and you think that justifies *censoring* people?!
Free speech and freedom from censorship are important, but I'm well tired of seeing them used as an excuse to deflect from real problems like online abuse, CSAM etc. Many people on HN seem to think some kinds of problems aren't even worthy of discussion because they any sort of regulation as an attack upon their privacy.
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