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Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

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Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#841

Post by [deleted] »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #522
nomdep wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime. Why aren't all gun manufacturers in jail then? They must know a percentage of their products are going to be used to commit crimes. A much larger percentage than those using Telegram to commit one.

The difference is knowing some percentage will be used to commit crimes, and knowing a specific individual is going to use it to commit a crime.

[deleted]

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#842

Post by int_19h »

coliveira wrote: post #556
nomdep wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime. Why aren't all gun manufacturers in jail then? They must know a percentage of their products are going to be used to commit crimes. A much larger percentage than those using Telegram to commit one.

Even worse, in the US they clearly go out of their way to lobby for no control of gun sales. They should be indicted as facilitating crime.

Are you suggesting that advocating for changes to laws should be a crime?

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#843

Post by int_19h »

alephnerd wrote: post #669
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not assume When in doubt, ask. I was replying to any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your service I mentioned criminal lawyers because their job is literally to "offer their services to criminals or to people accused of being criminals" and they have no obligation whatsoever to minimize bad actors from using your service , in fact bad actors are usually their regular clientele and they a…

> The premise of this story is that Telegram offers a service which is very similar to safe deposit boxes, the bank it's not supposed to know what you keep in there hence they are not held responsible if they are used for illegal activities. This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or Hacker News. Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content Moderatio…

At least in case of Section 230, distributirs that do not moderate do not need it because they do indeed have that kind of legal protection - see Cubby v. CompuServe for an example. Section 230 was created because a provider that did moderate tried to use this precedent in court and its applicability was rejected, and Congress decided that this state of affairs incentivized the wrong kind of behavior.

This is precisely why Republicans want to repeal it - if they succeed, it would effectively force Facebook etc to allow any content.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#844

Post by int_19h »

hcfman wrote: post #796
jsheard wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is for the most part not end-to-end encrypted, one to one chats can be but aren't by default, and groups/channels are never E2EE. That means Telegram is privy to a large amount of the criminal activity happening on their platform but allegedly chooses to turn a blind eye to it, unlike Signal or WhatsApp, who can't see what their users are doing by design. Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to…

Slightly offtopic. Why would telegram have chosen to not make it e2ee like this? I'm trying to see the motivation for this?

Because people generally want features like persistent chat history across all devices to "just work".

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#845

Post by mboyarsky »

wklm wrote: post #540
soufron wrote: post #364

French lawyer here, it's difficult to know anything as of now given that's all the information is covered by secrecy as long as he's in preliminary custody. Neither him nor his lawyers have access to the procedure yet. This will last for 48 hours from his arrest - it can be 96 hours if they decide his suspected crimes are about drugs or prostitution, and even 144 hours if it's about terrorism. So we'll probably need…

The only decently prudent comment I've read in this thread so far

Consider folks already know a bunch of other input.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#846

Post by int_19h »

squidbeak wrote: post #343
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what if it is state sponsored propaganda? Most media is biased in some way. It shouldn’t be censored. I want to hear their side of the story too.

In this instance (RT being banned), it's Russia's quite candid strategy to undermine social cohesion in their enemies' societies, using disinformation. Margarita Simonyan and Vladislav Surkov have each bragged about its success. So yes, for social cohesion, when there's a malign external actor poisoning public discourse with the intention of splitting societies, a responsible government ought to tackle it.

If we start throwing around terms like "social cohesion" to justify censorship in the West, how can we complain about China doing the same in the name of "social harmony"?

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#847

Post by int_19h »

axegon_ wrote: post #291
mazambazz wrote: post #29

This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again. Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything. Hell, then there's the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery s…

The difference is that this is not an isolated case on telegram(you said it yourself: "some amount", which implies "limited"). At the same time, you can literally open up the app and with 0 effort find everything they are accusing them of - drugs, terrorist organizations, public decapitations, you name it. They also provide the ability to search for people and groups around you, and I am literally seeing a channel wh…

As far as E2EE, you do not need to trust Telegram since the clients are open source, and third party clients are also available.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#848

Post by mboyarsky »

dtquad wrote: post #306
pshirshov wrote: post #245

My opinion would be extremely unpopular, but: 1) The guy was marketing an open-text messenger as an e2ee messenger 2) Because of (1) he was able to moderate it and help law enforcement with locating criminals but he was not cooperating 3) He was extremely cooperative with Russian "law enforcement", as multiple deanonymised activists with leaked chats, contact lists and location history found out So, a hypocrite got w…

Telegram within Russia and outside Russia are two completely different apps with completely different featureset and visible channels. The only "anti-war" sentiment on Russian Telegram is ultra-nationalistic whining about the warfare not being efficient and brutal enough. But outside Russia there are even pro-Ukrainian Russian-language Telegram channels.

That is just false. Try it yourself.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#849

Post by int_19h »

NikkiA wrote: post #755
tuatoru wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is France going to arrest the owners of HP, because their printers can't filter out CSAM?

No because HP printers *do* print tracking marks to allow law enforcement to match a printout to a printer if they find abuse material that's been printed.

I find it amazing that this is used as an example of a good thing.

A few decades ago, one of the factoids about USSR was that they required all typewriters to be registered with the state, with a sample page produced for every unit manufactured so that the state could track their use (this last bit is unlikely to be true, but was widely believed). That was supposed to be a case in point on why free societies are better, not an example to follow.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#850

Post by int_19h »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #159
mazambazz wrote: post #29

This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again. Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything. Hell, then there's the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery s…

Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do [...] maybe I'm just being naive? In this case, the comment does strike me as naive. Back in the 1990s the tech community convinced itself (myself included) that Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy it enabled. In reality, law in a society is supposed to serve that society. The tech community talked itself into believing tha…

Historically speaking, a great deal more crime was impossible to combat in practice simply because no state could afford a police apparatus extensive enough to monitor everything. Coincidentally, this also extended to things like political dissent.

Now that automated mass surveillance actually makes it possible for the states to keep tabs on just about everything, E2EE, if anything, merely rebalances the scales (although even that is overselling it - in practice, with modern surveillance tools, the scales are still much more heavily tilted in favor of those surveilling).

To what extent people really want to embrace the panopticon is not so clear-cut. It is certainly something heavily pushed from above, and in many societies that does seem to be reflected in public opinion (e.g. UK) - but not in all, so I do not think it can be reasonably assumed to be the default.

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