[HN Gopher] Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terr...
___________________________________________________________________
Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud,
child porn
Author : toss1
Score : 582 points
Date : 2024-08-25 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (decripto.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (decripto.org)
| pjkundert wrote:
| France is arresting people for providing end-to-end encrypted
| communications?
|
| What could possibly go wrong!
| Krasnol wrote:
| Telegram doesn't have much to do with E2EE.
| BadHumans wrote:
| > French authorities believe that Telegram, under Durov's
| leadership, became a major platform for organised crime due
| to its encrypted messaging services, which allegedly
| facilitated illegal activities
|
| Sounds like it was because of E2EE.
| drmaximus wrote:
| Encrypted doesn't necessarily mean e2ee.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Nope. It's because of the large telegram group chats for
| the most part and those aren't E2EE. The only chats that
| can be E2EE on telegram are one to one DMs and that's only
| if you manually enable it.
|
| i.e. They refused to turn over chat records that they have
| server side access to.
|
| It's worth noting that they could do E2EE here for group
| chats but they don't. Signal does it but telegram wholesale
| refused to.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| It doesn't do E2EE by default, you need to select it when
| messaging someone.
| Aspos wrote:
| Can you, please, elaborate? Wasn't it their main feature and
| the selling point?
| tail_exchange wrote:
| E2EE is optional. Telegram does have it, but you don't need
| to use it.
| jsheard wrote:
| Telegram also only supports E2EE in one-to-one chats, so
| any bad guys operating out of group chats / channels are
| definitely doing so in the clear.
| financetechbro wrote:
| What are the downsides to telegram providing default
| E2EE? Seems like a no brainer to have it as a default
| feature for the product.
| robjan wrote:
| Their focus is on UX more than security. The app is super
| snappy and supports group chats with hundreds of
| thousands of participants.
| jsheard wrote:
| I think they don't support cross-device syncing or
| automatic backups of E2EE chats, so it's about minimising
| friction by default. Telegrams main focus is UX, unlike
| Signal which prioritizes security at the expense of UX.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Telegram e2ee FAQ covers the nuances
| https://tsf.telegram.org/manuals/e2ee-simple
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Telegram's E2EE isn't available for group chats. It's not
| on by default for other chats, so most or all of your chats
| are probably just transport encrypted. Further, they rolled
| their own crypto (bad), MTProto2, which has a number of
| problems (but is not necessarily broken)
|
| This places Telegram's security stance below that of even
| Instagram or Facebook (which also has optional E2EE chats,
| but uses the Signal protocol, which is considered better
| than MTProto2.)
| kdmtctl wrote:
| E2EE is optional on Telegram and not really convenient. You
| can create a private chat which will be E2E encrypted but
| this takes a few taps and pins to device. Most of the users
| don't bother. And the main target is not personal chats but
| channels which can be easily discovered and followed.
|
| This is not an e2e battle, this is the hunt for channel
| owners. Frankly it is too easy to make a "local chat" and
| sell stuff. Durov has the data and this is his weakness and
| strength. Platform is viral but there are too much for one
| hands.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| I don't why you were downvoted. Because that is exactly what is
| going on. EU is generally on a open-encryption-by-warrant path
| and this is a great example of applying some pressuring.
|
| Should we enable the Iranian polotical refugee to communicate
| in secret with her family ?
|
| Should we by warrant enable the possibility to open up messages
| when pedofiles sell or buy children for sex ?
|
| Nasty questions.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Aren't you advocating for a Big Brother-style system?
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Not at all. I wish the iranian political refugee can
| communicate with her family without the state to intervene.
| That's great.
|
| But at the same time I wish a court order can open up
| encryption when it's needed.
|
| But the balance is difficult. As we see all the time.
| questinthrow wrote:
| Why did he enter a country with an arrest warrant on his name? I
| don't understand it
| ibbih wrote:
| it was issued while he was en route
| ErneX wrote:
| you have a source for this?
| itohihiyt wrote:
| Was it public knowledge prior to it's execution?
| resiros wrote:
| He did not. He stopped his jet to refuel in France, and they
| issued it in the mean time
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Do you have any reference for this?
| frankharv wrote:
| This shows the strength of the five eyes "CARTEL"
|
| They grounded a Presidents plane because they thought
| SNOWDEN was onboard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_inciden
| t
| olalonde wrote:
| Is that information even possible to know? I believe in the US
| arrest warrants are generally sealed before an arrest is made.
| pathless wrote:
| Telegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I
| have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and
| this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it.
| When you create something that is objectively great, everyone
| will use it - including bad actors.
| bangaroo wrote:
| i gotta agree, i basically live out of telegram.
|
| even with the recent trend towards adding incremental bloat to
| the client, it's managed to stay a simple, straightforward tool
| for communicating with minimal advertising and enough of the
| features that i need front and center.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| You like it better than Signal? The only thing I know Telegram
| for is several of my girlfriend's relatives being exposed to
| crazy scams and right-wing conspiracy theories and
| misinformation on it.
| rpgbr wrote:
| Signal has better governance, plus e2ee mandatory, while on
| Telegram is optional and rarely used. Telegram also has a
| "social media" aspect with huge groups and channels, which
| attracts many people, but is a depart from the whole secure
| chat messaging it's still known for.
|
| IMHO, Signal is way better.
| 14 wrote:
| This is exactly my experience as well. I have never actually
| used telegram as I was early a signal user and never needed
| it but my ex used it. All she ever used it for was conspiracy
| garbage she would follow. Anti covid vaccine doctors and
| groups mainly. The amount of misinformation she tried to show
| me and every time I would show her how it was fake she still
| would not believe me. Then she was even scammed out of $10k
| from telegram when she fell for a romance crypto scam. The
| conspiracy stuff is a main reason we broke up it was every
| single one from flat earth to fake moon landing to all the
| covid world economic forum world take over and on and on.
| Most of these came from telegram.
| logicchains wrote:
| The reason you consider all that misinformation is because
| it's politically sensitive information and every single
| other social media company and the vast majority of
| western-aligned media censor it, so the only place you come
| across such information is in the uncensored Telegram
| platform, and assume it must be false because all the other
| media you consume tells you so.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| frankly signal is a lot buggier than telegram and people like
| having their chat history.
| 42lux wrote:
| Video and Audio calls are hit and miss. The history and search
| are not reliable. The interface is not really suited for big
| group chats... I could go on and on.
| aldanor wrote:
| How big is a "big group chat" in your definition?
|
| It's perfectly fine for a few thousand people
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i find history and search very reliable in my experience but
| agree about the calls compared to e.g. messenger
| loceng wrote:
| And tactics exist outside of control of communications, to
| capture these bad actors, to infiltrate their ranks; why are
| these alternatives to fighting the production of child
| exploitation and abuse content not brought up in conversation
| ever?
| mpeg wrote:
| I use telegram for some group chats, but I'm not sure why tech-
| savvy people would like it so much - messages are not end-to-
| end encrypted which makes it an inferior choice compared to
| even whatsapp
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I prefer Signal and it provides encryption.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Signal has the better protocol and the better organisation
| behind it, but inferior apps and UX. It's unfortunate,
| really.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Apps? I just use it for messaging.
|
| I haven't noticed any major UX issues but I use it for
| one thing only
| yunohn wrote:
| Yes, the messaging apps. They suck big-time. By far the
| worst communication app I've ever used. So many bugs...
|
| Telegram is indeed the best like others are saying, and
| WhatsApp is a distant second.
| croes wrote:
| Can you give an example?
|
| Never had any problem with Signal.
| sunnybeetroot wrote:
| On iOS, if you turn off your Internet connection and
| receive a message, you won't get a notification when you
| restore your connection. This problem doesn't exist with
| WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram. Quite strange.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| On my Signal app screen, I have Chats, Calls and Stories.
| I could probably do without Stories. Periodically it
| prompts me for my PIN.
|
| Other than that it just works
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Signal for mobile and Signal for desktop are different
| apps with different code bases. Neither is as good as
| Telegram's, in my opinion.
|
| Signal is fine for messaging. Not bad, not amazing. I'd
| have a much easier time convincing people to switch to
| Signal if it would've had a client as good as Telegram's,
| especially for the desktop application.
|
| That said, Telegram has been adding more and more
| annoying premium features that distract and annoy.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Thanks I only use mobile so now I understand
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp
|
| I'd rather have a good privacy policy with a good enough
| server-side encryption than some closed-source implementation
| of E2EE, that we can never audit.
|
| WhatsApp actually disallows you from reverse-engineering the
| app and looking into the algorithm. That begs the question,
| what percentage of E2EE is it really? 20%? 50%? 100%? Because
| there's still no way to confirm their claims of E2EE. All we
| have is a company with a really good track record in lying
| publicly, telling you that it's safe.
|
| Looking at WhatsApp's privacy policy, I really wonder why
| people even support it compared to Telegram:
| https://privacyspy.org/product/whatsapp/
|
| https://privacyspy.org/product/telegram/
| mpeg wrote:
| This is no longer true, whatsapp have taken steps [0] to
| make their e2ee auditable and honestly I disagree with the
| idea that no e2ee is better than closed source e2ee. I'm
| not sure why you would trust a privacy policy more than you
| would trust encryption, with a court order Telegram would
| provide your chats to law enforcement, while Whatsapp would
| not be able to.
|
| [0]:
| https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-
| key-...
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > to make their e2ee auditable
|
| This is not the algorithm being audited, it's the key.
| Telegram's complete algorithm is auditable, including the
| open source client apps. Server code is always
| unverifiable, so let's not bring that up.
|
| Secondly, WhatsApp channels and large groups (copied from
| Telegram) are not encrypted in any way (cmiw), as opposed
| to Telegram's MTProto 2.0 Cloud encryption. The app is
| completely closed-source even with all their claims of
| privacy and its TnC even discourages you from reverse-
| engineering it.
| p2detar wrote:
| WhatsApp Communities are indeed E2E encrypted. About
| channels, why would you want a channel to be encrypted
| when you are just a follower and cannot communicate back?
| In fact WhatsApp's guidelines explicitly state the
| following:
|
| > Channel updates should be used to share information
| with followers and viewers, not as a way for admins to
| communicate back and forth.
|
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/671443411431514/
| usrnm wrote:
| Same reson people choose macbooks for work over running
| Linux, it's just a nicer product
| yehat wrote:
| Where's windows than?
| 4bpp wrote:
| For one, it's the only major messenger that has an actually
| lightweight, well-written and full-featured desktop client
| rather than yet another boxed-up web browser. I might be more
| enthusiastic about using the alternatives if I could use the
| Telegram client.
| whatsuphotdog wrote:
| It's very bizarre to see all these comments downplaying
| this, or implying the lack of E2EE by default somehow makes
| it less attractive to the average user than something like
| Signal.
|
| Most people care about usability and interconnectivity
| first and foremost because the majority of their messaging
| activities are not so sensitive that they feel the need to
| sacrifice those things for _mandatory_ E2EE. Call that
| shortsighted if you like, but it 's far more common than
| this "encryption or bust" mindset around here.
|
| If signal or some messaging platform could find a way to be
| E2EE capable all the time, with all the same usability and
| design as telegram, without unnecessary restrictions on
| users, and without it being a completely walled off garden
| from which your data can never be self-extracted, it would
| win this argument.
|
| Same goes for things like Tutanota and a lot of these other
| data prisons that are cropping up which create privacy
| through taking away user agency.
|
| Until then users will pick what they want for their own
| needs. Telegram met those needs for many.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> the same usability and design as telegram_
|
| From the recent Tucker Carlson interview of Pavel Durov,
| Telegram has: - 1 PM (Durov) - 1
| owner (Durov) - 30 developers - 0 HR, they
| hire contest.com winners
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41343845
| limit499karma wrote:
| a very impressive guy. too bad he didn't name the oss
| libraries.
| walterbell wrote:
| One could list OSS libraries (if any) that Telegram uses
| today, then diff against OSS libraries used by other E2EE
| messengers.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Line has a fully featured desktop client that's even more
| lightweight than Telegram. They also have a white paper
| that explains their encryption which is decent enough
| https://d.line-scdn.net/stf/linecorp/en/csr/line-
| encryption-...
|
| You do need to turn off "display stickers suggestion"
| before the app becomes nice.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Does Line offer server based/cross-platform messaging
| with a similar upload allowance? I'm curious to find
| telegram alternatives.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Intriguing (and surprising to me that they offer E2EE at
| all), but there is seemingly no Linux build. I can't seem
| to find source code either (Telegram Desktop's is
| released under the GPL).
| foresto wrote:
| Some of these are native apps; not Electron, Java, or what
| have you:
|
| https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
|
| (Of course, I don't know what qualifies as a major
| messenger to you.)
| 4bpp wrote:
| They used to have a page wittily named "feature matrix",
| which made it apparent that only Element was really kept
| up to date, with other clients missing features ranging
| from channel search to embedding images. I don't know if
| this situation has improved and whether the original page
| still exists somewhere.
| whatsuphotdog wrote:
| Why are you assuming tech savy people care primarily about
| end-to-end encryption?
| guigar wrote:
| I think it is because Telegram is a communications platform,
| not just another chat app. For example, it has good APIs to
| build apps on top of it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| because telegram just works really well tbh.
|
| it is lightweight, pretty much never goes down, has
| reasonable features.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| At least on the beginning, when I looked into it, it had a
| very simple and well documented API. I guess it was the only
| messenger you could send a message with one line of code (of
| course not e2e encrypted). So it's very simple to send you a
| message from your home project.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Hot take: E2EE is overrated!
|
| Almost all conversations that most people have are benign. I
| used telegram to follow journalists (essentially as a twitter
| replacement), how would E2EE benefit my use case?
| forinti wrote:
| I prefer it because of the bot API.
| golergka wrote:
| WhatsApp doesn't save my history. And secret services of
| governments of certain counties are not a realistic adversary
| that I'm trying to defend myself against. The usual scammers
| which are going to steal my identity are not the people Durov
| will sell admin access to his server to.
| aquova wrote:
| I actually despise it. I'm not sure if this has changed, but
| after being forced to make an account under my phone number, it
| proceeded to send a message that I had joined to everyone who
| had my number in their contacts and was foolish enough to share
| them with Telegram. This included a rather vile woman whose
| number I apparently inherited from a deceased relative some
| years before. She didn't understand this and accused me of
| stealing his identity. While it was simple enough for me to
| brush it off, I couldn't believe they would allow and even
| encourage such a thing, so I almost immediately deleted my
| account and instead tried out one that wasn't so eager to lap
| up my personal details.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Signal is much better, even if the UX is not quite as good as
| telegram's.
| jacooper wrote:
| It's also the least private one (compared to whatsapp and
| signal.)
| Voloskaya wrote:
| The fact bad actors are also using it is not the problem. His
| unwillingness to moderate content and cooperate with
| authorities is. Great UX doesn't suddenly put you above the
| law.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| I don't understand why anyone uses Telegram if it there is no
| proof that it is secure. Their code isn't open source?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Good lawyers won't make much difference for him as the French
| government is tired of not being able to look at all our
| conversations. They want to start scaring people into
| compliance and verifying all their actions with the government
| or at least scaring the companies providing a (semi) private
| experience. This is mostly like just phase 1 of getting the
| keys that open up telegram servers to 5 eyes by getting Durov
| under their thumbscrews.
| mihaaly wrote:
| The masses do not care much if ones do not do agains bad actors
| what are in their power just their pretty platform shall keep
| running, they will keep this one alive too and argue for it to
| the death, don't worry, the masses could argue for any
| malicious thing that they find pretty or nice or like for some
| reason. Can organize some protest or even riot too in a -
| unencrypted by nature - group channel, there will be scores to
| participate, as recent example show in other precious matters,
| maybe can loot some good scores too on the side of the big
| party about a dear matter for the heart! Paris deserve the
| revenge! : /
| Retr0id wrote:
| I really hope this doesn't become an "encryption bad" cudgel.
|
| > The main accusation by EU authorities concerns Telegram's
| encrypted messaging services, which were allegedly used to
| facilitate organised crime. One investigator stated that
| 'Telegram has become the number one platform for organised crime
| over the years', underlining the perceived link between the
| platform's privacy features and criminal activities.
|
| It's unclear to me how much this "perceived link" is on behalf of
| the author of the article, as opposed to the prosecutors
| themselves.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. Doesn't the fact that the
| prosecutors had him arrested directly imply they perceive a
| link?
| Retr0id wrote:
| Accusing someone of facilitating crime is different to
| accusing someone of using cryptography to preserve privacy.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Why would the concern not be the crime rather than the tool
| used in carrying out the crime?
| rpgbr wrote:
| Telegram doesn't have mandatory e2ee, which puts it in this
| kind of situation. Having data on crime committing and denying
| access to it from authorities is a crime itself in most
| countries.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Right, I think that's an important distinction to make, but
| it's not really one that's explored in the article.
|
| The article doesn't say anything about E2EE specifically, but
| I think it would be understandable to "read between the
| lines" and assume that Telegram is in trouble for offering
| E2EE - but I think/ _hope_ that assumption would be
| incorrect.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| For centuries snail mail was used to facilitate organized
| crime, yet nobody prosecutes post offices.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I'm sure a post office would definitely refuse a legal
| request to intercept the mail.
|
| Guess not:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_interception
| KaiserPro wrote:
| because they were state run and had well practised
| interception systems.
| bagels wrote:
| What is the difference between telegram and cell phone providers
| other than encryption in relation to these charges?
| BadHumans wrote:
| Your cell phone provider will cooperate with the authorities
| immediately and without question.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Telegram not being fully encrypted and seeing the content of
| most messages on its servers but not cooperating with the
| police?
| itohihiyt wrote:
| The cell phone providers aren't likely refusing to cooperate
| with the authorities in whose jurisdiction they operate.
| jsheard wrote:
| Cell phones are encrypted over the air, but they aren't end to
| end encrypted, and it's safe to assume that a provider will
| wiretap the plaintext passing through their backend if the
| authorities ask for it.
| mpeg wrote:
| Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted in the way other
| messaging services are (whatsapp, signal), it is encrypted
| but Telegram holds the keys and are able to decrypt any
| messages not sent on a "secret chat" which is not the
| default, or any messages on a group chat
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| The article is very poor mixing the actual charges with
| unrelated European Union concerns. The charges are not linked
| to encryption. Most of Telegram is unencrypted anyway.
|
| The issue is with Telegram non cooperation and lack of
| moderation of publicly available content.
| croes wrote:
| If a warrant exists they hand over all your data and even
| wiretap you.
| tail_exchange wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious to what would happen with Signal if the
| same bad actors moved to their platform. Would France also be
| arresting its creators for not properly moderating and giving
| backdoors?
| psychlops wrote:
| They are certainly already on Signal, but Signal has end-to-end
| encryption so cannot supply information other than meta
| information to authorities.
| tail_exchange wrote:
| This would imply that just E2EEing everything would give you
| a free pass not to moderate anything, which seems very naive.
| I doubt the judges would care about their self-imposed
| technological limitations.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| If I sell shovels, it's not a self-imposed techical
| limitation that I don't have a way to detect and prevent
| anyone from doing something illegal with a shovel. Even
| after the technological means exist to include an intetnet
| connected spy device in every shovel.
|
| Secure message passing is no different. The "shovel", the
| thing one might sell, is just the application of some math
| which does something and not any of the infinite other
| things.
| psychlops wrote:
| I agree with you, but also sympathize with the technical
| issues of moderating encrypted information. Thinking a bit
| about it, there would need to be a global man in the middle
| or a requirement for all applications to decrypt/re-encrypt
| centrally for moderation.
| croes wrote:
| Such global man in the middle could be abused by bad
| parties.
|
| That's why the authorities ask for the squaring of the
| circle.
|
| Don't break encryption but make it readable.
|
| That's "Let's make PI = 3" level of ignorance
| croes wrote:
| But that would mean killing E2EE completely.
|
| There's a difference between breaking the encryption of a
| single target after a warrant or handing over previous data
| which would need some kind of backdoor in the encryption.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Signal always sounded like they have better lawyers and are not
| as antagonistic. Police work is not only about encryption. But
| a lot of it involves metadata. And you know, just booting bad
| actors from the platform.
|
| They also don't have public groups with questionable material,
| as far as I know
| tail_exchange wrote:
| Signal is also a lot smaller. Telegram has over 1B users,
| while Signal has 40M. These optics could just be a product of
| the size of the user base.
| frankharv wrote:
| If I were Moxie Marlinspike I would not be traveling to
| Europe any time soon....
| layer8 wrote:
| He isn't Signal's CEO anymore.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| Telegram does store chats and channels on servers. Signal
| doesn't. I wonder Durov managed to stay between Scylla and
| Charybdis that long.
| rpgbr wrote:
| No need to imagine: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
| layer8 wrote:
| Signal doesn't have public groups/channels. Moderation
| obligations only apply to public dissemination. If I send an
| email to a private mailing list, the involved email providers
| have no obligation to moderate its contents.
| croes wrote:
| I think the difference is that Signal can't provide the data
| but Telegram could but didn't want to.
| 1024core wrote:
| This is what happens when you refuse to hand over the keys.
| rodric wrote:
| Two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41328688
|
| Probably an unrelated coincidence.
| financetechbro wrote:
| Very peculiar coincidence
| tomohawk wrote:
| Telegram is not just a messaging platform.
|
| Telegram is one of the few places where you can see uncensored
| material about what Putin is doing to Ukraine. When that war got
| hot again in 2022, you could still see some of that on places
| like youtube, but they rapidly changed their censorship regime,
| to the extent that many channels were demonetized or only keep a
| token presence on the platform to point at telegram. Any
| survivors severely self censor to maintain a presence.
|
| They're arresting this guy because they believe telegram should
| have a moderation system that they control.
|
| The social media platforms that enabled the Arab Spring, are now
| being used to ensure that such a thing never happens again.
| loceng wrote:
| TL;DR - The bad guys are winning?
| loxs wrote:
| TL;DR yes, and Moldbug explained all of this in like 2009
| mazambazz wrote:
| 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 slope with no defined boundaries where the
| government can just arbitrary use to pin the blame on the people
| they don't like. Because ultimately, almost every platform with
| user-provided content will have some quantity of illegal
| material.
|
| But maybe I'm just being naive?
| poisonborz wrote:
| You really ask why? This isn't about serving justice - it's
| statuary example for anyone trying to run an unmoderated
| platform.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| IANAL and not that familiar with the legal situation, but if
| we assume that running a platform of this type requires you,
| by law, to moderate such a platform and he fails to do that,
| idk what we are talking about. Yes, he would clearly be
| breaking the law. Why would that not get prosecuted in the
| completely normal, boring way that I would hope all law
| breaking will eventually be prosecuted?
|
| If you are alleging that there's comparable, specific and
| actual legal infringements on the part of meta/google, that
| somehow go uninvestigated and unpunished, free free to point
| to that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i don't think that platform providers of encrypted
| messaging should be required to ensure that none of the
| images being sent contain CP.
| StrLght wrote:
| You're missing the key part: Telegram doesn't have E2EE
| enabled by default. Group chats and channels aren't
| encrypted at all.
|
| The only E2EE in Telegram is called "secret chats" and
| they're 1-on-1.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| frankly, even with unencrypted chats, any law/precedent
| requiring that platform providers have to scale
| moderation linearly with the number of users (which is
| effectively what this is saying) sounds like really bad
| policy (and probably further prevents the EU from
| building actual competitors to American tech companies)
| StrLght wrote:
| Seems like other platforms without E2EE are managing to
| do that without any issues whatsoever (e.g. Discord)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| discord has hundreds of content moderators, telegram is
| made by a team of 30 people
|
| i don't think messaging startups should be required to
| employ hundreds of people to read messages
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A startup wouldn't need hundreds of people, they don't
| have millions of daily messages yet. Only successful
| businesses like Telegram would.
| StrLght wrote:
| Isn't this a consequence of Telegram's actions?
|
| It was their decision to become something bigger than a
| simple messaging app by adding channels and group chats
| with tons of participants. It was also their decision to
| understaff content moderation team.
|
| Sometimes the consequence is a legal action, like the one
| we're seeing right now. All this could have been easily
| avoided if they had E2EE or enough people to review
| reported content and remove it when necessary.
| estebank wrote:
| Telegram started 11 years ago. I know the term has been
| diluted for ages, but it still rubs me the wrong way to
| use the word startup for decade old businesses.
| squidbeak wrote:
| A straightforward legal responsibility should be shirked
| because scaling moderation is hard? How many other
| difficult things do you propose moving outside the law?
| Avamander wrote:
| That's not the case here though. Most of the
| communication on Telegram is not E2E Encrypted.
|
| Even E2EE messaging service providers have to cooperate
| in terms of providing communication metadata and
| responding to takedown requests. Ignoring law enforcement
| lands you in a lot of shit everywhere, in Russia you'll
| just be landing out of a window.
|
| These laws have applied for decades in some shape or form
| in pretty much all countries, so it shouldn't come as a
| surprise.
| naasking wrote:
| Where are "moderated" and "platform" defined in the relevant
| legislation?
| dareal wrote:
| Have you used Telegram before making this comment? It _is_
| moderated. You really think this is about the company, the
| platform, not about politics? Well you should think again.
| twelve40 wrote:
| it is much less aggressively moderated and censored than
| facebook, and pleasant to use, source: first hand
| experience.
|
| But i have no idea if it truly has more or less crime than
| other platforms. So we can't really tell if he's being
| messed with because he can't stand up for himself in a way
| Microsoft or Musk can, or it is truly a criminal problem.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Should have written >unmoderated<. No service would live 2
| hours if it would be actually unmoderated. But seemingly
| they only remove content that is directly a product
| of/causing physical harm.
| Infinity315 wrote:
| Because those services don't get shown reports of CSAM and then
| turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it.
|
| A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime. However,
| a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to report it is a
| crime.
| itohihiyt wrote:
| I don't think it's a crime not to report a crime, at least
| not where I live. But facilitating a crime, which is
| something you could accuse telegram of is.
| Infinity315 wrote:
| You're technically right (I think). However, I believe if
| you witness a murder and know the murderer and the police
| asks you: "Do you know anything about X murder?" Then I
| think you're legally required to tell the truth here.
| throwadobe wrote:
| > Then I think you're legally required to tell the truth
| here.
|
| Or you can just not respond, at least in the US.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-incrimination
| Infinity315 wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily self-incrimination to
| report a crime you witnessed, though I think it's
| dependent based on the time from when it occurred to the
| time of reporting.
| qingcharles wrote:
| That only applies if you're the defendant.
|
| If you're the witness to a murder and you're subpoena'd
| to court and refuse to testify then you are committing
| contempt of court. There was a guy in Illinois who got 20
| years (reduced to 6 on appeal) for refusing to testify in
| a murder.
|
| https://illinoiscaselaw.com/clecourses/contempt-of-court-
| max...
|
| Contempt of court usually has no boundaries on the
| punishment, nor any jury trials. A judge can just order
| you to be executed on the spot if you say, fall asleep in
| his courtroom. Sheriffs in Illinois have the same
| unbridled power over jail detainees.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think in actual practice you will rarely get contempt
| for refusing to testify or taking the fifth for questions
| that could only tenuously implicate yourself in practice.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Usually if you let the prosecutor know up-front that
| you're not willing to cooperate they will tend to save
| themselves the hassle of trying. It can go wrong if they
| subpoena a belligerent witness, then they don't turn up
| on the day they're supposed to testify, and now the jury
| is empaneled and they start doing a dance where they
| demand the sheriff finds the witness, but then the clock
| runs out on holding the jury and it's a mistrial all
| round.
| throwadobe wrote:
| That guy needed a better lawyer. He could just have said
| "I don't remember. Can't say for sure" repeatedly
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yes, "I don't recall" is the oft-heard phrase in the
| witness stand. I don't remember the specifics of that
| case and why the guy decided to martyr himself.
| Avamander wrote:
| Such laws exist in most countries. I'm not aware of any
| that provide such a right to business entities though.
| antimemetics wrote:
| I think in most modern democracies you aren't legally
| required to tell the police anything. Courts are a
| different case though.
| lxgr wrote:
| _As a suspect_. At least in court, as a completely non-
| involved bystander you have no right of refusal to
| testify in most jurisdictions.
|
| Not sure whether that extends to police questioning
| though.
| antimemetics wrote:
| It doesn't extend to police questioning, i also pointed
| out it's a different thing when you are in a court. For
| the police an innocent bystander can turn into a suspect
| real fast.
| skissane wrote:
| The English common law tradition has a crime called
| "misprision". Misprision of treason is the felony of
| knowing someone has committed or is about to commit
| treason but failing to report it to the authorities.
|
| It still exists in many jurisdictions, including the UK,
| the US (it is a federal crime under 18 U.S. Code SS 2382,
| and also a state crime in most states), Australia,
| Canada, New Zealand and Ireland.
|
| Related was the crime "misprision of felony", which was
| failure to report a felony (historically treason was not
| classed as a felony, rather a separate more serious
| category of crime). Most common law jurisdictions have
| abolished it, in large part due to the abolition of the
| felony-misdemeanour distinction. However, in the US
| (which retains that distinction), it is a federal crime
| (18 U.S. Code SS 4). However, apparently case law has
| narrowed that offence to require active concealment
| rather than merely passive failure to report (which was
| its original historical meaning)
|
| Many of the jurisdictions which have abolished misprision
| of felony still have laws making it a crime not to report
| certain categories of crime, such as terrorism or child
| sexual abuse
| marcinzm wrote:
| If someone says I need a cab for after I rob a bank and
| you give them a ride after waiting then you're almost
| certainly an accessory. If they flag a random cab off the
| street then not.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Depending on the jurisdiction and the crime and the
| circumstances an act of omission (like ignoring a murder)
| would be suspicious and may get you charged with aiding
| and abetting.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Generally, there is no general legal obligation for
| bystanders or witnesses to report a crime, but there are
| exceptions.
| dotancohen wrote:
| To what jurisdiction are you referring?
| nabla9 wrote:
| As far as I know all western judicial systems, both civil
| and common law. But as I said, there are exceptions for
| certain professions, and situations.
| lxgr wrote:
| > I don't think it's a crime not to report a crime
|
| That heavily depends on the jurisdiction. It's explicitly a
| crime in Germany, for example: https://www.gesetze-im-
| internet.de/stgb/__138.html
|
| On top of that, if you can be shown to _benefit_ from the
| crime (e.g. by knowingly taking payment for providing
| services to those that commit it), that presumably makes
| you more than just a bystander in most jurisdictions
| anyway.
| codethief wrote:
| That link you posted is 1) about very specific crimes
| (treason, murder, manslaughter, genocide etc.) and 2) it
| applies only when you hear about a crime that is being
| planned but which _has not been committed yet_ (and can
| still be prevented).
| sharpshadow wrote:
| It is only for specific crimes not all crimes and there
| are exemptions when you don't have to report the crime in
| Germany. For example family members don't have to report
| if they try to convince the other party not to do it.
| Priests and other religious figures don't have to do it.
| Lawyers, physicians, therapists etc. are also exempted.
|
| It is also only for upcoming not yet accomplished crimes.
| Crimes already happened don't have to be reported.
|
| Also it has to be proven that you received the plan in a
| plausibel manner.
| philjohn wrote:
| CSAM is different - in the US, as well as france, the law
| designates the service provider as a mandatory reporter. If
| you find CSAM and don't report the user who posted it to
| authorities (and Telegram have phone numbers of users) then
| they are breaking the law.
|
| https://www.icmec.org/csam-model-legislation/
| rayiner wrote:
| > A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime.
| However, a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to
| report it is a crime.
|
| That's generally not true, at least in the Anglo legal
| system.
| simianparrot wrote:
| YouTube ignored reports for CSAM links in comments of "family
| videos" of children bathing for years until a channel that
| made a large report on it went viral.
|
| Who you are definitely determines how the law handles you. If
| you're Google execs, you don't have to worry about the courts
| of the peasantry.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Google no doubt has staff lawyers whose job it is to advise
| them in such cases.
| negus wrote:
| > get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it
| and do nothing about it.
|
| How do you know this is the case?
| vanliyan wrote:
| I have my dead creepy uncle's phone in my drawer right now,
| and can give you soft core child porn from his instagram. His
| algorithm was even tuned to keep giving endless supply of
| children dancing in lingerie, naked women breastfeeding
| children while said children play with her private part,
| prostitutes of unknown age sharing their number on the
| screen, and porn frames hidden in videos.
|
| Nobody's arresting Zuckerberg for that.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate
| their content to a fairly large degree?
| saintfrancis wrote:
| How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp
| supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?
| jsheard wrote:
| 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
| what's happening on your platform will always be a
| bulletproof way to avoid liability, but it's a much more
| defensible position than being able to see the illegal
| activity on your platform and not doing anything about it.
| Especially in the case of seriously serious crimes like
| CSAM, terrorism, etc.
| scotty79 wrote:
| If law enforcement asked them nicely for access I bet
| they wouldn't refuse. Why take responsibility for
| something if you can just offload it to law enforcement?
|
| The issue is law enforcement doesn't want that kind of
| access. Because they have no manpower to go after
| criminals. This would increase their caseload hundredfold
| within a month. So they prefer to punish the entity that
| created this honeypot. So it goes away and along with it
| the crime will go back underground where police can
| pretend it doesn't happen.
|
| Telegram is basically punished for existing and not doing
| law enforcement job for them.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| >I bet they wouldn't refuse
|
| Apparently, they have. Sorry for your bet.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Maybe they didn't ask nicely. Or they asked for something
| else. There's literally zero drawback for service
| provider to provide secret access to the raw data that
| they hold to law enforcement. You'd be criminally dumb if
| you didn't do it. Literally criminally.
|
| I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked
| Telegram to build them one click creator that would print
| them court ready documents about criminals on their
| platform so that law enforcement can just click a button
| and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > There's literally zero drawback for service provider to
| provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to
| law enforcement.
|
| That's not true. For one things, it is expensive. For
| another, there's a chance people will find out and you'll
| lose all your criminal customers... they might even seek
| retribution.
|
| > I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked
| Telegram to build them one click creator that would print
| them court ready documents about criminals on their
| platform so that law enforcement can just click a button
| and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
|
| You seem to believe, without having looked at the
| publicly available facts of the matter, that the problem
| is law enforcement didn't say "pretty please". The fact
| of the matter is that they've refused proper law
| enforcement requests repeatedly; if anyone has been rude
| about it, it's been Durov.
| c0mbonat0r wrote:
| if its not not end-to-end encrypted, what does that mean?
| whats the method that govts access these messages?
| mr_mitm wrote:
| You can simply join those channels. Getting an invite is
| not hard, or even unnecessary, from what I hear.
| ianburrell wrote:
| End-to-end encrypted means that the server doesn't have
| access to the keys. When server does have access, they
| could read messages to filter them or give law
| enforcement access.
| marcinzm wrote:
| You can report people and have their messages sent to Meta
| for review.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Meta seems to shy away from saying they don't look at the
| content in some fashion. Eg they might scan it with some
| filters, they just don't send plaintext around.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Probably government portals that Meta provides
| raverbashing wrote:
| Answering law enforcement letters, even if it's just to say
| that data cannot be provided, is some 80% of cooperation
| needed.
|
| Meta can provide conversation and account metadata (Twitter
| does the same - or used to do at least), or suspend
| accounts
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Read the founder exit letter. whatsapp is definitely not
| e2e encrypted for all features.
|
| You leak basic metadata (who talked to who at what time).
|
| You leak 100% of messages with "business account", which
| are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays
| the message e2e to N reciptients handling that business
| account".
|
| Then there's the all the links and images which are sent to
| e2e you->meta, meta stores the image/link once, sends you
| back a hash, you send that hash e2e to your contact.
|
| there's so many leaks it's not even fun to poke fun at
| them.
|
| And I pity anyone who is fool enough to think meta products
| are e2e anything.
| switch007 wrote:
| Exactly. Another case of a business hijacking a term and
| abusing it to describe something else.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > with "business account", which are another way to say
| "e2e you->meta and then meta relays
|
| actually its a nominated end point, and then from there
| its up to the business. It works out better for meta,
| because they aren't liable for the content if something
| goes wrong. (ie a secret is leaked, or PII gets out.)
| Great for GDPR because as they aren't acting as processor
| of PII they are less likley to be taken to court.
|
| Whatsapp has about the same level of practical "privacy"
| (encryption is a loaded word here) as iMessage. The
| difference is, there are many more easy ways to report
| nasty content in whatsapp, which reported ~1 million
| cases of CSAM a year vs apples' 267. (not 200k, just 267.
| Thats the whole of apple. https://www.missingkids.org/con
| tent/dam/missingkids/pdfs/202...)
|
| Getting the content of normal messages is pretty hard,
| getting the content of a link, much easier.
|
| Its not signal, but then its never meant to be.
| MertsA wrote:
| iMessage is not on the same playing field as Whatsapp and
| Signal. Apple has full control over key distribution and
| virtually no one verifies Apple isn't acting as a MitM.
| Whatsapp and e2e encrypted messenger force you to handle
| securely linking multiple devices to your account and
| gives you the option to verify that Meta isn't providing
| bogus public keys to break the e2e encryption.
|
| https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-
| key-...
|
| For iMessage, Apple can just add a fake iDevice to your
| account and now iMessage will happily encrypt everything
| to that new key as well and there's zero practical
| visibility to the user. If it was a targeted attack and
| not blanket surveillance then there's no way the target
| is going to notice. You can open up the keychain app and
| check for yourself but unless you regularly do this and
| compare the keys between all your Apple products you
| can't be sure. I don't even know how to do that on
| iPhone.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| isn't meta only end to end encrypted in the most original
| definition in so much that it is encrypted to each hop. but
| it's not end to end encrypted like signal.. ie meta can
| snoop all day
| smolder wrote:
| If a service provider can see plain text for a messaging
| app between the END users, that is NOT end-to-end
| encryption, by any valid definition. Service providers do
| not get to be one of the ends in E2EE, no matter what
| 2019 Zoom was claiming in their marketing. That's just
| lying.
| layer8 wrote:
| Supporting E2EE doesn't imply a failure to cooperate. This
| is not the issue here.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| In a number of ways, and probably all the ways that are
| required by law in your jurisdiction.
|
| Learn more: https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences
| /law/guidelin...
|
| Yes, WA messages are supposed to be e2e encrypted. Unless
| end-to-end encryption is prohibited by law in your
| jurisdiction, I don't see how that question is relevant in
| this context.
| option wrote:
| don't you have an answer now?
| znpy wrote:
| > Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?
|
| It is _supposedly_ end-to-end encrypted. And in a shallow
| way. Also the app is closed source and you can 't develop
| your own.
|
| It's basically end-to-end-trust-me-bro-level encrypted.
| zo1 wrote:
| I'm more disturbed by the fact that on HN we have 0 devs
| confirming or denying this thing about FBs internals wrt
| encryption. We know there are many devs that work there
| that are also HN users. But I've yet to see one of them
| chime in on this discussion.
|
| That should scare a lot of us.
| Illotus wrote:
| I find it pretty ridiculous to assume that any dev would
| comment on the inner workings of their employers software
| in any way beyond what is publicly available anyway. I
| certainly wouldn't.
| zo1 wrote:
| Why not? If I think my employer is doing something
| unethical, I certainly would. That would be the moral
| thing to do.
|
| This tells me most of the people implementing this are
| either too-scared of the consequences, or they think what
| they're implementing is ethical and/or the right thing to
| do. Again, both are scary thoughts we should be highly
| concerned about in a healthy society that talks about
| these things.
|
| One other potential explanation: FB and these large
| behemoths have compartmentalized the implementations of
| these features so much that no one can speak
| authoritatively about it's encryption.
| mr_toad wrote:
| It'd be quicker just to say when Facebook did something
| ethical.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| There's not really much point in trying to convince flat
| earthers of the truth.
| zo1 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the analogy. In your analogy,
| who are the flat-earthers?
| Almondsetat wrote:
| What has E2EE got to do with it? If you catch someone who
| sent CP you can open their phone and read their messages.
| Then you can tell Meta which ones to delete and they can do
| it from the metadata alone.
| archerx wrote:
| I find it funny that they claim to be "end-to-end" at least
| once they have censored one of my messages.
| bananskalshalk wrote:
| The receiving end shared your message with the
| administrators? E2e doesn't mean you aren't allowed to do
| what you want with the messages you receive, they are
| yours.
| archerx wrote:
| Nope, it didn't even arrive on their end, it prevented me
| from sending the message and said I wasn't allowed to
| send that. So they are pre screening your messages before
| you send them.
| MertsA wrote:
| For some trivial client side filtering that still makes
| it e2e encrypted.
| DLoupe wrote:
| The chats are encrypted but the backup saved in the cloud
| isn't. So if someone gets access to your Google Drive he
| can read your WhatsApp chats. You can opt-in to encrypt the
| backup but it doesn't work well.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Reddit moderates itself so well that even half the legitimate
| posts get immediately removed by mods or downvoted by users
| to oblivion
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I've actually given up trying to post on Reddit for this
| reason. Whenever I've tried to join in on a discussion in
| some subreddit that's relevant(eg r/chess) my post has been
| autoremoved by a bot because my karma is too low or my
| account is "too new". Well how can I get any karma if all
| my posts are deleted?
| kemayo wrote:
| Comment in subreddits without those restrictions for a
| bit. E.g. this list: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit
| /wiki/index/newusersubs/
|
| I can see how it's frustrating, but the communities
| you're trying to post in are essentially offloading their
| moderation burden onto the big popular subreddits with
| low requirements -- if you can prove you're capable of
| posting there without getting downvoted into oblivion,
| you're probably going to be less hassle for the smaller
| moderator teams.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That's silly. I gotta go shitpost in subreddits I have no
| interest in as some sort of bizarre rite of passage? I'd
| rather just not use the site at that point.
| hereyouare wrote:
| Yet here you are posting on HN which does the exact same
| thing.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Actually, HN has a much better system. Comments from new
| accounts, like your throwaway, are dead by default, but
| any user can opt in to seeing dead posts, and any user
| with a small amount of karma can vouch those posts,
| reviving them. Like I just did to your post.
| chuckadams wrote:
| New account comments are not dead by default, they just
| render the author name in green.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Also @dang answers emails and always replies fairly and
| thoughtfully, because he is mindful of creating a better
| community.
| Avamander wrote:
| You ask for the post to get approved. You probably can't
| imagine the amount of spam subreddits suffer under.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| In the cases I remember there was no such recourse. It
| was just autodeleted by a bot.
| Avamander wrote:
| You have to send the moderators a message manually. They
| can unhide comments held by AutoMod.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Mods simply ignore any such messages, especially from new
| or low karma accounts. Entreaties into the void.
| pohl wrote:
| Even those who farm accounts know the simple answer to
| your question. You have to spend a little time being
| civil in other subreddits before you reveal the real you.
| Just takes a few weeks.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| The comments I made were quite serious and civil. Not
| sure what you mean. They were autodeleted by a bot. I
| wasn't trolling or anything.
|
| I'm not particularly interested in spending a lot of time
| posting on reddit. But very occasionally I'll come across
| a thread I can contribute meaningfully to and want to
| comment. Even if allowed I'd probably just make a couple
| comments a year or something. But I guess the site isn't
| set up for that, so fuck it.
| pohl wrote:
| Sounds like you glossed over the phrase "in other
| subreddits", which is the secret sauce. The point of my
| phrasing was not to suggest that you aim to be uncivil,
| but to highlight that the above works even for those who
| do aim to. So, surely, it should work for you, too.
| medo-bear wrote:
| There is a simpler explanation, those providers are
| controlled by Western governments (read US)
| squidbeak wrote:
| There's a simpler explanation. Those providers make an
| earnest attempt to obey western law.
| medo-bear wrote:
| It's simpler, the US wants to control the narrative
| everywhere and in everything, just like in the 90s and
| 00s. Things like Telegram and Tiktok and to some extent
| RT, stand in the way of that.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| As far as I can see. CP is probably the fastest way to get a
| channel and related account wiped on telegram in a very short
| time. As a telegram group manager. I often see automated
| purge of CP related ad/contents, or auto lockout for managers
| to clear up the channel/group. Saying telegram isn't managing
| CP problems is just absurd. I really feel like they just
| created the reason for other purpose.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the
| time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is
| in a completely different category than a company that makes
| the fact that they'll look the other way one of their core
| selling points.
|
| Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out
| of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job
| of making James Bond style hidden compartments that perfectly
| blended into the interior. He was later arrested because drug
| dealers used his hidden compartment business to help their
| drug trade.
|
| There was an uproar about the fact that he wasn't doing the
| drug crimes himself. He was only making hidden compartments
| which could be used for anything. How was he supposed to know
| that the hidden compartments were being used for illegal
| activities rather than keeping people's valuables safe during
| a break-in?
|
| Yet when the details of the case came out, IIRC, it was clear
| that he was leaning into the illegal trades and marketing his
| services to those people. He lost his plausible deniability
| after even a cursory look at how he was operating.
|
| I don't know what, if any, parts of that case apply to Pavel
| Durov. I do like to share it as an example of how intent
| matters and how one can become complicit in other crimes by
| operating in a manner where one of your selling points is
| that you'll help anyone out even when their intent is to
| break the law. It's also why smart _corporate_ criminals will
| shut down and walk away when it becomes too obvious that
| they're losing plausible deniability in a criminal
| enterprise.
| kyleee wrote:
| Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables
| and/or criminals?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If you are directly aiding and abetting without any
| plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your
| services then absolutely.
|
| For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or
| IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to
| the best of their ability and cooperate with law
| enforcement when it is brought to their attention.
|
| And like I have mentioned a couple times before, Telegram
| was only allowed to exist because the UAE allowed them
| to, and both the UAE and Russia gained ownership stakes
| in Telegram by 2021. Also, messaging apps can only
| legally operate in the UAE if they provide decryption
| keys to the UAE govt because all instant messaging apps
| are treated as VoIP under their Telco regulation laws.
|
| There have been plenty of cases where anti-Russian govt
| content was moderated away during the 2021 protests -
| https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-
| chat...
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > If you are directly aiding and abetting without any
| plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your
| service
|
| isn't this the definition of "criminal lawyer"?
| alephnerd wrote:
| If you are a criminal lawyer who is providing defense,
| that is acceptable because everyone is entitled to to a
| fair trial and defense.
|
| If you are a criminal lawyer who is directly abetting in
| criminal behavior (eg. a Saul Goodman type) you
| absolutely will lose your Bar License and open yourself
| up to criminal penalties.
|
| If you are a criminal lawyer who is in a situation where
| your client wants you to abet their criminal behavior,
| then you are expected to drop the client and potentially
| notify law enforcement.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| There was a recent gang related case in Georgia where
| several defense lawyers were charged for being a little
| too involved.
| MertsA wrote:
| Are you talking about Brian Steel? He was held in
| contempt because he refused to name his source that
| informed him of some misconduct by the judge (ex parte
| communication with a witness). That's hardly relevant
| here, the client wasn't involved at all as far as anyone
| knows.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Lawyertalk/comments/1dd32ji/bria
| n_s...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| It was records and communication that the lawyer made on
| behalf of his client.
|
| More interesting is why the judge and prosecutors have
| not been referred to the bar for their illegal actions.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > If you are a criminal lawyer who is directly abetting
| in criminal behavior
|
| Not a lawyer myself but I believe this is not a correct
| representation of the issue.
|
| A lawyer abetting in criminal behaviour is committing a
| crime, but the crime is not offering his services to
| criminals, which is completely legal.
|
| When offering their services to criminals law firm or
| individual lawyers in most cases are not required to
| report crimes they have been made aware of under the
| attorney-client privilege and are not required to ask to
| minimize bad actors from using their services.
|
| In short: unless they are committing crimes themselves,
| criminal lawyers are not required to stay clear from
| criminals, actually, usually the opposite is true.
|
| Again, presumption of innocence do exists.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Yep. Your explaination is basically what I was getting at
|
| In this case, Telegram showed bad faith moderation. They
| are not a lawyer, and don't operate with the same
| constraints.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| ... client wants you to abet their criminal behavior,
| then you are expected to drop the client and potentially
| notify law enforcement.
|
| When would a lawyer be allowed to snitch on their client?
| MertsA wrote:
| That in particular would fall under the crime-fraud
| exception so there's no attorney client privilege.
| tialaramex wrote:
| TV drama tends to give people the wrong idea. Your
| lawyers aren't allowed to aid you with doing any crimes,
| they're just advocates.
| coliveira wrote:
| This happens in real life all the time, just look at
| Trump's lawyer.
| alephnerd wrote:
| And they get suspended or disbarred as well as referred
| to LE.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 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 are free to attract as many
| criminals as they like in any legal way they like.
|
| Helping a criminal to commit a crime it's an entirely
| different thing and anyway it must be proved in a court,
| it's not something that can be assumed on the basis of
| allegations (their clients are criminal, so they must be
| criminal too).
|
| That's why in that famous TV drama Jessy Pinkam says "You
| dont want a criminal lawyer, you want a Criminal.
| Lawyer.".
|
| 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.
|
| In other words most of the times people do not know and
| are not required to know if they are dealing with
| criminals, but, even if they did, there are no legal
| reasons to avoid offering them your services other than
| to avoid problems and/or on moral grounds (which are
| perfectly understandable motives, but are still not a
| requirement to operate a business).
|
| Take bars, diners, restaurants, gas stations or
| hospitals, are they supposed to deny their services?
|
| And how would they exactly should take actions to
| _minimize bad actors from using your service_?
|
| If someone goes to a restaurant and talks about
| committing a crime, is the owner abetting the crime?
|
| I guess probably not, unless it is proven beyond any
| reasonable doubt that he actually is.
|
| It doesn't matter if it's true or false it only matters
| what the justice system can prove.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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
| Moderation is expected from all internet platforms as
| part of Section 230 (USA), Directive 2000/31/EC (EU),
| Defamation Act 2023 (UK), etc.
|
| As part of that content moderation, it is EXPECTED that
| you crack down on CP, Illicit Drug Transactions, Threats
| of Violence, and other felonies.
|
| Also, that is NOT how bank deposit boxes work. All banks
| are expected to KYC if they wish to transact in every
| major currency (Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen, Yuan, Rupee,
| etc) and if they cannot, they are expected to close that
| account or be cut off from transacting in that country's
| currency.
|
| > That's why in that famous TV drama Jessy Pinkam says
| "You dont want a criminal lawyer, you want a Criminal.
| Lawyer.".
|
| First, it's Pinkman BIATCH not Pinkam.
|
| And secondly, Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman) was
| previously suspended by the NM Bar Association barely 5
| years before Breaking Bad, and was then disbarred AND
| held criminally liable when SHTF towards the finale.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind
| of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or
| Hacker News.
|
| e2e encryption cannot be broken though
|
| > Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content
| Moderation is expected from all internet platforms as
| part of Section 230 (USA), Directive 2000/31/EC (EU),
| Defamation Act 2023 (UK), etc.
|
| I have no sympathy for Durov and I don't care if they
| throw away the keys, but what about Mullvad then?
|
| I guess that a service whose main feature is secrecy and
| anonymity should at least provide anonymity and secrecy.
|
| > CP, Illicit Drug Transactions, Threats of Violence, and
| other felonies
|
| you understand better than me that the request is absurd
| all of this is in theory, in practice nobody can actually
| do it for real, the vast majority of illicit clear text
| content are honeypots created by agents of various
| agencies to threaten the platforms and force them to
| cooperate. nothing's new here, but let's not pretend that
| this is to prevent crimes.
|
| also: the allegations against Telegram are that they do
| not cooperate, but we don't actually know if they really
| crack down on CP or other illegal activities or not,
| because if they don't, the reasonable thing to do would
| be to shut down the platform, what does arresting the CEO
| accomplish? (rhetorical question: they - I don't want to
| throw names, but i think that the usual suspects are
| involved - want access to and control of the content,
| closing the platform would only deny them access and
| would create uproar among the population - remember when
| Russia blocked Telegram?)
|
| also 2: AFAIK Telegram requires a phone number to create
| an account, it's the responsibility of the provider to
| KYC when selling a phone number, not Telegram's.
|
| also 3: safe deposit boxes are not necessarily linked to
| bank accounts. I pay for a safety deposit box in
| Switzerland but have no Swiss bank account.
|
| So my guess is EU wants in some way control the narrative
| in Telegram channels where the vast majority of the news
| regarding the war in Ukraine spread from the war front to
| the continent.
|
| > First, it's Pinkman BIATCH not Pinkam.
|
| Sorry. I'm dyslexic and English is not my mother tongue,
| but the 4th language I've learned, when I was already a
| teenager.
|
| > was previously suspended by the NM Bar Association
|
| that was the point. TV dramas need good characters and a
| criminal lawyer who's also a criminal is more interesting
| than a criminal lawyer who's just a plain boring lawyer
| that indulges in no criminal activity whatsoever.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| > For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB
| or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away
| to the best of their ability
|
| Is this true? After decades now of a cat and mouse game,
| it could be argued that they are simply incapable. As
| such, the "best of their ability" would be using methods
| that don't suit their commercials - e.g verifying all
| users manually, requiring government ID, reviewing all
| posts and comments before they're posted, or shutting
| down completely.
|
| I understand these methods are suicidal in capitalism,
| but they're much closer to the "best of their ability".
| Why do we accept some of the largest companies in the
| world shrugging their shoulders and saying "well we're
| trying in ways that don't impact our bottom line"?
| moqmar wrote:
| In most jurisdictions yes AFAIK, if those services
| directly help an illegal activity, and you knew about the
| illegal activity.
| whatnotests2 wrote:
| Ok, like selling gasoline to the getaway car driver?
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > and you knew about the illegal behavior
|
| Your analogy is terrible and doesn't make sense.
|
| If you provide a service that is used for illegal
| behavior AND you know it's being used that way AND you
| explicitly market your services to users behaving
| illegally AND the majority of your product is used for
| illegal deeds THEN you're gonna have a bad time.
|
| If one out of ten thousand people use your product for
| illegal deeds you're fine. If it's 9 out of 10 you
| probably aren't.
| coliveira wrote:
| > If one out of ten thousand people use your product for
| illegal deeds you're fine.
|
| This logic clearly makes the prison of someone like the
| owner of Telegram difficult to justify, since 99.999% of
| messages in telegram are completely legal.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| If 10,000 people out of 10 million are doing illegal
| things and you know about it or you are going out of your
| way to turn a blind eye then you're gonna have a bad
| time.
|
| This really isn't that complicated.
| coliveira wrote:
| But how would you know about this illegal activity, if
| the product can be used by anyone? Only if you were
| eavesdropping on your users...
| jrflowers wrote:
| Possibly.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)
| pavlov wrote:
| Working as a car driver isn't illegal. Working as a
| getaway car driver is.
|
| You're making the opposite point of what you intended.
| coliveira wrote:
| If his was really true for banks there would be a large
| number of bankers in jail. This number being close to
| zero, I guess the courts are very lax at charging bankers
| for crimes.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Banks do a massive amount of tracking and flagging. Even
| putting a joke "for drugs" in a Venmo field can cause
| issues. Plus reporting large transactions. There was a
| massive post on HN yesterday about how often banks close
| startup accounts due to false positives.
| coliveira wrote:
| All this flagging seems to be more for "cover your *ss"
| reasons, because the real criminals continue doing their
| business everyday.
| ajross wrote:
| If you know your services are going to be used to commit
| a crime, then yes, that makes you an accessory and
| basically all jurisdictions (I know basically nothing
| about French criminal law) can prosecute you for that.
| Crime is, y'know, illegal.
| nomdep wrote:
| 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.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| 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.
| coliveira wrote:
| 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.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > 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.
|
| The usual metaphor is child pornography, but let's pick
| something less outrageous: espionage. If a spy uses your
| messaging platform to share their secrets without being
| detected & prevented, that's using the service to commit
| a crime. Now, if you're making a profit from said
| service, that doesn't necessarily make you a criminal,
| but if you start saying "if spies used this platform,
| they'd never be stopped or even detected", that could get
| you in to some serious trouble. If you send a sales team
| to the KGB to encourage them to use the platform, even
| more so.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Gun manufacturers have repeatedly been charged with
| crimes (some are currently in court). I'd argue that
| messaging platforms have, historically, been less likely
| to be charged with crimes.
|
| The second amendment gives weapon makers some extra
| protection in the US, but they do have to be very careful
| about what they do and do not do in order to avoid going
| to jail.
|
| > 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.
|
| Do you have the stats on that? I don't, but I'm curious.
| While I don't doubt the vast majority of people using
| Telegram aren't committing a crime, I know that the vast
| majority of people using guns also aren't committing a
| crime.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Shouldn't gmail be closing as they know a percentage will
| be used for crime?
| coliveira wrote:
| The answer to this charade is that to "prove" that you're
| not doing anything wrong you need to secretly provide all
| data from anyone that the government doesn't like.
| Otherwise you go to jail.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apple knows iPhone users commit crimes.
| Muromec wrote:
| Try to deposit 10k to your bank account and then, when
| they call you and ask the obvious question, answer that
| you sold some meth or robbed someone. They will totally
| be fine with this answer, as they are just a platform for
| providing money services and well, you can always just
| pay for everything in cash.
| akira2501 wrote:
| If you deposit more than 10k the IRS simply gets
| automatically notified. No one calls you to ask where you
| got the money.
|
| The IRS actually expects you to report income earned from
| illegal activities, they _explicitly_ state this in
| Publication 17.
| dawnerd wrote:
| And even then you don't have to tell them it's illegal.
| Just what you earned. Frankly they don't care where it
| came from as long as you report and pay.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No, you have to specify where it came from. You don't
| have to say what crime you committed, but you'd list the
| income under "income from illegal activities".
| dawnerd wrote:
| It's very loose. You can just say cash and that's fine.
| oytis wrote:
| TIL. How do they check that the sum you specified is
| correct though?
| arcticbull wrote:
| A SAR or CTR gets filed with FinCEN
| cbsmith wrote:
| Aiding and abetting. It's a crime.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > operating in a manner where one of your selling points is
| that you'll help anyone out even when their intent is to
| break the law
|
| is it what happened here?
|
| in my view Durov is the owner renting his apartment and not
| caring what people do inside it, which is not illegal,
| someone could go as fare as say that it is morally
| reprensible, but it's not illegal in any way.
|
| It would be different if Durov knew but did not report it.
|
| Which, again, doesn't seem what happened here and it must
| be proven in a court anyway, I believe everyone in our
| western legal systems still has the right to the
| presumption of innocence.
|
| Telegram not spying on its users is the same thing as
| Mullvad not spying on its users and not saving the logs. I
| consider it a feature not a bug, for sure not complicity in
| any crime whatsoever.
| hiq wrote:
| > the owner renting his apartment and not caring what
| people do inside it, which is not illegal
|
| Problem is if you know what these people do inside it and
| you don't do anything about it.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Which is something that should be proven in court.
|
| Problem is if the police arrests the owner of the
| apartment but not those doing something illegal inside
| it.
|
| Out of metaphor: Durov has been arrested because he's
| Russian and the west is retaliating as hard as they can.
|
| Under the same assumptions Durov has been arrested for,
| Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey should be in jail too. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/04/twitter-
| saudi-...
| fallingknife wrote:
| What do you mean "look the other way?" Does the phone
| company "look the other way" when they don't listen in to
| your calls? Does the post office "look the other way" when
| they don't read your mail?
|
| That guy who built the hidden compartments should
| absolutely not have gone to jail. The government needs to
| be put in check. This has gotten ridiculous.
| marcinzm wrote:
| If the police tell them illegal activity is happening and
| give them a warrant to wiretap and they are capable of
| doing so but refuse then yeah they're looking the other
| way. That's not even getting into things like PRISM.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Why don't they arrest telecom CEOs for allowing terrorists to
| have uncensored phone calls with each other?
| marcinzm wrote:
| You do realize the police wiretap and get metadata from
| phone companies all the time, right? Not event counting
| Five Eyes stuff.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| But why don't they arrest them for allowing it to happen?
| Phone calls should be actively moderated to block
| customers who speak about terrorist activity.
| marcinzm wrote:
| You really should Google Snowden and PRISM at some point.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Phone calls are transcribed and stored forever.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| Because the telcos _cooperate_ with law enforcement.
|
| It's not whether the platform is being used for illegal
| activity (all platforms are to some extent, as your
| facile comment shows). It's whether the operator of a
| platform actively avoids cooperating with LE to stop that
| activity once found.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| I know. That's obviously true, but I hate that it happens
| and it makes no sense to me why more people aren't upset
| by it. What I'm trying to get at is that complying with
| rules that are stupid, ineffective, and unfair is not a
| good thing and anyone who thinks these goals are
| reasonable should apply them to equivalent services to
| realize they're bad. Cooperation with law enforcement is
| morally neutral and not important.
|
| The real goal is hurting anyone that's not aligned with
| people in power regardless of who is getting helped or
| harmed. Everyone knows this but so many people in this
| thread are lying about it.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| > anyone who thinks these goals are reasonable should
| apply them to equivalent services to realize they're bad
|
| AFAIK these goals _are_ applied to equivalent services.
| It's just that twitter, FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, and all
| the others _do_ put in the marginal amount of effort
| required to remove/prohibit illicit activity on their
| platform.
|
| Free speech is one thing, refusing to take down CSAM or
| drug dealing operating in the open is always going to
| land you in hot water.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| I don't agree that internet platforms deserve to be in
| their own special category which is uniquely required to
| police bad content. The only reason it happens is because
| it's not politically or technically feasible to do it
| when the message comes through another medium.
|
| I think it's wrong on social media for the exact same
| reason it's wrong to arrest power companies if a guy
| staples printed CSAM to a utility pole. Same thing for
| monitoring private phone calls. We know that AI can
| detect people talking about terrorism on the phone and
| cameras can monitor paper ads and newsletters in public
| spaces, but nobody would advocate for making this a legal
| requirement because it's insane. The fact that nobody
| cares is proof that the public does value privacy and
| free speech. Why are so many of them tricked into
| thinking the internet is an exception?
|
| I want people to commit to their beliefs and either admit
| they want surveillance wherever it's technically feasible
| or give up and recognize that internet surveillance is
| also wrong. No more of this "surveillance is good but
| legacy platforms are exempt" waffling. Very frustrating
| and only serves the interests of people who already have
| power
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| From what I've read the arrest wasn't related to lack of
| proactive moderation, but the lack of, or refusal to do,
| _reactive_ moderation i.e. law enforcement say "there's
| CSAM being distributed on your platform here" and the
| owner shrugs
|
| > for the exact same reason it's wrong to arrest power
| companies if a guy staples printed CSAM to a utility pole
|
| That seems like a bad analogy. A closer one would be that
| I rent the pole space to people who I am told by law
| enforcement are committing serious crime in the open,
| using the pole I am renting to them. Additionally, I am
| uniquely capable of a) removing the printouts b) passing
| on whatever information I have about those involved
| (maybe zero, but at least I say that). The issue is
| refusing both. I don't feel they are egregious requests.
|
| (this is not a tacit approval of digital surveillance)
| asdf6969 wrote:
| I'm not interested in having a publisher vs platform
| debate. You know what I mean.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| For Reddit it is a bit documented how some power-mods used to
| flood subreddits with child porn to get them taken down. It
| was seemingly done with the administration's best wishes. Not
| sure if it still going on, but some of these people are
| certainly around, in the same positions.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| That's disgusting but certainly effective to take down
| something very quickly.
|
| I was very disappointed to hear that UFO related subreddits
| take down and block UFO sightings. What's the whole point
| of the sub if they censor the relevant content.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| This is unrelated to main thread but since you brought up
| UFOs and censorship. Isn't it a disgrace what Wikipedia
| has done to the trove of "list of UFO sightings"?
|
| Those listings were great and well documented up until
| about 2019 or so. They've been scrubbed heavily.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Yes it is. I don't recall when and if I check out the
| list of UFO sightings on Wikipedia but I'm very aware of
| the problem.
|
| In the English wiki it's a group "Guerilla Skepticism"
| which dominates the field on esoteric content and much
| more.
|
| In Germany we have the same situation and very likely
| every language has the same issue.
|
| The bigger pictures is that the whole content from
| Wikipedia gets fed into the AIs and then it answers you
| practically the strongly moderates censored misleading
| content from Wikipedia.
|
| The very disappointing thing is that nobody can't to
| anything about the mods in Wikipedia, they dominate the
| place.
| whiterknight wrote:
| In other words, they give the government a cut of the power.
| itohihiyt wrote:
| The difference is telegram wasn't cooperating with authorities
| in the jurisdictions in which it was operating; be that
| moderation, interception, etc.
| dns_snek wrote:
| It's incorrect to say that they weren't cooperating with
| authorities at all.
|
| In the EU, Telegram blocked access to certain channels that
| the EU deemed to be Russian disinformation, for example.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Really? That's a really disappointing example of
| censorship. The state has no business judging the truth.
| dns_snek wrote:
| One of those was @rtnews which is definitely state-
| sponsored propaganda and remains inaccessible to this
| day.
|
| They cooperated to _some_ degree, but I 'll go out on a
| limb to say that the authorities wanted Telegram to be
| fully subservient to western government interests.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| 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.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I think your subtle arguments are wasted on EU's decision
| to stop the spread of misinformation and manipulation.
| It's that simple for them. Black and white. Us vs them.
| Don't think too much, you are taken care of by your
| "representatives" ...
| squidbeak wrote:
| 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.
| whatnotests2 wrote:
| The old "enemy of the people" argument.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Information warfare is a real thing, and if you're
| suggesting governments shouldn't react to it - on the
| basis that doing so would fall under 'the old enemy of
| the people argument' - then what you're actually
| contending is that governments should neglect national
| defence.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Fascist lol.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i should be allowed to watch whatever state propaganda i
| want, i'm a big boy
|
| 15 years ago in the US this would have been
| uncontroversial
| carbotaniuman wrote:
| I'm sure the US government would have been real keen on
| you reading Kremlin news source 40 year ago...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| there were multiple Kremlin propaganda outlets you could
| read in the US 40 years ago, although it is true that
| (IIRC) there were restrictions on broadcast television
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| It's legal. We have that right.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's still uncontroversial in the US, where RT remains
| widely available, although their local TV operations
| folded after a boycott by cable providers.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, if you _really_ want to watch it, I
| think you should be allowed to.
|
| Personally I'm undecided about whether these channels
| should be publicly available on e.g. free TV channels,
| but that's getting off topic.
| namdnay wrote:
| 15 years ago watching too much Taliban propaganda would
| have put you in Guantanamo pretty fast
| whimsicalism wrote:
| you earnestly think that is true of an american citizen
| in 2009?
| squidbeak wrote:
| Eliminating child pornography and organised crime is a
| societal rather than 'government' interest. And rightly.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| think there is a societal interest in unsnoopable
| messaging.
|
| there are other low-hanging fruit EU governments could do
| to address crime, NL has basically become a narcostate
| and they are just sitting by and watching - Telegram is
| not the problem.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Eliminating child pornography and organised crime is a
| societal rather than 'government' interest.
|
| Empirically speaking, governments have had absolutely
| zero success at this, but their attempts to do so have
| gotten them the kind of legal power over your life that
| organised crime could only dream about.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Huh? The traditional mafia is almost non-existent in the
| US today. RICO and its application has been highly
| successful at taking down the mafia.
|
| You could certainly argue that RICO was too powerful and
| is often misapplied, but I've never before seen anyone
| argue that it has been ineffective.
| logicchains wrote:
| Are you implying that after the Italian mafia there were
| no more organised crime gangs in the US? There's a huge
| number of organised crime gangs nowadays; who do you
| think is distributing the drugs responsible for America's
| massive drug problem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_
| of_gangs_in_the_United_St... . A policy isn't a success
| if it kills one crime group only for it to be replaced
| with more, and the overall drug consumption/distribution
| rate doesn't decrease. More people are using illicit
| drugs than ever before: https://www.ibanet.org/unodc-
| report-drug-use-increase
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Yes but the arrest as absolutely zero to do with both
| claims listed. Comes off as misdirection.
| layer8 wrote:
| How do you propose jurisdiction to work without judging
| the truth?
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| It is government's role to protect speech, not to censor.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's also the government's role to take measures against
| harmful actions. Personal rights end where they start to
| harm others, or harm society in general. They are not an
| absolute, and always have to be balanced against other
| concerns.
|
| However, my GP comment was against the claim that "The
| state has no business judging the truth". That claim as
| stated is absurd, because judging what is true is
| necessary for a state being able to function in the
| interest of its people. The commenter likely didn't mean
| what they wrote.
|
| One can argue what is harmful and what isn't, and I
| certainly don't agree with many things that are being
| over-moderated. But please discuss things on that level,
| and don't absolutize "free speech", or argue that
| authorities shouldn't care about what is true or not.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > Personal rights end where they start to harm others, or
| harm society in general
|
| This empty saying is used to justify basically any
| violation of civil liberty, because it is unprincipled
| and open ended, so it can be used to respond to any
| action anyone can take
|
| > The commenter likely didn't mean what they wrote
|
| No, I meant what I wrote. The government has no business
| judging the truth. What is the Russian disinformation
| from earlier in this thread? For example, is it
| discussing the illegal 2014 coup in Ukraine that ousted a
| democratically elected government that was friendly to
| Russia? To EU overlords, discussing that event is
| "spreading disinformation" even though it is factually
| true and deserving of discussion. It's a great example of
| political censorship being a problem.
|
| > don't absolutize "free speech", or argue that
| authorities shouldn't care about what is true or not.
|
| Free speech should be absolutized in day to day
| discussion, even if there are very limited exceptions in
| the law. It's when there is permission from society to
| limit speech that populations end up propagandized and
| suppressed by whoever has power over them. That's what is
| happening here, where people are coming up with absurd
| mental gymnastics to justify France's authoritarian
| actions.
|
| > judging what is true is necessary for a state being
| able to function in the interest of its people
|
| This sounds like support for Soviet or China style
| control of speech, and labeling of anything that power
| disagrees with as misinformation. Authorities shouldn't
| care about what is true or not, because they are biased
| and corrupted by their agendas and ideologies and
| incentives. The free exchange of information is
| foundational to any free and democratic society. That's
| what is necessary for a state to be able to function in
| the interest of its people.
| lxgr wrote:
| As far as I've heard, they did that only under threat of
| getting kicked out of the Apple and Google app stores.
| Supposedly, the non-app-store versions don't have these
| blocks.
|
| In other words, Apple and Google are the only authorities
| they recognize (see also [1]). I'm not surprised this
| doesn't sit well with many governments.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41348666
| itohihiyt wrote:
| I don't think you can pick and choose what you comply with.
| holoduke wrote:
| The real deal channels are still accessible. I follow them
| every day. Its the only way of getting a clear picture of
| the situation in Ukraine. Both sides are heavily using it.
| Also during combat operations.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| It's called selective enforcement.
| segmondy wrote:
| US has section 230, other countries don't.
| wepple wrote:
| I believe both cases come down to how much effort the leaders
| put into identifying and purging the bad activities on their
| platforms.
|
| One would hope that there is clear evidence to support a claim
| that they're well aware what they're profiting off and aren't
| aggressively shutting it down.
|
| To use Reddit as an example: in the early days it was the Wild
| West, and there were some absolutely legally gray subreddits.
| They eventually booted those, and more recently even seem to
| ban subreddits just because The Verge wrote an article about
| how people say bad things there.
| lima wrote:
| Intent matters.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Given how it's all plaintext on their servers, telegram is
| essentially also a storage for those criminal data.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| pour encourager les autres
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Dotcom got extradited (which was declared legal much later).
| Durov landed in a country that had an arrest warrant out for
| him.
|
| I hope his situation isn't similar to Dotcom's, as Dotcom was
| shown to be complicit in the crimes he was being persecuted
| for. Convicting the megaupload people would've been a LOT
| harder if they hadn't been uploading and curating illegal
| content on their platform themselves.
|
| As a service provider, you're not responsible for what your
| users post as long as you take appropriate action after being
| informed of illegal content. That's where they're trying to get
| Telegram, because Telegram is known to ignore law enforcement
| as much as possible (to the point of doing so illegally and
| getting fined for it).
| loceng wrote:
| From my understanding the arrest warrant only was created
| while he was en route; sneaky sneaky..
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| That's really dark and dystopian
| whimsicalism wrote:
| really? we seal warrants in the US all the time - we
| don't want people who we are trying to apprehend to
| always know ahead of time we are trying to apprehend them
| frankharv wrote:
| I found this airplane trickery amusing.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/son-el-chapo-
| another-si...
| archerx wrote:
| The US is on it's way to becoming a dystopia so not the
| best argument...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| maybe, but i don't think sealed warrants are the reason
| ipaddr wrote:
| There purpose is to hide charges as longas possible to
| deceive or trick which is against a fully transparent
| process
| matwood wrote:
| There are valid reasons, like stopping people from
| destroying evidence or fleeing.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There are also valid reasons the other way, like
| consulting an attorney to challenge the warrant or
| prepare a defense before it gets executed, disrupts your
| life and prevents you from clearing your name because
| you're being incarcerated without bail. It's hard to
| investigate the charges against you from a cell.
|
| Or the ability of journalists to inform the public of
| what the government is getting on with in their name. If
| the government is investigating their critics they have
| no right to keep it a secret.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You're somewhat mistaken. In the U.S., you aren't owed a
| warning that the cops are looking for you, especially if
| you're a flight risk. That was never part of it.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| That inconvenient bill of rights keeps us a step or two
| behind the rest of the anglosphere in decent to tyranny,
| but only for so long. It just takes a handful of
| dishonest judges to claim some right actually means
| something entirely different.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| It has already been a form of one for at least 10 years,
| just happening too gradually for the average person to
| realize it.
| threeseed wrote:
| That's the beauty of comments like yours.
|
| Because in your eyes it is so gradual the difference
| between it's happening slowly and not happening at all is
| imperceptible and impossible to prove.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Because in your eyes it is so gradual the difference
| between it's happening slowly and not happening at all is
| imperceptible and impossible to prove.
|
| It's extremely straightforward to prove. You look at the
| laws that have been passed and the court opinions issued
| in the last 30-60 years.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| your understanding is based on what? i would assume this is
| just standard unsealed warrant like they have in the US
| gabaix wrote:
| I found this article that explains that the arrest
| warrant was only to be activated if Pavel was on the
| French territory.
|
| (French) https://www.sudouest.fr/economie/reseaux-
| sociaux/le-patron-d...
|
| It could have been a warrant that was not communicated to
| Durov himself. This would have helped to catch him by
| surprise.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yeah so sounds like (what in the US we call) a sealed
| warrant, not that it was literally issued while he was in
| the air
| rtsil wrote:
| The Sud-Ouest article must have been updated because the
| version currently online does not mention that at all.
| Quite the opposite, the article quotes an official that
| was surprised that Durov would come to Paris anyway even
| though he knew he was under an arrest warrant in France,
| and another source says that he might have decided to
| come in France anyway because he believed he'll never be
| held accountable.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| According to the more detailed news sources I can find
| about this, it seems he knew the French were looking for
| him. I don't know if he knew about the contents of the
| warrant, but it does seem he knew the authorities were
| planning to arrest him.
|
| From what I can tell the warrant has been out for longer,
| but he was arrested when the airport police noticed his
| name was on a list. There's not a lot of information out
| there, with neither the French authorities nor Telegram
| providing any official statements to the media.
| philistine wrote:
| Fuck around and find out. If he legitimately ignored legal
| French documents forcing him to share information, as the
| French have declared, he's got got.
|
| You don't step foot on a country with an extradition
| treaty, even less so the country itself, where you're
| flouting their warrants for your company's data.
| pajeets wrote:
| so which country doesnt dubai and uae extradite to?
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Despite having lots of treaties agreeing to extradition
| in principle, the UAE is somewhat notorious for never
| extraditing anybody anywhere in practice.
|
| https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/a-golden-
| opportunity-f...
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Durov landed in a country that had an arrest warrant out
| for him.
|
| And of which he's a citizen, fwiw
| walterbell wrote:
| 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._
|
| 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."_
| medion wrote:
| Signal built by the US government? Is there any more actual
| information on this claim?
| walterbell wrote:
| Signal's early funding source is public record,
| https://www.opentech.fund/projects-we-support/supported-
| proj...
|
| Double Ratchet [1] is also used by WhatsApp (2B+ users)
| and IETF MLS [2] standard for E2EE group messaging.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm
|
| [2] https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-
| to-end-e...
| threeseed wrote:
| I don't understand.
|
| Nothing in this comment is about the US government
| funding Signal's encryption.
| walterbell wrote:
| Click link -> About -> About our funding
| wildzzz wrote:
| The US government likes funding encrypted communication
| channels because it helps destabilize the kinds of
| dictators that eavesdrop on dissidents.
| sterlind wrote:
| and it's useful for tradecraft. I think NSA uses Tor to
| some degree, for example.
| lttlrck wrote:
| funded != built ?
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| Wrong.
|
| https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/-i-m-not-leaving---kim-
| do...
|
| 1) There was an order signed recently. He has not physically
| left NZ yet. 2) He's not convicted, he hasn't been in front
| of a judge for the charges against him
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Convicting the megaupload people would've been a LOT harder
| if they hadn't been uploading and curating illegal content on
| their platform themselves.
|
| This is just a gimmick to bamboozle judges and the public.
| The ploy is to claim that someone is guilty of serious
| offense A because you proved they committed less serious
| offense B, even though the offenses have different elements
| and penalties.
|
| They use the ploy because any large organization by
| definition has a lot of people in it and copyright
| infringement is pretty common, so by the law of large numbers
| somebody in the company is probably doing it even if the
| company doesn't want them to and then the prosecutors want to
| claim that the _company as a whole_ is doing something wrong
| and has to be shut down. Which doesn 't make any sense when
| another company is just going to provide the same perfectly
| legal service and the users are going to use it for the exact
| same thing.
|
| Moreover, the obvious way for companies to prevent this --
| indeed, the thing Megaupload's replacement started doing
| after the original was shut down -- is to encrypt everything
| so their employees have no access to it. Which _I_ have no
| objection to, but if courts and prosecutors like to be able
| to issue a subpoena and actually get something back, they
| might want to reconsider turning the ability of a company to
| access data into a liability.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| 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 that the only valid arguments were _for_
| Napster. In hindsight, it 's less cut-and-dry.
|
| I have never believed E2EE to be viable, in the real world,
| without a back-door. It makes several horrendous kinds of crime
| too difficult to combat. It also has some upsides, but
| including a back-door, in practice, won't erase the upsides for
| most users.
|
| It is naive to think people (and government) will ignore E2EE;
| a feature that facilitates child porn, human trafficking,
| organized crime, murder-for-hire, foreign spying, etc etc. The
| decision about whether the good attributes justify the bad ones
| is too impactful on society to defer to chat app CEOs.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you comment strikes me as naive in the same lines as "i have
| nothing to hide"
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Think of my comment as a prediction, rather than a value
| judgement.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| It's worse than this. The author argues that backdoors are
| necessary rather than simply being willing to share _his
| /her_ data for inspection.
| Spivak wrote:
| That's how most law works. I have to give up my right to
| murder someone in order to enjoy a society where it's
| illegal for everyone.
|
| If you believe privacy not inspectable by law enforcement
| is wrong the prerequisite is saying that you're willing
| to have the the law apply to you as well.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I believe that privacy not inspectable by law enforcement
| is a fundamental right. I'm willing to accept that aids
| some crimes but also willing to change my mind if the
| latter becomes too much of a problem. It doesn't seem to
| be the case at all ATM.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm with you, wish the supreme court agreed.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Yes, that is my position. E2EE back-doors might not
| affect my communications or yours, but have serious and
| undesirable repercussions for some journalists and
| whistleblowers. The thing is, regular people aren't going
| to tolerate a sustained parade of news stories in which
| E2EE helps the world's worst people to evade justice.
| whatnotests2 wrote:
| Like, say, whistle blowers, and journalists who speak out
| and reveal evidence of government crimes? Like Julian
| Assange and Edward Snowden?
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy
| it enabled
|
| How could they have any moral responsibility for ethically
| neutral thing other people were doing?
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Not much has changed, I see.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Nothing. In other news, murder still immoral as always.
| naasking wrote:
| Even if you think they had no moral responsibility, it's
| clear they had legal responsibility.
| scotty79 wrote:
| What's legal is very malleable with the use of money.
| Which copyright holders weren't shy about spending.
| excalibur wrote:
| This should be obvious to everyone here, but it's pretty much
| inevitable that if a backdoor exists, criminals will
| eventually find their way through it. Not to mention the
| "legitimate" access by corrupt and oppressive governments
| that can put people in mortal danger for daring to disagree.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| No doubt that is true, and presumably Cory Doctorow has
| written some article making that seem like the only
| concern. The alternative makes it difficult to enforce all
| kinds of laws, though.
| psychoslave wrote:
| This comment can itself be said to take for granted the naive
| view of what law it exposes.
|
| Law is a way to enforce a policy on massive scale, sure. But
| there is no guarantee that it enforces things that are aiming
| the best equilibrium of everyone flourishing in society. And
| even when it does, laws are done by humans, so unless they
| results from a highly dynamic process that gather feedback
| from those on which it applies and strive to improve over
| time, there is almost no chance laws can meet such an
| ambitious goal.
|
| What if Napster was a symptom, but not of ill behavior?
| Supposing that unconditional sharing cultural heritage is
| basically the sane way to go can be backed on solid
| anthropological evidences, over several hundred millennia.
|
| What if information monopolies is the massive ethical
| atrocity, enforced by corrupted governments which were
| hijacked by various sociopaths whose chief goal is to
| parasite as much as possible resources from societies?
|
| Horrendous crimes, yes there are many out there, often
| commissioned by governments who will shamelessly throw
| outrageous lies at there citizens to transform them into
| cannon fodders and other atrocities.
|
| Regarding fair retribution of most artists out there, we
| would certainly be better served with universal unconditional
| net revenue for everyone. The current fame lottery is just as
| fair as a national bingo as a way to make a decent career.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| You know, I agree with nearly all of these points. I even
| think there is _something_ to point about Napster 'being a
| symptom' but (as people love to say around here) it's
| 'orthogonal' to the original point I wanted to make.
|
| Few things would please me more than to live under a system
| where arts and culture were freely available to all, and
| artists didn't have to starve in the process. It doesn't
| strike me as far-fetched either; it wouldn't take much to
| improve on the system we currently have.
|
| But my original point was that, given the society we
| actually had when Napster came along, it was unreasonable
| for Napster unilaterally to decide for everyone else that
| existing laws and expectations no longer mattered.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > Horrendous crimes, yes there are many out there, often
| commissioned by governments who will shamelessly throw
| outrageous lies at there citizens to transform them into
| cannon fodders and other atrocities.
|
| Yes, this happened, is happening and will happen.
|
| I wonder however if the word "often" may perhaps be
| misleading or even completely wrong.
|
| If you pick one random victim of a horrendous crime today
| in a western society. Feel free to pick the minority most
| hated by that society. What is the likelihood that that
| crime was commissioned by the government? It's more likely
| domestic violence, trafficking etc done by fellow community
| members.
|
| Sure there are examples of governments shooting civilian
| planes in the sky or ferries in the and covering up. And
| it's perfectly sensible to be outraged when that happens.
| But jumping to the conclusion that "the government" just
| does those things as a matter of routine doesn't sound
| right to me. I don't buy it. It smells conspiratorial
| thinking and requires extraordinary proof.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You can go ahead and encrypt messages yourself, without
| explicit E2E support on the platform. In fact, choosing your
| own secure channel for communicating the key would probably
| be more secure than anything in-band.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| I doubt that will upset the public the way Signal and
| Telegram eventually will. Most people, including criminals,
| struggle with tech. If they want E2EE badly enough, and use
| one of the big messaging GUI apps they can succeed. If they
| can only do it via less user-friendly software, they'll
| need help or to do research, and likely will leave a trail
| behind them. That is more useful to law enforcement than if
| they simply had downloaded one of the most popular App
| Store apps. It's hard for a news story about a CLI utility
| to gain traction.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Isn't this what Section 230 was supposed to protect against?
| petesergeant wrote:
| Yes, but that's an American law
| pjc50 wrote:
| Please explain how a US law affects an arrest in France.
| joelmichael wrote:
| Section 230 does not apply as law in France.
| croes wrote:
| It's better not the Kim Dotcom situation, that would mean Durov
| encouraged the illegal use of Telegram like Megaupload rewarded
| file uploads which generated heavy download traffic.
|
| If that would be the case he would be at least a accomplice if
| not even the Initiator of criminal activities.
|
| Otherwise it would be just an abuse of his service by
| criminals.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > 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.
|
| WORSE, you get banned for reporting CSAM to Discord, and I
| guarantee if you report it to the proper authorities (FBI) they
| tell them to bug off and get a warrant. Can we please be
| consistent? If we're going to hold these companies liable for
| anything, let's be much more consistent. Worse yet, Discord
| doesnt even have End to End encryption, and the number of child
| abuse scandals on that platform are insane. People build up
| communities, where the admins (users, not Discord employees)
| have perceived power, users (children) want to partake in such
| things. Its essentially the Roblox issue all over again, devs
| taking advantage of easily impressionable minors.
| throwaway17216 wrote:
| Yep. At this point, it's clear to me that Discord is acting
| with _malice_. On top of banning people for reporting abuse
| on their platform, which is by itself insanity, they changed
| their report system [0] so it 's longer possible to report
| servers/channel/users _at all_ , only specific messages, with
| no way to report messages in bulk being provided.
|
| Reddit isn't much better. [1]
|
| [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/14sx8fz/dis
| cord...
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/25/22399306/reddit-
| lawsuit-c...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| They had a scandal where they allowed the furry equivalent
| of child porn, and quietly banned that type of porn from
| the platform later on. I assume due to legal requirements.
|
| Edit:
|
| I think the lack of bulk reporting is a pain too. They used
| to ask for more context. One time I reported a literal nazi
| admin (swastika posting, racial slurs, and what have you),
| but the post was "months old" and they told me essentially
| to "go screw myself" they basically asked why I was in the
| server.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Why are these service providers being punished for what their
| users do?
|
| There is a legal distinction here between what happens on your
| platform despite your best efforts (what you might call
| "incidental" use) vs what your platform is designed
| specifically to do or enable.
|
| Megaupload is a perfect example. It was used to pirate movies.
| Everyone knew it. The founders knew it. You can't really argue
| it's incidental or unintended or simply that small amount that
| gets past moderation.
|
| Telegram, the authorities will argue, fails to moderate CSAM
| and other illegal activity to the point that it enables it and
| profits from it, which is legally indistinguishable from
| specifically designing your platfrom for it.
|
| Many tech people fall into a binary mode of thinking because
| that's how tech usually works. Either your code works or it
| doesn't. You see it when arguments about people pirating IP
| being traced to a customer. Tech people will argue "you can't
| prove it's me". While technically true, that's not the legal
| standard.
|
| Legal standards relay on tests. In the ISP case, authorities
| will look at what was pirated, was it found on your hard drive,
| was the activity done when you were home or not and so on to
| establish a balance of probabilities. Is it more likely that
| all this evidence adds up to your guilt or that an increasingly
| unlikely set of circumstances explains it where you're
| innocent?
|
| In the early days of Bitcoin I stayed away (to my detriment)
| because I coudl see the obvious use case of it being used for
| illegal stuff, whichh it is. The authorities don't currently
| care. Bitcoin however is the means that enables ransomware.
| When someone decides this is a national security issue, Bitcoin
| is in for a bad time.
|
| Telegram had (for the French at least) risen to the point where
| they considered it a serious enough issue to warrant their
| attention and the full force of the government may be brought
| to bear on it.
| ineptech wrote:
| > the warrant was issued because of his alleged failure to
| cooperate with the French authorities.
|
| That would seem to be the key bit. Makes one wonder what level
| of cooperation is required to not be charged with a slew of the
| worst crimes imaginable. Is there a French law requiring that
| messaging providers give up encryption keys that he is known to
| be in violation of?
| axegon_ wrote:
| 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 where
| people are buying and selling groups "800 meters away" from me
| and another one for prostitution, which is also illegal in my
| country. Meanwhile, see their TOS[1]. They have not complied
| with any of the reports or requests from users (and governments
| by the looks of it) to crack down on them. While 1:1 chats are
| theoretically private and encrypted(full disclosure, I do not
| trust Telegram or any of the people behind it), telegram's
| security for public channels and groups is absolutely appalling
| and they are well aware of it - they just chose to look the
| other way and hope they'd get away with it. You could have
| given them the benefit of the doubt if those are
| isolated("some") instances, sure. But just as in the case of
| Kim Dot-I-support-genocide-com, those are not isolated cases
| and saying that they had no idea is an obvious lie.
|
| 2000/31/EC[2], states that providers are generally not liable
| for the content they host IF they do not have actual knowledge
| of illegal activity or content AND upon obtaining such
| knowledge, they take action and remove and disable access to
| that content(telegram has been ignoring those). Service
| providers have no general obligation to monitor but they need
| to provide notice and take down mechanisms. Assuming that their
| statement are correct, and they had no idea, they should be in
| the clear. Telegram provides a notice and take down mechanism.
| But saying that there are channels with +500k subscribers
| filled with people celebrating a 4 year old girl with a blown
| off leg in Ukraine and no one has reported it in 2 and a half
| years after it was created is indeed naive.
|
| [1] https://telegram.org/tos/eu
|
| [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/31/oj
| axegon_ wrote:
| :%s/selling groups/selling drugs/g
| brookst wrote:
| > Specifically, these service providers
|
| I'm not a fan of this arrest and I don't believe service
| providers have a duty to contravene their security promises so
| as to monitor their users.
|
| But it seems pretty obvious that governments find the
| monitoring that Google / Reddit / etc do acceptable, and do not
| find operation of unmonitorable services acceptable.
| mazambazz wrote:
| All right, what about logless VPN providers like Mullvad?
|
| > do not find operation of unmonitorable services acceptable.
|
| Sounds like something straight out of a dystopian
| surveillance state novel, very bad outlook if true.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| VPNs don't pose an obstacle to monitoring any specific
| activity, and as many VPN-using criminals have found, even
| their ability to stop law enforcement from identifying you
| is limited. So they've been less of an issue. Having said
| that, I would note that Mullavad was forced to remove port
| forwarding in response to law enforcement interest, and I
| don't think it would be too surprising (or too dystopian)
| if in the future "connection laundering" is a crime just
| like money laundering.
| hananova wrote:
| There are several jurisdictions in the world where the
| government has the power to _force_ a provider to keep
| logs, and actively lie about it. We simply have no way to
| know if mullvad or any other logless provider is actually
| logless, because they can be legally forced to lie about
| it.
|
| Aside, warrant canaries have never been actually tested in
| court and the common consensus is that they wouldn't fly in
| reality if they were ever contested.
| outside415 wrote:
| Watch his interview with Tucker Carlson and you'll see. He
| doesn't acquiesce to government requests for moderation
| control, censorship, and sharing private user data so they
| target him. He refuses to implement backdoors as well. In stark
| contrast to western social media companies.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _He refuses to implement backdoors as well._
|
| We have no way to know this, and (unlike Signal), Telegram
| doesn't give us best-effort assurances by doing things like
| open-sourcing its code.
| 4ad wrote:
| Open source is irrelevant as the protocol is plain text.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Wait... you're saying if the protocol is binary, that's
| different somehow?
|
| Either way, you're saying the MTProto is binary? How do
| you mean that?
| cbsmith wrote:
| "...you're saying MTProto _isn 't_ binary?"
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| What? Literally all Telegram clients are open source.
| konart wrote:
| What about the server? Telegram is not strictly e2e.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| An "open source server"... are you trolling?
| vilunov wrote:
| > Show me an example of an "open source server".
|
| XMPP and Matrix services run open source software such as
| ejabberd
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| Running open source software != "Open source server"
| foresto wrote:
| If you bothered to look, you would find that both of the
| examples given are open-source servers. You might then
| deduce that you misunderstood the comment to which you
| replied.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| You cannot audit the system/service logs for those
| servers, neither can you audit the hardware running those
| servers, nor the internet providers who can snoop on the
| traffic et al... That's the argument behind "Open source
| server" in case it wasn't clear.
| konart wrote:
| Not sure what part of my comment amused you so much.
|
| An IM platform server can be open sourced. Just like any
| kind of software.
|
| It's just a matter of publishing your code and,
| preferably making it possible to verify that the service
| your users are connecting to is build using the same
| published code.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| How could you possibly verify what code they are running
| server-side?
|
| Typically, the way it goes is that you implement e2ee
| such that even a fully compromised server cannot read the
| clients messages, publish the client's source code, and
| build it yourself or use reproducible builds. That ladt
| part is where you can criticize Signal. Whether they
| publish the server code is mostly irrelevant unless you
| want to run a separate messenger infrastructure.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Huh, I was going to point out that the Signal server
| isn't Free Software either, since for a while it wasn't
| being published, but it seems they have gotten back into
| publishing it.
|
| https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
| twelve40 wrote:
| while it's amazing for them to keep maintaining it, as
| the person mentioned down the thread, it's hard to know
| what they are actually running, right? and it's not a lot
| of work to patch this or clone/branch as necessary before
| deploying. Oh well, i already resigned that a part of my
| life will be run by someone else by now.
| jjav wrote:
| Publishing server code provides no assurance of anything
| (although it is still nice, for other reasons) since
| nobody can know if what they (for any "they") run in
| production is the same as the public source.
|
| Open client code and documented protoccols are much more
| important. If you can compile your own client from open
| source code and it works fine, then you can know for sure
| what you're sending to the server.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > We have no way to know this
|
| Well, other than his arrest ;-)
| pakyr wrote:
| The arrest tells us that he said no to one country, it
| doesn't say much about all the others.
| smt88 wrote:
| Russian govt officials are protesting his arrest.
|
| When an authoritarian govt is calling for the release of
| someone who runs a "private" messenger, it suggests they
| have a back door. Otherwise they tend to oppose all
| private messaging.
| kombine wrote:
| No, there is no logical link between the two events.
| Russian govt can protest that for propaganda reasons: to
| make a point that Western governments are restricting
| freedom of speech.
| sweeter wrote:
| They're hitting that Uno Reverse card. Tbf, the US does a
| LOT of the stuff that we openly criticize Russia and
| China for. Which, I would hope that people have enough
| insight to recognize that this is a bad thing across the
| board. The only people who get hurt and face consequences
| from this kind of a thing are the citizens.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| This is a key perspective people fail to take into
| account. We've been conditioned by movies, books etc to
| think everyone fits into these black and white "good and
| bad" categories.
|
| Most western countries do horrific things we do not find
| acceptable, but when we do find out we hand wave it away
| because they're the "good guys".
| azinman2 wrote:
| Can always count on HN for whataboutism.
|
| Good thing it's legal to say so in the countries that
| dominate its user base.
| kennedywm wrote:
| No. What would be illogical is to assume that because
| Russia _might_ be motivated to protest for the sake of
| propaganda, that it is not also, or instead, motivated by
| not wanting to lose access to a hypothetical backdoor.
| miohtama wrote:
| Durov was robbed from his previous startup at a gunpoint
| by Putin's thugs, and then he had to escape, so it is
| unlikely Durov co-operates with Russia:
|
| https://x.com/moo9000/status/1827651335476461813
| dawnerd wrote:
| Russia was also using it for "secret" chats and are
| probably terrified what could be exposed.
| Nux wrote:
| Or they want to make it seem as such..
| squarefoot wrote:
| I don't completely buy the fact that he was arrested
| because he didn't cooperate with authorities. World
| Police forces have an history of infiltrating criminal
| groups and gaining their trust; planting backdoors isn't
| the only way they can investigate people. Also, this way
| they're yelling loud to these people "hurry! pick another
| platform!".
|
| And then, he is also on Putin's wanted list; his arrest
| could one day turn him into a valuable bargaining chip.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| What exactly do you think this tells you?
| mihaaly wrote:
| I did not see in the list the 'did not allow us adding
| backdoor to their service' charge. Did I miss something?
| miohtama wrote:
| This is one of the charges (according to French press):
| refusing to give French police unfettered access to
| Telegram user data and moderation.
|
| It's French national law, not EU (though the EU will copy
| for sure).
|
| https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/whats-going-frances-
| onl...
|
| Also now they have added "because people watch football
| matches illegally on Telegram". So they are going to
| throw everything at kitchen sink at Durov, probably also
| national security issues because anti-French political
| groups use Telegram in Africa.
|
| https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1827767824858931319
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| A hint of light in the dark.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Telegram still collects and stores private user data, and as
| per their own privacy policy. This isn't in stark contrast to
| western companies at all.
|
| Additionally, they fulfilled requests made in Brazil, India,
| and Germany to name some I remember. Again, using the private
| user data they collect.
|
| So what you fell for was just basic marketing (a CEO going on
| a TV program, as Tucker Carlson isn't even news) to market
| his app.
| golergka wrote:
| Which government? There has been a lot of mysterious deanons
| of protesters in Belarus in 2020. You know, the kind of
| deanon where armed people break down you door and you're
| going to be beaten and tortured for several days in the very
| least.
| bitnasty wrote:
| Who would watch an interview being held by a crazy person and
| take it at face value? Anyone with half a brain would avoid
| watching or listening to Tucker Carlson like the plague.
| api wrote:
| I strongly suspect there's more to it than just running a chat
| system used by criminals. If that were the issue then tons of
| services would be under indictment.
|
| We'll have to wait and see, but I suspect some kind of more
| direct participation or explicit provable look-the-other-way at
| CSAM etc.
| tharmas wrote:
| Or its just intimidation like FBI raid on Scott Ritter.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Usually as part of a plea agreement the criminal is
| required to let law enforcement search them without a
| warrant.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| Everyone knows why and you're not being naive
| stefan_ wrote:
| It seems there has been a misunderstanding; laws for service
| providers _never_ exempted them from having to cooperate and
| provide data available to them when ordered.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| It's like mafia. If you cooperate, you're safe. If not, mafia
| destroys you
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Let's just say I encrypt illegal.content prior to uploading it
| to Platform A. And share the public key separately via Platform
| B. Maybe even refer Platform A users to a private forum on
| Platform B to obtain the keys. Are both platforms now on the
| wrong side of the law?
| hananova wrote:
| If either platform doesn't remove the content after having
| been made aware of it, yes.
| ajuc wrote:
| > Why are these service providers being punished for what their
| users do?
|
| Because they let their users do it and benefited from it. Try
| doing the same thing as a bank :) Or a newspaper :)
|
| Internet cannot be anarchy forever. Every anarchy ends up as
| oligarchy. It needs regulation and fast.
| dareal wrote:
| Because these countries are hypocrites. Because politics,
| because these guys are from Russia, China. You can so obviously
| see there's discrimination against companies from those
| countries. Can you imagine France do this if it's a US company?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > Because these countries are hypocrites.
|
| Rhetorical question: for what reason should a country be
| anything other than a hypocrite when it comes to situations
| such as this? Nations prioritize their own self-interests and
| that of their allies, even if that makes them appear
| hypocritical from an outside, or indeed, even an inside
| perspective. But that doesn't mean there's no legitimacy to
| what they do.
| ajross wrote:
| > Why are these service providers being punished for what their
| users do?
|
| I think this is simplified. Certainly yes, if "all" Telegram
| was doing was operating a neutral/unmoderated anonymized chat
| service, then it's hard to see criminal culpability for the
| reasons you list.
|
| But as people are pointing out, that doesn't seem to be
| technically correct. Telegram isn't completely anonymous, does
| have access to important customer data, and is widely suspected
| of complying with third party requests for that data for law
| enforcement and regulatory reasons.
|
| So... _IF_ they are doing that, and they 're doing it in a non-
| neutral/non-anonymized way, then they're very plausibly subject
| to prosectution. Say, if you get a report of terrorist activity
| and provide data on the terrorists, then a month later get
| notified that your service is being used to distribute CSAM,
| _and you refuse to cooperate_ , then it's not that far a reach
| to label you an accessory to the crime.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Those platforms are more cooperative with authorities.
| liotier wrote:
| > Why are these service providers being punished for what their
| users do ?
|
| Because they crossed the line from common carrier to editor -
| an entirely different set of obligations.
|
| Also, even such common carrier as telcos must abide to state
| injunctions against their users.
| lossolo wrote:
| > This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.
|
| I'm not sure where this myth originated--perhaps from Kim
| Dotcom's Twitter account? I clearly remember the Megaupload
| case. They knew they were hosting pirated content, didn't
| delete it after requests[1], and shared money with the people
| who uploaded it because that was their business model.
|
| 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/21/the-
| fasc...
| axus wrote:
| > Why are these service providers being punished for what their
| users do? Specifically, these service providers?
|
| https://xkcd.com/538/
|
| Someone wants the service to stop, and has the influence to
| make it happen, the users are not a concern.
|
| Now that Telegram is compromised, what's the next chat app
| people trust?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Why are these service providers being punished for what
| their users do?
|
| Are we 100% certain that this is only about Telegram? I want to
| see the allegations, not the vague charges, before
| pontificating about ISP liability. These charges might be more
| straightforwards.
| multjoy wrote:
| Telegram is an absolute hive of criminality but, more
| importantly, Telegram will simply not cooperate with law
| enforcement.
|
| That is why he's been lifted. Google et al will cooperate, even
| if that's by way of an onerous bureaucratic procedure involving
| MLATs.
| breezeTrowel wrote:
| Regarding Kim Dotcom, the government allegetions aren't about
| what users do. You can read them here:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-charges-le...
|
| Granted, he's moved on to being a Kremlin propagandist and is
| now shilling anti-Semitism. See:
|
| https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1825187568834753021
| memer426 wrote:
| Yeah he has become a Russian shill and likes to boot lick
| Elon Musk now that he is as well. (Hell Elon is funded by
| Russia now!)
| tptacek wrote:
| Dotcom is being prosecuted for knowingly and deliberately
| directing and encouraging the unlawful behavior of his users,
| and it's a criminal prosecution rather than a civil case
| because he's accused of building a (lucrative) business off the
| effort. You don't have to agree with the case or believe the
| DOJ has made it adequately (it's early to say, given the
| extradition drama), but it's not reasonable to say that Dotcom
| is being prosecuted "for what his users did", any more than it
| would be reasonable to say that a mafia kingpin was being
| prosecuted for what their street crews did at their behest.
|
| (I have no idea what's going on with Durov, or how French
| and/or EU law works, except to say that legal analysis on HN
| tends sharply towards US norms, and people should remember that
| a lot of basic US legal norms, like the rules of evidence and
| against self-incrimination, do not generally apply in Europe.)
| pictur wrote:
| Thanks to idiots like you, these people are rich and live in
| super prosperity.
| alex00 wrote:
| Kim Dotcom is still harassed because he is very vocal against
| the US and what is happening in Ukraine.
| https://x.com/KimDotcom
|
| The US narrative on Ukraine and Israel is getting weaker.
| Thorns like Kim Dotcom that has a big following, Telegram that
| is the only social platform to access the Russian side of the
| events, can break the US narrative.
|
| It is ironic that the US screams Russia did a war crime in
| Bucha but Israel on Gaza is fine.
| holoduke wrote:
| True. Best source to get info from the war are on Telegram.
| Both Ukrainian and Russian ones. Some channels have millions
| of users and provide daily map updates, information about
| enemy positions and even information about locations where
| equipement is stored in EU countries.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again._
|
| At least Kim Dotcom earings and the main utility of the service
| was indeed based on pirated content. Telegram is huge
| news/chat/etc app, where the things the mention as "enabling"
| as totally marginal and coincidental, more like arresting a
| property owner that owns half of the city because some people
| sold drugs in a few of the apartments.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Except that this is France prosecuting a French citizen for
| breaking French laws.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think the real difference is the intent. If your platform
| makes it extremely easy to do illegal things, and you choose
| not to put in the controls to stop it, and then I think it is
| fair that government should stop.
| burnte wrote:
| Because some things like terrorism and child sex abuse are
| harms to society as a whole, and even private individuals have
| an obligation to help combat them. Durov has a service where by
| design it's hard to filter out that kind of activity, and he's
| effectively (if not explicitly) helping protect that activity.
| tuatoru wrote:
| So is France going to arrest the owners of HP, because their
| printers can't filter out CSAM?
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Whoa, it's absurd if true... I fail to see how being responsible
| for not cooperating with authorities can be turned into being
| accused of these crimes. And I don't care for the legal
| gymnastics which makes this possible - the law exists to serve
| the public interest and is of no inherent value.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| In every country I know of, the freedom to not be responsible
| for what your user's do on a platform includes certain
| requirements. Removing illegal content is the very least a
| platform must do.
|
| Every country has their own definition of "illegal" content,
| but things like CSAM are illegal everywhere, and that's one
| area where Telegram never really bothered to take action.
|
| The arrest warrant has been out for a while, so I doubt Durov
| got himself arrested by accident. He probably has a plan, or at
| least good lawyers.
| beezle wrote:
| So if I own and operate a hardware store (or any other
| storefront) and do nothing about people who are clearly using
| it to deal fentanyl, I'm absolved of all wrong doing?
| layer8 wrote:
| By knowingly facilitating criminal activities, you become
| complicit.
| 13415 wrote:
| The Silk Road was designed and marketed explicitly towards
| criminals to facilitate crime and AFAIK had practically no
| other uses. So, it's not a reasonable comparison.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think you replied to the wrong comment.
| salawat wrote:
| Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.
|
| Why do I bring that line of reasoning up? Because an actually
| exhaustive traversal of 2nd-6th order effects renders
| everyone complicit in something, especially in the presence
| of things criminalizing not looking for things.
|
| You should never count yourself out of being a complicit
| party for something, and realize that if you're going to
| impose a penalty on a group you consider a "them"; it is
| likely only a matter of time invested enumerating your
| effects in the world to make evident something they did has
| been enabled by you. Even if only by you not making the
| choice to do something about them.
|
| Bad things will happen. We can't prevent them all. And trying
| to zero any class of bad thing has so many onock on effects,
| that even the most trivial sounding solutions need be met
| with strictest scritiny to figure out what they will break.
| croes wrote:
| Wasn't the Silk Road founder jailed for something similar?
|
| He provided the platform.
| nemo44x wrote:
| He was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill a business
| partner/competitor.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Not true. That charge was dropped. He was convicted of
| numerous other charges related to running Silk Road:
| Engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing
| narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet,
| conspiring to distribute narcotics, etc.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| the government needs to enforce its laws. telegram is accused
| of getting in the way of enforcing laws. that seems like a
| reasonable accusation.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Terrorism and child porn? Seems a little on the nose.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| He very likely refused to play ball with NATO, and the software
| is working as intended, meaning no backdoors.
|
| I think we should have and open and decentralized version of this
| kind of "criminal" communication system.
|
| We should show them what Streisand effect really means.
| negus wrote:
| https://matrix.org/ ?
| literalAardvark wrote:
| We do have Signal. People prefer not encrypted Telegram to it.
| kelsey98765431 wrote:
| > jpost.com
|
| > * 5 hours ago
|
| > Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, arrested by France following
| warrant - The Jerusalem Post
|
| > The alleged offenses include: terrorism, narcotic supply,
| fraud, money laundering and receiving stolen goods.
|
| For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT ENCRYPTED.
| They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers. All chats that
| are not 'secret chat' mode (single device to single device) are
| NOT ENCRYPTED (stored in plaintext on server).
|
| This is not about encryption, it is about the plaintext data and
| the organized crime happening in these channels.
|
| Signal group chats ARE ENCRYPTED by default. It is actually not
| possible to send an unencrypted message on signal. This will not
| pivot into an E2E issue, and will not affect signal which has set
| itself up to not store unencrypted content on it's servers.
|
| EDIT: Also possibly this may be a factor in the decision to
| arrest:
|
| > finance.yahoo.com
|
| > * 2 weeks ago
|
| > Telegram adds new ways for creators to earn money on its
| platform
|
| > Today's announcement comes as Telegram reached 950 million
| active users last month, and aims to cross the 1 billion mark
| this year. Earlier this year, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said
| the company expects to hit profitability next year and is
| considering going public.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This is misinformation that Telegram stores chat data in
| plaintext on their servers.
|
| It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across the
| globe.
|
| Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to be
| subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.
| mlyle wrote:
| This is effectively plaintext, in that one entity has all of
| those secrets for everyone. That's one entity to subpoena.
|
| If that entity doesn't comply, governments will get upset and
| charge your executives with crimes if they get the chance.
|
| Different jurisdictions makes it harder to kick down the
| doors and get the keys, but it doesn't change the fundamental
| problem.
|
| "Nuh-uh, I put all those records in a box in Switzerland, you
| can't have them" does not work well for US citizens, unless
| the government fails to even notice the box.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > This is effectively plaintext
|
| Everything's effectively plaintext then.
|
| Plaintext: refers to data that is transmitted or stored
| unencrypted. None of which Telegram does.
| mlyle wrote:
| Data that is transmitted or stored along with the keys is
| _effectively_ plaintext, which Telegram does. The data is
| _effectively_ plaintext on my device, at Telegram, and on
| the group members ' devices, even if it is not plaintext
| in-between.
|
| Data I send to a website over TLS is _effectively_
| plaintext on my computer and on the other side; in
| transit, it is not.
|
| It all comes down to your threat model. Encryption does
| not protect information from entities who hold the keys
| to decrypt that information.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > stored along with the keys
|
| It's not. They use a split-key encryption system so it's
| not exactly the same as storing the keys where the data
| is.
|
| > It all comes down to your threat model. Encryption does
| not protect information from entities who hold the keys
| to decrypt that information.
|
| I agree, which is why I'll say that the bottom line is:
|
| Are auditable E2EE algorithms stronger in security than
| cloud encryption? Yes. Is MTProto 2.0 Cloud Encryption
| plaintext? No.
| mlyle wrote:
| > It's not. They use a split-key encryption system so
| it's not exactly the same as storing the keys where the
| data is.
|
| Yes, again, it all comes down to your threat model. No
| one can kick down the door and get to the keys.
|
| But _Telegram_ can get to all the keys, and thus can be
| _legally expected to_. The data is effectively plaintext
| to Telegram.
|
| > Is MTProto 2.0 Cloud Encryption plaintext? No.
|
| Just to note: "effectively plaintext" has been in use for
| a couple of decades as a term of art. We don't say it's
| plaintext, because it's not. It means there's effectively
| no security properties lent by the encryption.
|
| For example, my web browser encrypts a few passwords for
| me and stores them on disk, but doesn't need a
| cryptographic secret from me to decrypt them; they're
| _effectively plaintext_ , because no one has to break any
| encryption to read them.
|
| Indeed, here's a thread on HN from 2013, where Durov is
| participating, where people are using "effectively
| plaintext" in exactly this way to describe exactly what
| we're talking about:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6937097
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Yeah, I don't doubt that it can be improved. I hope it
| does because Telegram is not a fringe messenger anymore.
| There can be improvements made to the infrastructure, so
| that they don't keep facing these issues again and again.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Yeah, I don't doubt that it can be improved.
|
| There was no discussion of whether it can be improved. I
| was just telling you that it meets the established
| understanding of the term "effectively plaintext," which
| you were seeming to disagree with.
|
| Have a good rest of your day.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > which you were seeming to disagree with.
|
| Yeah, I would still disagree because everything is
| effectively plaintext in the end. The only difference is
| how you derive the key. There are levels of encryption,
| that is true but I think calling an actual encryption as
| 'effectively plaintext' is wrong.
|
| > Have a good rest of your day.
|
| Thank you! You too :D
| fsflover wrote:
| > The only difference is how you derive the key.
|
| Telegram CEO has access to all keys and therefore all
| chats. Matrix foundation has no such access. These two
| examples should explain the difference between
| "effectively plaintext" and e2ee. The main difference is
| not _how_ someone derives the key. It 's _who_ can do it.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Browsers should be interacting with the OS to require
| something (like your system password, Touch ID, etc.) to
| have unlocked the vault before being allowed to auto
| complete.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup, in the best case you have a truly secure container
| of keys somewhere. That takes things away from being
| effectively plaintext.
| lxgr wrote:
| No, end-to-end encrypted systems are not effectively
| plaintext. That's a distinction anyone familiar with
| cryptography is well aware of, but Telegram has been
| gaslighting their user/fanbase and many journalists about
| it for years.
| brabel wrote:
| This is such an ignorant comment I am really disappointed
| at reading this here.
|
| Besides the protocol used by Telegram being publicly
| available so you can easily confirm in 5 minutes that what
| you're saying is completely wrong, but you're also saying
| that law enforcement can totally see all those plain text
| messages hosted by Telegram, yet they choose to be really
| upset about it anyway despite it being, according to you,
| the best possible honeypot ever created with all criminal
| activity readily available for their peruse. Why, I ask
| you, would law enforcement want to stop such an app??? They
| would be completely silent about it and enjoy catching all
| criminals in it who are "ignorantly" thinking their
| messages are safe, wouldn't they??
|
| Given the amount of baseless comments like yours on this
| topic, I can only imagine there's a concerted effort here
| to misinform everyone to make Telegram look bad so actual
| criminals move away from it to some more law enforcement-
| friendly platform. I have conflicting feelings about that,
| as perhaps the intention is noble, but I can never agree
| with misleading people by spreading misinformation and
| plain lies.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yes, the data is encrypted in transit. But Telegram can
| decrypt the data.
|
| We can see that's true, because when I add a new device I
| can get into all my group chats.
|
| Only if I explicitly "Start secret chat" does something
| else happen.
|
| Telegram is sitting on a lot of group chats where a lot
| of horrible things are happening that governments want to
| see... and gets upset when Telegram doesn't use this
| access to share that information in response to lawful
| orders.
|
| > I can only imagine there's a concerted effort here to
| misinform everyone
|
| Assume good faith-- it's in the guidelines. I have been
| here just as long as you. I am not part of some shadowy
| conspiracy to make people think that Telegram security is
| bad.
|
| I feel like people just don't understand the term of art
| "effectively plaintext".
|
| Alternatively, if you thought I was talking about secret
| chats in general-- note that we are in a subthread
| talking _explicitly_ about channels and non-secret chats:
|
| "For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT
| ENCRYPTED. They are stored in plaintext on telegram
| servers. All chats that are not 'secret chat' mode
| (single device to single device) are NOT ENCRYPTED
| (stored in plaintext on server)."
| lxgr wrote:
| Law enforcement totally _could_ see all those plaintext
| messages, _if Telegram would honor their requests_. But
| they don 't, hence their CEO is being detained.
|
| That's a position he knowingly and willingly maneuvered
| himself into. Compare that with e.g. the way Signal
| answers subpoenas: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
|
| > Besides the protocol used by Telegram being publicly
| available so you can easily confirm in 5 minutes that
| what you're saying is completely wrong
|
| There's absolutely no need to analyzse the protocol,
| since you can just perform a high-level mud puddle test
| [1], and Telegram fails it. I've tried this myself.
|
| [1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/i
| cloud-w...
| speedgoose wrote:
| It could be worth a try to extract the keys of one server
| with a liquid nitrogen can and a cold boot attack. Or
| something more advanced that isn't documented on Wikipedia.
| Jerrrrrrry wrote:
| That is so 2009.
|
| RAM can be XOR'd with little latency with hardware
| acceleration with a key in a slightly - separated secure
| enclave that will degrade if upset too rapidly, similar to
| a virtual da Vinci cryptex.
|
| radio/bluetooth/em/sensitive/proximity warning switches to
| unmount virtualized volumes all in a quasi-state-
| sanctioned-"contact center" in middle Ukraine.
|
| They are trying their best to prevent the inevitable; the
| ungovernable, untaxable, uncensorable, un-surveillable
| commerce and communication platform that will eventually
| arise from the amalgamation of human's pesky technology and
| its crossroads with the human condition.
|
| The hate for all things labeled "crypto" (convenient
| poising the well/doublespeak) was a (partially) government
| sigh op astro-fabri-exagerated to sway public opinion
| against anything "crypto" so that an ungovernable,
| decentralized, general trust-less computation
| protocol/escrow/rep using zkp+ and hormophic encryption was
| not able to be realized before the alfabit bois got a
| chance to mole into the development pipeline and backdoor
| the inevitable Merchanti Ultimatum; anything less would be
| a massive national security threat globally.
| lxgr wrote:
| > It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across
| the globe.
|
| The physical storage location is completely irrelevant. What
| matters is access, and they have that.
|
| Telegram has full operational control over these keys, as
| demonstrated by the fact that anyone that can perform SMS
| verification is able to access past messages on an account,
| and SMS-OTP can in principle not involve any cryptographic
| operation, as there is absolutely no user input.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to
| be subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.
|
| Thats not how legal works.
|
| for example if I am an EU based judge and I issue a warrant
| for getting data from a company in a case related to
| something important (your values may vary, but lets say its
| not about parking fines) then if your company wants to
| continue to operate in the EU, you need to pony up the data,
| or tell them why your _can 't_ comply, rather than won't
|
| Having your data stored with keys that you control isn't an
| excuse.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers
|
| FYI, this is a totally misleading and false claim.
|
| Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud algorithm for non-secret
| chats[1][2].
|
| In fact, it uses a split-key encryption system and the servers
| are all stored in multiple jurisdictions. So even Telegram
| employees can't decrypt the chats, because you'd need to
| compromise all the servers at the same time.
|
| Telegram's algorithm has been independently audited multiple
| times. Compared to other apps like WhatsApp with claims of E2EE
| and no body of verification and validation.[3]
|
| [1]: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto#general-description [2]:
| https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFM...
| [3]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03141
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > So even Telegram employees can't decrypt the chats
|
| I very much doubt that. If Durov wanted to, they could
| decrypt all of those messages.
|
| That fancy encryption system is worthless when someone can
| hijack the session of any of the users in a chosen group.
| This is a risk in many crypto messengers, but those usually
| come with optional key verification whereas Telegram doesn't
| have that outside of encrypted one-on-one chats.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Because of the nature of the encryption, it allows more
| convenience compared to WhatsApp and Signal. For example,
| on Telegram you can (and we do) have a million people in a
| group without exposing their phone numbers. This has proven
| itself to be extremely useful to protestors. Signal failed
| massively, you couldn't add too many people and you always
| had the risk of exposing the phone numbers.
|
| Along with that, you can use Telegram on as many devices as
| you want. The chats instantly appear after login. WhatsApp
| and Signal both are lacking here.
|
| So there are always tradeoffs when it comes to encryption
| and convenience.
|
| Telegram's focus has been on the convenience side and
| providing assurance using a clean record of protecting
| user-data from governments, which is why Telegram was
| created in the first place.
|
| Can the encryption be improved? Of course yes! I'd love to!
| but I think much of the criticism by the WhatsApp loving
| crowd is not only disingenuous, but also harmful.
| lukan wrote:
| "The chats instantly appear after login. "
|
| I agree, that is very convenient. Also for the secret
| police officer..
|
| I use telegram as social media, but I really would not
| use it to organize protest somewhere. Then the whole
| safety depends on whether Durov made a deal with the
| secret police, or them infiltrating the servers to know
| everything about anyone involved. What they liked at what
| time, what pictures they shared, etc.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > them infiltrating the servers to know everything about
| anyone involved
|
| That's not a possibility. Split-key encryption doesn't
| allow such a thing to happen.
| fsflover wrote:
| Can you be more specific how the split-key encryption
| would prevent the Telegram CEO from reading all chats and
| users' info?
| EasyMark wrote:
| That's my concern as well, maybe none of the devs have
| the capability, but if -anyone- does it's Durov, so why
| not just grab him under false pretenses and throw the
| book at him, trying to scare him into compliance with
| anything they want or face the rest of his life in the
| worse French prison they can find for him.
| kobalsky wrote:
| > That fancy encryption system is worthless when someone
| can hijack the session of any of the users in a chosen
| group
|
| what do you mean? user sessions are remotely hijackeable?
| EasyMark wrote:
| This is likely why the grabbed Durov, he has the keys to
| the kingdom. Telegram is a remarkably small company and not
| a 800lb gorilla and it would be very easy for him to
| provide whatever they need if he folds.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Compared to other apps like WhatsApp with claims of E2EE
| and no body of verification and validation.
|
| We do have at least some empirical evidence that WhatsApp is
| properly encrypted. WhatsApp's cryptography has made judges
| in my country foam at the mouth with rage so hard they
| ordered retaliatory nation wide blocks of the service at
| least twice.
|
| People are right to distrust Meta but I for one am glad that
| everyone I know is using WhatsApp. I also have Signal and
| Matrix but a grand total of zero people message me through
| those.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > We do have at least some empirical evidence that WhatsApp
| is properly encrypted
|
| so do we. Telegram's MTProto 2.0 has been audited multiple
| times by independent researchers, compared to WhatsApp's
| closed-source claims of E2EE.
|
| I'd rather trust a company with a proven track record of no
| security incidents and fight for user privacy than a
| corporation which lies through its teeth time and again.
| which wrote:
| What is stopping Telegram from signing in as you and
| reading all of your past messages by changing how the
| authentication logic is handled for specific targeted
| users? Not saying they have done this, but they obviously
| could.
| lxgr wrote:
| We can agree on the statement "Telegram does not
| cooperate with law enforcement authorities".
|
| This is however something completely different from and
| largely orthogonal to "Telegram does not have access to
| their users' message contents".
|
| The fact that they are consistently claiming the former
| _and_ the latter makes them seem extremely untrustworthy
| to me.
|
| Gaining my trust requires truthfulness and transparencies
| about the capabilities and limits of a service provider's
| technology (but of course is in no way sufficient).
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| basing your assurance that whatsapp is secure because meta
| didn't care about a Brazilian judge misconstrued wiretap
| request is wild.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's not really an "assurance". I don't fully trust them.
| I do trust them a lot more than others that haven't been
| put on trial.
|
| The point is moot anyway. _Everyone_ in Brazil uses
| WhatsApp. They will not use anything else. I 'd be
| ostracized if I refused to use it.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > WhatsApp's cryptography has made judges in my country
| foam at the mouth with rage
|
| Oh wow, they need to get that checked, could be pulmonary
| edema.
| dagmx wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, your mproto link only covers
| transport level encryption not storage.
|
| It doesn't include E2E encryption in the scheme only client
| to server.
|
| Whether the server stores it as plaintext or not, is moot to
| the point of having telegram itself be able to see the chats
| because they hold the encryption keys of the server and
| therefore can be made to comply with legal requests.
|
| The person you replied to may be incorrect on the aspect of
| plain text but imho they're right that it's not really
| relevant in this context.
|
| Encrypted storage would be relevant for the case where a
| server is compromised by a hacker.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I can't open the telegram.com links, blocked at work :/
|
| But the Arxiv paper says:
|
| _" We stress that peer clients never communicate directly:
| messages always go through a server, where they are stored
| to permit later retrieval by the recipient. Cloud chat
| messages are kept in clear text, while secret chat messages
| are encrypted with the peers' session key, which should be
| unknown to the server."_
|
| So it doesn't _appear_ to be encrypted-at-rest, but without
| reading the telegram documentation I can 't verify that.
| dagmx wrote:
| Yeah that feels pretty cut and dry. But even if it was
| encrypted at rest, it sounds like the server has the key
| to everything anyway so it's not E2E.
| MyNameIsFred wrote:
| This rebuttalakes no sense to me. What you cite is about
| about transport encryption. App -> Server. The end of the
| process is that the receiver (Telegram servers) receives a
| decrypted (plaintext) message, just as kelsey98765431 is
| saying.
| lxgr wrote:
| > FYI, this is a totally misleading and false claim.
|
| No, you seem to have have in fact fallen for Telegram's
| continuous intentional misinformation.
|
| The only thing that matters for whether we can call something
| "encrypted" or "plaintext" (or more precisely, "end-to-end
| encrypted" vs. "storage encrypted at rest" or "encrypted in
| transit" etc.) is whether they, the service providers, can
| access it themselves.
|
| Would you argue they can't? And if so, how come can I log in
| to my Telegram account using only SMS verification and access
| my old messages?
| itvision wrote:
| > FYI, this is a totally misleading and false claim.
|
| > Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud algorithm for non-
| secret chats[1][2].
|
| FYI you don't understand encryption and are spewing pristine
| BS.
|
| Only p2p secret chats use e2e encryption and are invisible to
| Telegram employees.
|
| Everything else is stored in plain text on Telegram servers.
|
| The OP was correct and your counter argument is void and
| null.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. I have no idea how Telegram got this reputation for
| privacy.
|
| I'd like to point out WhatsApp chats are also end-to-end
| encrypted, just like in Signal. People aren't wrong to distrust
| Meta but I'd like to point out that WhatsApp encryption often
| makes judges here seethe to the point they order nation wide
| blocks of WhatsApp out of spite. The fact everyone I know uses
| something this secure makes me very happy. It's not perfect but
| since network effects makes alternatives unusable I'll take
| what I can get.
| negus wrote:
| See my comment above about the unencrypted backup.
|
| It's basically a UX tradeoff: You can not promote default E2E
| + no autobackups -- people in mass are not ready to lose
| their data when losing the device. Nor they are ready to
| store the key separately in a confidential manner. Nor they
| are ready to manually transfer the key among different
| devices.
|
| All this UX situation is defined by Moxie (the author of
| Signal and Whatsapp encryption) in his blog post about
| PGP/WoT concept meeting the reality
| https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html
|
| So in fact as the average user you have either: 1) E2E +
| unenctypted autobackup (Whatsapp) or 2) no e2e by default and
| separate e2e secret chats (Telegram) that are available only
| on a specific device.
|
| In the first scenario all your chats inclusing the most
| sensitive are available by the law enforcement by issuing a
| warrant to your file storage provider. In the second scenario
| you potentially can spill some sensitive information in
| default non-encrypted chats.
|
| What is worse? I don't know. But I use both Telegram and
| Whatsapp with backups turned off. So I'm losing all the
| Whatsapp chat history when using a new device while losing
| only secret chats In Telegram (not a problem for me since I
| delete them often manually or set a self-destruct timer
| anyway)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Backups are encrypted now. Looks like they improved it.
|
| I get it. I'm a privacy and free and open source software
| enthusiast. It's not perfect. It certainly is better than
| alternatives though. We know for a fact that it pisses off
| judges and authorities. That's a major sign that its
| working. You should be concerned when they _stop_
| complaining about it, it means they got in.
| samastur wrote:
| Judges and authorities complaining is not a proof that
| encryption is good. Not cooperating with court will have
| the same effect, which is exactly what Durov is allegedly
| accused of.
| negus wrote:
| But this very same situation with Pavel's arrest aligns
| with your criteria of "authority-pissing" tech.
|
| Have you checked the source of Telegram?
| https://telegram.org/apps#source-code
| negus wrote:
| And non E2E chats by default is an intentional design desision.
| Pavel previously gave comments about these tradeoffs: In some
| sense it is better design than Whatsapp's e2e by default BUT
| 99%+ users have an automated backup to an un-e2encrypted
| storage such as Google Drive.
| kkfx wrote:
| This Signal you trust?
| https://kitklarenberg.substack.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-...
|
| Anyway, while it's possible to activate a Telegram account
| without a physical phone (using some temporary number services)
| or using an (relatively) anonymous SIM card 99% of users use it
| via Android or iOS and that's means there is no need to grab
| data from Telegram, USA gov. as well as Apple or Alphabet could
| simply milk them from their OSes, virtual keyboards and so on.
|
| It's really cloying how many do focus on the service instead of
| weighting the ecosystem...
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's Kit Klarenberg of Grayzone. If he claims X, you should
| believe the opposite with much better than even odds. It
| could have been a hint to you when the news source of your
| choice attributes everything in the world to the CIA.
| flan1058 wrote:
| He claims that Signal got so good that the government
| abandoned funding. I shall now assume the opposite and
| believe that the government can read all messages.
|
| All mentions of the Open Technology Fund are true. It is
| also true that Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe have
| CIA connections:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liber
| t...
|
| German government funded radio:
|
| https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/propaganda-im-auftrag-der-
| cia...
| kurisufag wrote:
| other countries do this and wonder why they aren't centers of
| technical innovation. why would anyone working on a privacy-
| centric tool, after seeing this, base themselves in .fr?
| quantum_state wrote:
| " French authorities believe that Telegram, under Durov's
| leadership, became a major platform for organised crime due to
| its encrypted messaging services, which allegedly facilitated
| illegal activities. " One could replace Telegram with any other
| products and find abuse by users of the products to concoct a
| reason to arrest anyone. This is what an authoritarian regime
| would do. It's shocking to see it becomes part of the playbook of
| the French government.
| mrandish wrote:
| I don't know anything about this guy or the basis of these
| charges but if he is only "guilty" of operating a messaging
| platform with the option of end-to-end encryption, thus can't let
| law enforcement tap into private communications when customer's
| enable that option, how can he be held responsible for the
| criminal actions of those customers when he isn't even aware of
| the actions and physically cannot tap into them himself?
|
| This seems like some heavy-handed government coercion.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| So let's say I open up a night club. I have to abide the laws and
| regulations, and make sure things like the following: Minors
| aren't getting in or being served alcohol, that people aren't
| selling drugs there, that prostitutes aren't doing business
| there.
|
| If undercover agents come by, and discover that minors are
| purchasing alcohol - the business will get fined, and likely
| banned from selling alcohol for some time.
|
| If I, the owner, continue to ignore authorities and flat out
| refuse to cooperate, and there are new busts - I would expect to
| face charges. The joint would likely get shut down, and I could
| be liable. If things are severe enough, I'll likely be
| investigated for running a criminal enterprise there.
|
| Obviously there are differences in how things are regulated in
| the different countries - but in countries where the CEO assumes
| total responsibility, and the buck stops there - it would make
| sense that the CEO will get charged with those sort of things, if
| the company has not done enough to cooperate or moderate their
| product and users.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Lets say I open up a grocery store. Criminals start buying
| their food and bookkeeping supplies there. The police discover
| this. Should I be held liable for fueling and enabling these
| criminals?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| the crux of the problem here is that the french police asked
| for their purchase history, and you said "sorry, i already
| gave them to the Russian fsb" ;)
| gosub100 wrote:
| So free speech should be regulated like alcohol sales?
| intunderflow wrote:
| France was the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man
| and of the Citizen, and now you have an autocracy in a semi-
| democratic vest:
|
| - All protests in support of Palestine banned
| https://www.politico.eu/article/france-gerald-darmanin-aims-...
|
| - Head coverings banned
|
| - Run a messaging app but the French state finds stuff on it that
| it disapproves of? You are a Terrorist
|
| It's sad to see this backsliding in Europe.
| lucasRW wrote:
| Head coverings are not banned. Anyone who's ever been to Paris
| or any french cities in the past few years can confirm.
| inamorty wrote:
| The ban against protests was stated by the courts to have to be
| done case by case.
|
| The headscarf ban is part of all religious symbols in public
| areas like schools and hospitals.
| pjc50 wrote:
| France has never really been as liberal as people seem to think
| it is. The colonial history runs deep.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Rights don't give you super power to ignore laws. He failed to
| follow judicial orders. If he doesn't want to follow French
| justice orders, then leave France for good.
| conradfr wrote:
| The French government actually uses Telegram.
| POiNTx wrote:
| I'm generally very pro EU, but this anti-encryption stuff they
| try to pull these last couple of years needs to stop. If it's
| proven that Pavel Durov is facilitating bad actors with purpose,
| that's a different story, but creating a secure messaging
| platform by itself should not constitute a crime.
| XorNot wrote:
| Telegram is _not_ a secure messaging platform. By default
| Telegram is not encrypted at all. Only "secret chats" in
| Telegram are encrypted. Telegram groups are _not_ - and those
| can be made public and basically are just Telegram hosting
| content on their servers for you.
| gloosx wrote:
| That's a popular lie, Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud
| algorithm for non-secret chats, which is audited and verified
| by multiple independent parties. For example WhatsApp claims
| it uses EE2E encrypted chats, how ever these claims are
| unverified and not audited. Also their chief executives are
| not in jail, coincidentally.
|
| You can consult these links if you want to read more about
| it:
|
| https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFM.
| ..
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03141
|
| https://github.com/miculan/telegram-mtproto2-verification
| XorNot wrote:
| https://t.me/s/UkraineNow
|
| This is a Ukraine channel. You can preview it in a web
| browser. If Telegram can enable that functionality, then it
| means they have the complete capability to serve the
| content of the channel. Same story if they can scroll back
| an existing channel to new users.
| gloosx wrote:
| Channels were meant to be public. No-one ever claimed
| encryption for channels since it is nonsense.
|
| You claim that only secret chats are encrypted in
| telegram, which is straight not true. You can pull up a
| link to public channel and everyone can preview the
| posts, that's obvious. You cannot do the same trick with
| group chats because they are private and encrypted using
| MTProto
| stall84 wrote:
| There is so much oddness surrounding this.. First, I don't really
| see how you can prosecute ideas, because as much as authorities
| will try and narrowly-define this case as being about moderation
| (of a platform), and cooperation with authorities, ultimately
| this is really an attempt to prosecute the idea/concept of
| publicly available 'e2e' encrypted communications. Second
| though... How does that list of charges only amount to a maximum
| of 20 years ? lol
| bakuvi wrote:
| In the meantime French government is promoting Olvid that claims
| "Your exchanges leave no digital trace. No one will ever know who
| you've discussed with." How does it make any sense?
| d0mine wrote:
| keys, backdoors, lies (e.g., in the past, people were kill
| based on metadata alone--technically, no actual conversations'
| content is necessary).
| esjeon wrote:
| Telegram has always been just one slip away from this kind of
| stuffs because it's a centralized service. Depending on how laws
| are read, it could be seen as complicit in various crimes, and
| it's politicians who decide how to read those laws, not tech
| people. It might be the end of those good days where things were
| so simple and easy.
| devman0 wrote:
| A lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram
| didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a
| lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was
| illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less.
|
| The comparisons to other providers is off base because either
| other providers are cooperating more when they possess
| actionable, unencrypted information and taking steps to detect or
| prevent such recurrences or they are like Signal and do not have
| access to the underlying material in the first place or store it
| for very long anyway.
|
| One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in
| the developed world, one will always be required to remove
| illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law
| enforcement.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > Nothing more, nothing less.
|
| A lot more and a lot less than that. Arresting this CEO in
| France is largely a political decision, not a politically
| neutral enforcement action against the Telegram platform.
|
| They don't perform the same enforcement against other entities
| they could go after.
| devman0 wrote:
| He appears to be a French citizen, so who else should be
| doing the arresting?
| StrLght wrote:
| He holds French citizenship, apparently broke French laws,
| and got arrested on French soil. How is that a political
| decision?
| DandyDev wrote:
| How is it not just a neutral enforcement action against the
| Telegram platform? The Telegram platform knowingly hosts
| illegal content in unencrypted format and does little to
| moderate that, which is illegal in many countries. The CEO is
| accountable for how the company operates and what happens on
| the platform.
|
| If Telegram breaks the law - which it does - it's completely
| logical that the CEO is held accountable for that and is
| arrested
| ashconnor wrote:
| A sane comment in the slew of conspiracy theories, "service
| provider" apologists and misdirection of encryption being the
| issue.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Telegram always elicits bizarre reactions from the public. On
| one side there's actual security professionals saying don't
| use Telegram because it's not fully E2E encrypted, and on the
| other side there's people who are convinced that it's secure
| because Marketing and that there's this big conspiracy to
| stop people from using Telegram.
|
| The _real_ conspiracy theory is: Telegram have never made any
| attempt to either implement full E2E or to dissuade their
| users for using it for politically sensitive messages. Why
| not?
| fsflover wrote:
| > Telegram have never made any attempt to either implement
| full E2E or to dissuade their users for using it
|
| It's probably true. There are still no e2ee chats on
| desktop, which includes my smartpon running GNU/Linux.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > "service provider" apologists
|
| I sincerely doubt that Telegram makes most of it's money by
| being this kind of host. I don't generally give the
| government the benefit of the doubt when it comes to
| _communication_ platforms. I also see zero evidence that
| Telegram's existence or policies help promote or create crime
| in any way.
|
| It's not conspiratorial to refuse to show deference to the
| government which currently only has vague accusations to
| justify jailing a CEO. If the French government was so
| concerned about the criminal aspect then they should just
| order Telegram to not operate in France or they should work
| to block it at a national level.
|
| The problem, the reaction, and the solution are not at all
| aligned here. Why anyone would jump in to defend the
| government's actions is absolutely beyond me.
| devman0 wrote:
| > "which currently only has vague accusations to justify
| jailing a CEO"
|
| If they are charging him and intend to convict, they have
| specific accusations, unless the French legal system is
| much different than the rest of the western world.
|
| > "If the French government was so concerned about the
| criminal aspect then they should just order Telegram to not
| operate in France or they should work to block it at a
| national level."
|
| Many governments with anti-CSAM laws exercise universal
| jurisdiction in those statues (i.e. they will to prosecute
| anyone for those crimes regardless of where they were
| committed and regardless if the person in question is a
| citizen), that being said it isn't entirely relevant here
| since the defendant is a French citizen. I would fully
| expect a government with CSAM accusations to prosecute
| those involved in facilitating such not just "block" them.
|
| It's worth noting that the person in question was just
| arrested, so the trial hasn't happened yet, and yes the
| government could be full of shit, that would presumably
| come out at trial as dropped charges or an acquittal.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > so the trial hasn't happened yet
|
| Precisely. So the constant need for people to gatekeep in
| here and chastise other people for having a negative view
| of the French government's actions is, to me, absurd.
|
| > and yes the government could be full of shit
|
| Yes. That's the assertion based upon the balance of
| history and probability and the complete disconnect
| between these actions and actual law enforcement
| outcomes.
|
| > that would presumably come out at trial as dropped
| charges or an acquittal.
|
| That doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about it.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform
| in the developed world, one will always be required to remove
| illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with
| law enforcement.
|
| Just would like to clarify, Telegram _does_ take down channels
| /bots in some cases including copyright infringement. The only
| bots I've dealt with were music downloaders so I don't know
| much about other kinds of takedowns, but it's wrong to say that
| telegram doesn't/didn't take down material. Perhaps not enough
| or frequently enough, and I certainly don't condone immoral
| activities- but they do do it sometimes.
| lxgr wrote:
| They do it whenever the risk of Apple or Google kicking them
| out of their respective app stores becomes too great. That's
| presumably the only entities they take content moderation
| input from.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ultimately this fight against unmonitored messaging is going to
| be a lost one for the developed world. people who want
| encrypted group chats will get them
| devman0 wrote:
| As I hinted at earlier Signal does not have this issue
| because generally they are not aware of the underlying
| content. Even if Signal becomes aware of said content, it
| likely isn't hosted on their servers anymore as their store
| and forward system is highly transient. The most signal could
| do is be compelled to block specific users and maybe shutdown
| certain groups (not sure on that last one, would have to
| review the group architecture)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Precisely my point - moderated messaging in the modern era
| will ultimately be unenforceable.
|
| Which is why I don't see why certain services should be
| legally penalized just because they don't happen to be E2E
| encrypted. Like if Telegram was instead e2e encrypted, why
| should that be legal if what they were previously doing
| wasn't?
| devman0 wrote:
| I think there are two parts to this:
|
| 1) On the technical side, Telegram groups operate more
| like a bulletin board, content is posted and can be
| fetched over and over again, a bulletin board owner can
| be compelled to remove material and if non-cooperating
| considered to be facilitating. Signal is more like a
| conversation in the town-square or a letter box of sealed
| envelopes. Once the content is fetched, it's gone. If
| signal is made aware that certain envelopes contain
| material that needs to be removed, I'm sure they would do
| so provided they still possess them.
|
| 2) On the non-technical side, many countries have crimes
| that are all about who knew what and when did they know
| it and could that have acted (or did they have a duty to
| do so). Facilitating, accessory, accessory after the fact
| call it what you will but that's more of a legal /
| philosophical argument to be had about the legal system
| in general rather than telegram specifically. A situation
| were telegram was made aware of illegal activity and was
| hosting said content in the clear and did nothing is
| manifestly different from a case where those facts did
| not exist, in most legal systems.
| Illotus wrote:
| So essentially what you are saying that because we
| couldn't catch the smart criminals who use e2e encrypted
| services we shouldn't catch the dumb ones either?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If you ban the non-E2EE services unless they ban
| criminals, then dumb criminals will end up using E2EE
| services anyways
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Terrible takes notwithstanding, of which there are many, the
| issue I see with such arguments is that it's always possible to
| find legal violations that technically justify prosecution or
| imprisonment. However, the legal system only functions
| effectively if we trust that those handling the gray areas are
| motivated by the common good, rather than serving the interests
| of a select few or protecting an elite minority. Simply
| focusing on the arrest and comparing it to the alleged criminal
| activities on Telegram, along with the supposed lack of
| enforcement by the company, seems like turning a blind eye. It
| ignores the more likely reality that this is part of a broader
| effort to establish a censorship regime, with platforms like
| TikTok, X, Telegram, and Rumble already targeted. Accepting the
| official narrative and pretext at face value feels, frankly, a
| bit naive.
| devman0 wrote:
| It's important to note that he has only just been arrested,
| so there will be a case laid out, a defense offered, facts
| tried, and ultimately a conviction or not. I don't find a lot
| of sense in speculating about why or why it didn't happen as
| that will presumably be surfaced during the trial itself.
| Such events may or may not be followed up on HN as most of
| time these things turn out to not be wide ranging
| conspiracies but more mundane wrong-doings or acquittals
| based on facts presented and mundane things do not get
| clicks.
| slim wrote:
| Nothing more, nothing less
|
| Telegram has been operating for years and did not change
| recently to justify such an action yesterday. There's something
| more certainly. Maybe they did not comply with requests related
| to recent war in Ukraine or genocide in Palestine ?
| alibert wrote:
| The initial investigation which triggered the arrest was made
| by the OFMIN ("Office specialise dans la lutte contre les
| violences faites aux mineurs" basically the government branch
| tracking and fighting CSAM).
|
| Supposedly, Telegram (and by definition of the french law,
| the CEO) did not respond to requests for takedown of harmful
| content (or not enough or faster?) from the the OFMIN. This
| triggered another investigation looking globally at how
| Telegram handle content moderation on the public part of
| Telegram (Channel) which lead to all others charges of
| complicity.
|
| This is basically the CEO taking the fall because the
| (unreachable by french law) Telegram company is not on french
| soil and he made the mistake on landing here.
| samstave wrote:
| I posted this else ITT, but whats your opinion on the following
| _(I have NO opinion - as I cant verify any facts about anything
| - so I am just an Observer of the events and what people are
| saying:)_
|
| ---
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ixak5vq.png
|
| > _This reminds me of the entire plot to the last of the Bourne
| movies, Jason Bourne, where there is a scene of the head of
| some intel agency (Tommy Lee Jones) propositioned a social
| media founder to give them backdoor access or he would be
| killed. Great movie._
|
| https://youtu.be/VvfSkVDF8uE
|
| Fun Thread:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1f0i2yi/guess_w...
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform
| in the developed world, one will always be required to remove
| illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with
| law enforcement.
|
| Should you remove e.g blasphemy which is illegal in many
| countries including some of what I assume you call "developed
| world"?
| alwa wrote:
| You should certainly have a formal process to respond to
| those countries' requests, and you might consider technical
| architectures that don't leave you in direct custody and
| control of that content in the first place.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > You should certainly have a formal process to respond to
| those countries' requests
|
| Mere responding is evidently not enough, you need to
| cooperate.
|
| > you might consider technical architectures that don't
| leave you in direct custody and control of that content in
| the first place.
|
| This rules out the "public channel" feature.
|
| Essentially what you say boils down to a global publishing
| platform being impossible nowadays without random and
| contradictive censorship acts.
|
| While this is probably true, I definitely don't share the
| "yeah throw him to jail" sentiment. On the contrary, I miss
| very much the truly global Internet of early 2000s. If this
| was possible back then, it must be, generally speaking,
| possible? Are we going to see anything like this again in
| our lifetimes?
| hananova wrote:
| > Mere responding is evidently not enough, you need to
| cooperate.
|
| Only if the request is coming from a country with a lot
| of power to effect its judgments internationally, or from
| a country you plan to personally visit. Whether or not
| you agree with it, ignoring legal requests from the US,
| China, and the EU (and debatably some other countries),
| isn't really an option in this day and age.
| devman0 wrote:
| If you are a multi-national with a legal presence in that
| country you likely have the resources to engage local counsel
| in answering that question and to assist in understanding the
| legal risks of various business decisions.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I don't ask for legal advice, I ask you how do you imagine
| the "always remove illegal content, easy" part of your plan
| to work? There's no common definition of what is legal. E.g
| do you suggest removing content if it's illegal anywhere in
| the world?
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Why would you not ask for legal advice on potential legal
| issues when registering users from countries you do not
| operate in? That is the only way you can understand the
| definitions of what is and is not legal in those
| countries.
| devman0 wrote:
| The defendant in question is a French citizen, being
| arrested in France, so if I were similarly situated I
| would expect to follow French law at a minimum.
|
| My answer wasn't intended to be dismissive, truly, the
| answer will be specific to ones legal situation and the
| jurisdictions they plan to operate in and are best
| answered specifically by competent counsel in those
| jurisdictions after considering ones specific facts.
| Asking if ones should comply with laws "anywhere in the
| world" is not a useful question by itself.
| hananova wrote:
| This really isn't a difficult question to answer: You
| remove the smallest subset of content such that you are
| allowed to operate in the markets in which you plan to
| operate/have a business presence in/plan to visit.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I am pretty sure that aiding criminal activity or child
| pornography are illegal in more countries than not, which are
| on the list of charges, and can be expected to do against
| from anyone, and ontopic here. Unlike blasphemy.
| SergeAx wrote:
| This is a fantastic case of hypocrisy here. I personally see
| Facebook ads for illegal drugs at least once a week, and
| nothing happens. I even stopped reporting it because it was
| obviously pointless. Why? Because Zuck is "our son of bitch".
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Boy is the comment section ever glowing.
| seydor wrote:
| I think we need a constitutional right to immoral speech. This
| madness and the mob that supports it has to stop
| surfingdino wrote:
| It's interesting that he chose to fly to France knowing fully
| well that he will be arrested. It is also not surprising, because
| he has French citizenship and France does not extradite its
| citizens. Looks like a tactical move on his part when his legal
| team told him he ran out of options and he much preferred to
| spend time in a French prison than in a Federal prison in the US.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| didn't france put out the arrest warrant right before he got
| there to trap him?
| surfingdino wrote:
| I haven't got access to the timelines, but I'd be surprised
| if his arrest wasn't negotiated with his lawyers. He had no
| reason to go there, but chose to do so.
| yetmorethro420 wrote:
| A friend was just dragged of the plane and arrested in Paris
| recently for "money laundering". It was completely baseless using
| falsified evidence. They wanted information but didn't want to
| obtain a warrant or subpoena to get it. Eventually they let them
| go. Sad because this person was a total Francophile. Not any
| more. Sad state of affairs over there really.
| d0mine wrote:
| This is how censorship works in developed democracies. Telegram
| was the last platform where point of views different from
| sanctioned by the powers that be could be expressed (to a limit--
| it is still in app store after all). You've done nothing for
| dissidents until you are charged with CP.
| not_a_dane wrote:
| I'd gladly donate to his legal campaign, as long as he makes his
| statements public.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| European authoritarianism is an embarrassment and a betrayal of
| their claimed values of freedom and democracy.
| laurent_du wrote:
| If people were using my backyard to sell drugs or CSAM, I knew
| it, and did nothing about it, I would absolutely be guilty of
| facilitating these crimes. I fail to see how the situation is
| different for Pasha.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| if i put up a random E2E encrypted messaging side project i
| made on github and then people started using it for CSAM?
|
| People use government built sidewalks to sell drugs, does that
| mean I can sue the govt for the drug trade?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Telegram is not E2E encrypted.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| so i should be liable if it is a plain text messaging
| github side project?
| marcinzm wrote:
| You mean if you're also running servers for it that store
| all the data in a format you can read and refuse law
| enforcement requests in your jurisdiction.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| do you really feel this is a good faith analogy? how is a
| side project in any way similar to a company with
| billions of users?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think it is an analogy that is useful in elucidating
| what people view as the morally relevant aspect.
|
| i don't think it makes a ton of sense to me that the
| encryption or lack thereof is the relevant factor - if we
| think that proprietors of unencrypted messaging should be
| required to turn over chat logs, then encrypted messaging
| should probably be illegal or we have left a massive
| loophole in.
|
| the scale being the relevant issue is another thing as
| well. i worry that if you somehow create a protocol for
| dencentralized messaging, you somehow then become liable
| for misuse of what could have been an academic project,
| etc.
| koiueo wrote:
| The original comment had two prerequisites:
|
| 1. If drug dealers used my backyard. 2. If I knew about it
| and did absolutely nothing about it.
|
| And yes, if the government knows about someone selling drugs
| and does nothing about it, you can sue the government _.
|
| _ At least in theory, in countries not ridden with corruption
| (which probably aren 't that many).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > if the government knows about someone selling drugs and
| does nothing about it, you can sue the government.
|
| at least in the US, there are only a few limited times the
| government is open to civil litigation - and nonenforcement
| of the law is not usually one of them
| koiueo wrote:
| I didn't know, nonenforcement is a term. I thought it
| might be just negligence.
|
| Should've left the "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer.
|
| Thanks for the clarification.
| Blot2882 wrote:
| If you were the one hosting it on your own server and storing
| CSAM that people were sending, yeah, you should be arrested.
| Nobody cares if you upload a messenger to github, there's
| scores of them.
| hdbejs wrote:
| Many defend Telegram by likening it to a neutral platform, akin
| to TCP, claiming it merely provides a service without
| responsibility for the content. However, this comparison fails
| because TCP is a simple protocol with no ability to control or
| monitor content, whereas Telegram holds keys for most data and is
| capable of content moderation. Unlike E2EE platforms like Signal,
| which cannot comply with requests without breaking encryption
| protocols, and whose jurisdictions often prohibit forced
| backdoors, Telegram's refusal to cooperate, despite having the
| ability, shifts it from being unable to act to willfully aiding
| or sheltering criminal activity.
|
| In this context, Durov's arrest isn't unjust - Telegram knowingly
| allowed illegal content to thrive while ignoring legal
| obligations to assist law enforcement. Refusing to provide data
| when you can, under lawful requests, is tantamount to
| facilitating or even protecting criminal activity. This dismisses
| the complexities of cross-jurisdictional law enforcement, but the
| general concept remains valid.
|
| By the way, I'm not a fan of censorship, but I do believe that a
| platform's baseline for moderation should be compliance with the
| current laws in each jurisdiction, rather than the founder's
| personal moral judgment.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Forcing people to de anonymize speech and enforce state
| censorship ("moderation") is not an appropriate baseline and
| says more about the corruption of France than about Telegram.
| At this point how are they any different than the CCP? Each
| wants to paint their censorship and authoritarian tactics as
| moral and legal and justified.
| poszlem wrote:
| FWIW this post is ChatGPT generated at least partially.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| "Lol, are we just calling everything ChatGPT now whenever
| something is remotely coherent? Unless you're sitting on some
| actual proof, that claim feels like a lazy handwave. Like,
| maybe it's just... a person? Not everything well-written is
| AI-generated, you know"
|
| ---------------------------------------------
|
| Write a witty, hackernews comment responding to this post
| from a user:
|
| "FWIW this post is ChatGPT generated at least partially."
|
| Avoid using all language choices characteristic of text which
| was generated by ChatGPT. Call the user out for having no
| evidence. Add a few spelling errors characteristic of folks
| typing on their phone
| itvision wrote:
| > TCP is a simple protocol with no ability to control or
| monitor content, whereas Telegram holds keys for most data and
| is capable of content moderation.
|
| What?
|
| And how do governments of the world block websites, services or
| the entire external web (as in China)?
|
| > Telegram knowingly allowed illegal content to thrive while
| ignoring legal obligations to assist law enforcement
|
| What? You think Telegram must read and have the means to know
| the contents of all chats on its platforms?
|
| What an atrocious take.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| A anecdote about Pavel in a HN comment from few weeks ago (not
| that I have a stance anything in this situation):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41149755
| d0mine wrote:
| To be fair, it seems typical ceo behavior (gates, jobs, bezos)
| -- you don't become a billionaire by being nice.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| I was fully expecting him to be arrested by a third world
| dictatorship somewhere but, no it's my home country, France. I'm
| ashamed of my country.
|
| Most of the traffic on Telegram is not even encrypted...
|
| EDIT: Yes, reading more about it, nothing to see here, it's not
| about encryption...
| layer8 wrote:
| This is not about encryption, it's about lack of cooperation
| with the authorities, and breaking French law as a French
| citizen.
| croes wrote:
| It's at least https encrypted and stored encrypted on multiple
| telegram servers.
|
| So technically telegram could provide that data.
|
| I guess that's the angle.
| Svoka wrote:
| Why? He seems to be happily providing information to KGB
| (sorry, FSB), russian security service or ignoring backdoors
| they already have. In fact, telegram is one of the most
| powerful disinformation tool employed by russia. None of sane
| and savvy person who stands up to autority would use telegram.
| znpy wrote:
| Bullish situation, Durov is being targeted mainly because it's
| not explicitly and collaboratively affiliated with the NATO
| block.
|
| Terrorism, fraud and child porn are as present on Whatsapp,
| Facebook and other platforms, Facebook even instrumental in the
| Myanmar genocide (2017) and yet I haven't seen Zuck ever being
| detained anywhere at any time.
|
| As a Telegram user, however, Telegram is just great as a chat
| app. It's lightyears ahead of everything else.
| jappgar wrote:
| good on France.
|
| more billionaire CEOs should be arrested.
| g8oz wrote:
| Surely we could have gotten a better source for this story than a
| sketchy crypto news site.
|
| Here is some coverage from some more reputable sources:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2kz9kn93o
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/25/telegram-messaging-...
| contravariant wrote:
| So money laundering, drugs, terrorism and child porn plus some
| others for good measure. Were they deliberately trying to invoke
| all four horsemen of the infocalypse, or is that a side effect?
|
| Had they sticked with just one I may have been less likely to
| view it this as an authoritarian attack on privacy and freedom of
| speech.
| vik0 wrote:
| By all accounts, this looks to me like it's nothing else but a
| politically motivated decision - and it gives ever more credence
| to my take that there is no freedom of speech in Europe
|
| As a side note, this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic
| Church operated at the height of its power - do what we say or
| burn at the stake. We should then not be surprised that no longer
| does technological innovation happen in Europe - at least one
| that's actually important or has the potential to be
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church
| operated at the height of its power
|
| I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've gotten
| older is the way in which these cultural and legalistic norms,
| even 100 years+ bygone, still have considerable influence on
| modern cultures.
|
| Europe, and particularly France, is very Catholic, ex-Holy
| Roman brained. US is very protestant brained. China cribs tons
| of stuff from their old imperial system.
| vik0 wrote:
| >I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've
| gotten older is the way in which these cultural and
| legalistic norms, even 100 years+ bygone, still have
| considerable influence on modern cultures.
|
| Oh yeah, definitely. I've noticed similar patterns
|
| Anyway, and I know this is completely random, but I think
| you'd enjoy reading Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind
| by Tom Holland. It gives a nice overview of the influence of
| Christianity on modern Western civilization; though, after
| reading Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
| (which does, of course, have flaws of its own), I do think
| Hollnad places a bit too much importance on the influence of
| Christianity, as it is not the only thing that has influenced
| modern Western civilization, nor did Christianity develop in
| a vacuum - completely uninfluenced by the societal pressures
| of the time it found itself existing in - which I think
| Holland forgets to mention as you continue reading the book
| deeper and deeper. Nonetheless, both are great books and I
| recommend them
| d0mine wrote:
| It is unrelated to technological innovation (in the short run).
| I expect the same result in US. Europe is not united enough to
| have a separate from US opinion.
| vik0 wrote:
| I really hope the US doesn't become like Europe (Europe in
| general, as I know it's not an actual untied enough polity at
| the moment) when it comes to free speech, and, come to think
| of it, in many, many other aspects as well.
|
| It may sound funny to read, especially if you're an American,
| but I do still see America as the city upon the hill. I've
| lived in America, and I'm currently in ( _sigh_ ) Europe, but
| I wish to return to that shining city in the future. It may
| also sound even funnier to read, but I probably love America
| more than a surprising amount of Americans (not a dig
| directed to any obvious or non-obvious group within the
| country currently), even though I wasn't born there. The US
| has just left a huge impression on me.
| d0mine wrote:
| I envy your blind optimism.
| pshirshov wrote:
| 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 what he deserved.
|
| The overall trend of EU attacks on privacy is very concerning,
| but Tg is not a private messenger, it just was marketed as one.
| d0mine wrote:
| "unpopular"
|
| If we feed all the comments say to chatgpt and ask it (or just
| count by hand pro/against tg posts) what result do you expect?
| dtquad wrote:
| 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.
| kgeist wrote:
| I can find and open pro-Ukrainian channels from inside Russia
| no problem (Zelenski's official channel, UNIAN etc.) Not sure
| what you're talking about?
| holoduke wrote:
| Please source for this. As far as I know there is zero
| difference. From within Russia you can access all pro UA
| channels. Same for in Ukraine.
| itvision wrote:
| > 1) The guy was marketing an open-text messenger as an e2ee
| messenger
|
| Citations needed.
| pshirshov wrote:
| I would delegate the answer to another Russian company:
| https://www.kaspersky.ru/blog/telegram-why-nobody-uses-
| secre...
|
| Also it's not really THAT hard to find "the proofs".
| lxgr wrote:
| I can only once again quote this section of Telegram's privacy
| policy verbatim:
|
| > 8.3. Law Enforcement Authorities
|
| > If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you're a
| terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number
| to the relevant authorities. So far, this has never happened.
| When it does, we will include it in a semiannual transparency
| report published at: https://t.me/transparency.
|
| (from https://telegram.org/privacy)
|
| And interacting with their "Transparency Report" bot yields this:
|
| > [...] Note: for a court decision to be relevant, it must come
| from a country with a high enough democracy index to be
| considered a democracy. Only the IP address and the phone number
| may be shared.
|
| In other words, they are cherry-picking the jurisdictions they
| are even choosing to recognize, and within those they are again
| cherry-picking "terror suspicions" as the only class of law
| enforcement requests they will honor.
|
| If I were the CEO of a company maintaining such a position, I'd
| be a bit more careful on where to refuel my jet.
| dtquad wrote:
| Telegram also doesn't consider Sweden and Germany to be
| democracies for some reason and refuse to collaborate with
| either.
| Svoka wrote:
| This seems to be a blatant lie. In russia telegram is wdidely
| used to prosecute people and crack down on descent. KGB (today
| know as FSB) seem to have free access to anything not encrypted
| on the platform.
| lxgr wrote:
| I have no reason to doubt that, and evidence supports that
| statement (i.e. the fact that it got unblocked in Russia,
| after previously having been blocked).
|
| They could in any case very well be selectively applying that
| policy. But if they were fully cooperating with French
| authorities, why would there be a warrant?
| Svoka wrote:
| Why would KGB would share their toys with western powers?
| They have their ring of dictatorships to use it as one of
| most potent propaganda and tracking tools.
| deniska wrote:
| Some time ago many people in Russia wished that Russia will
| become a normal European country. I guess the wishes were
| granted, but not in a way we wanted.
| neilv wrote:
| I was talking with someone VC-ish, about my frustration with all
| the endpoint hardware and communication software being hopelessly
| insecure for various real threat models.
|
| But that, even if I somehow managed to pull off a successful
| superior solution, as a startup or an open source/hardware
| project, I didn't want to see all the worst criminals flock to my
| service.
|
| Also, I didn't want to be in an adversarial relationship with my
| own government at times, nor to secretly compromise the solution.
|
| (Probably the compromise-compromise I'd choose would be
| proactive: I'd have to backdoor for my government from the start,
| and publicly disclose that there's a backdoor, so I'm not
| misrepresenting to my users. Which would mean dramatically less
| adoption, a lot of privacy&secury people cursing it/me, and
| eventually the backdoor would also be exploited by parties other
| than the intended.)
|
| And also, I don't have the stomach for adversaries that would
| include foreign state dirty-tricks agencies.
|
| Most ostensible security solutions on the market are obviously
| weak, or just plain BS. The ones that might not be, I don't see
| how they don't run into the same barriers.
| salawat wrote:
| News flash: they do. They just see their users as $$$ or don't
| give a damn. And their users don't care/don't know because they
| just want piece of mind or legal risk transferrance.
|
| Legally speaking, if you get right down to it, privacy is de
| facto illegalized, and the old aphorism about "if you make a
| country where witchhunts are illegal, the population will be 3
| civilly minded libertarians, and the rest witches" applies.
|
| Abandon all hope, ye who enter here; or just realize your dream
| is effectively only realizable for the exact type of people you
| don't trust to have it. Then find another line of work.
| eduction wrote:
| Totally irresponsible to cut off the next part of the headline
| that makes clear he is accused of not cooperating with the
| authorities on these things. He's not accused of doing them
| himself.
|
| If you're going to edit the headline you're taking a
| responsibility. Words and sentences and paragraphs can't just be
| cut in arbitrary places any more than code can.
| roadrunner_pi84 wrote:
| The link is blocked in India....is it? Tata Play is the ISP
| roadrunner_pi84 wrote:
| Country Blocked
|
| India
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Kim Dotcom being extradited and this one now coming out of left
| field...Shit just got real.
|
| I suspect this is just the beginning. Western governments are
| losing control of their "narratives" and no one is buying the
| propaganda. This is deeply unsettling for those in authority, so
| it is only logical that they would go after social media that
| they cannot directly coerce/control for their agenda. But not
| just the companies, their owners in particular.
|
| Also likely this is a message for Elon and others - comply or go
| to jail.
|
| Its hard to argue this is tinfoil nonsense when Meta has been
| accused of child exploitation [1] yet Zuckerberg never went to
| jail - bc he complied. [2]
|
| Its time to get our collective heads out of the sand and
| acknowledge that governments are NOT democratic anymore - they
| serve only to preserve themselves, not us!
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/facebook-content-enabled-
| chi...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532
| r721 wrote:
| Active discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353
| (964 comments)
| soufron wrote:
| 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 to wait for a few days before
| understanding what this is really about.
| wklm wrote:
| The only decently prudent comment I've read in this thread so
| far
| beginning_end wrote:
| Is "decripto.org" really a reliable source?
| wslh wrote:
| What I genuinely don't understand is that Pavel Durov didn't see
| it coming.
| xyst wrote:
| Law enforcement is so ill equipped in this digital age. It's
| embarrassing. Instead of evolving, they are punishing the people
| creating services that benefit everybody.
|
| Reminds me of the Tornado Cash service. Used by normal citizens
| to anonymize transactions on the blockchain; and used by a
| smaller percentage of criminals. Law enforcement is inept in this
| digital age. So instead of catching the actual criminals they
| pursue the people making the service.
|
| It's all for nothing of course. People were apparently brought up
| on charges. None of them actual criminals as I recall. Just got
| thrown the book at them. US government even issued "sanctions",
| but they were useless.
| walterbell wrote:
| Previous discussion, 900+ comments,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Really embarrassing being European nowadays.
| miah_ wrote:
| Awesome. Now do Musk and Zuck.
| tharmas wrote:
| Meanwhile Jihadists roam the streets stabbing people in the neck
| let in by Politicians the West needs people because of
| Demographics etc. Should those Politicians be held responsible
| for the actions of people they let in? Equal standards should
| apply should they not?
| robswc wrote:
| I find it ironic. As a kid growing up with the start of the
| internet, many Europeans and Australians implied the US would
| soon be an authoritarian surveillance state. I even deleted all
| my comments and accounts because I believed it (as a kid). Now,
| about 20 years later, I would wager Europe/Australia will reach
| that point first.
|
| I sometimes wish I could bring a crystal ball back in time and
| see how people would react to the future... I think they would be
| horrified at how far we've let corporations and governments into
| our lives.
| wewxjfq wrote:
| But we should let corporations into our lives that aren't even
| following the laws? Frankly, the Telegram users I've seen here
| and on Reddit really don't make a case for themselves, with all
| the sweeping accusations they throw around without knowing
| anything about the case.
|
| 20 years ago it was still reasonable to assume that the person
| you saw posting something was actually real, that the content
| you saw was actually written by somebody like you, curated by
| people like you. It's not like this anymore. It's time to stop
| being naive. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and
| one of them is granting foreign entities unrestricted access to
| the minds of your fellow countrymen.
| dareal wrote:
| It's so beyond my mind that people are finding reasons and
| excuses for the authority to justify the arrest. Let it be
| crystal clear that this is purely politics motivated. There's
| probably 20 other ways to address the concern of the platform.
| Let me ask you this, will France do the same if it's a US company
| or the founder is a US citizen?
| o999 wrote:
| EU is becoming more clearily authoritarian with cases we only
| used to hear about in Russia, China and Iran
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Fascism is rising.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| This is bad.. I really hope he prepared everything that Telegram
| is able to continue without problems.
|
| Is there any information what will happen to the platform yet?
| StrangeClone wrote:
| By this logic the hardware manufacturers or even almighty God can
| be found responsible. God should have stopped them.
| masteranza wrote:
| I hope I'm wrong, as I didn't even know who Pavel Durov was until
| now, but the first thought that came to mind was that it's a show
| of power to intimidate Elon Musk.
| djaouen wrote:
| The reason he was arrested was because he created privacy for
| non-US citizens. Certain Intelligence Agencies won't allow that
| lol
| blumomo wrote:
| Telegram is being partially punished for allowing non main stream
| media flourish: German #RKIfiles today proof that vaccination
| pressure and lock downs where politically motivated, but
| criticized by RKI's scientific personal. I learned this already 4
| years ago, from Telegram channels where scientists and
| journalists where not censored! Now Durov has to pay that bill.
| But maybe Durov should have also cooperated with crime
| investigations! But we all know that this power to read chats
| would have been abused by governments! What's poor Durov going to
| do???
| exceptione wrote:
| OP's article is from a crypto blog and I think it misses the big
| picture. The Spectator [0] is imho more enlightening:
| There has been speculation that Durov's arrest is linked to his
| most recent trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, where he reportedly
| attempted to meet with Vladimir Putin during a state visit
| last week. In recent weeks the Kremlin has begun
| suppressing access to Youtube and WhatsApp in Russia in the wake
| of Ukraine's Kursk incursion. There is speculation that
| Durov may have been attempting to persuade Putin to leave
| Telegram alone - but the Russian leader refused to meet
| him. The fact that Durov flew from Baku to Paris in his private
| plane, knowing that the French had a longstanding warrant
| out for his arrest, is one of the unanswered mysteries of
| this story.
|
| So it seems the mystery has a reasonable explanation. There are
| lots of accidents in Russia, and Pavel probably chose France as
| the safest option.
|
| There are now also rumors that Russian officials got instruction
| from above to delete all their communication from the platform.
|
| We will have to wait for more information.
|
| EDIT: I will add that Pavel already lost control over VKontakte
| in 2014 to the state. By then he had already started Telegram,
| and so he left Russia back then. (Being denied a meeting with
| Putin gives Prigozhin saga vibes.) I think he knew the net is
| closing.
|
| ___
|
| 0. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-arrest-of-pavel-
| duro...
| iamsanteri wrote:
| I think people are missing the fact that this could be just a
| power play situation and intel gathering at intelligence services
| level. We don't know everything, and the stakes may be high right
| now, so maybe the French and more broadly the west, are trying to
| gather info and see what is really going on while trying to get
| an advantage. So a larger geopolitical power play here and way
| less about morals, laws, ethics, precedents, comparable other
| cases etc, etc...
| EasyMark wrote:
| This could easily pivot into "all e2e not officially sanctioned
| is bad because think of the children"if those public channel
| users use e2e to get the nasty bits done and it's provable. They
| (5 eyes countries) really want this to happen, even above all the
| stuff they already tap into legally at switching centers, network
| nodes, and social media companies.
| maxdo wrote:
| Feels like PR from his side.
|
| He will be released as part of some trade. Yesterday Moscow
| arrested someone from the West with 1 kg of heroin will label
| "for distribution" . That's what drag dillers do lol
|
| Telegram is a darknet, masked as a messenger , no matter what you
| think about it. The great proper way to solve such problem should
| be AI, that monitors illegal activity and acts as a legal
| mediator, if it found something bad, red flag, and in this case,
| release the conversation to authorities.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Bet he wishes he added those back doors now.
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