Turkey Rolls Out Domestic Rival To WhatsApp, Raising Surveillance Concerns (reuters.com) 36
Turkey has launched a domestic messaging app to rival Facebook's popular WhatsApp Messenger service, raising concerns among government critics that Ankara (capital of Turkey) could use the new platform to tighten surveillance and bolster an 18-month-old crackdown. From a report: The app, called PttMessenger after Turkey's Post and Telegraph General Directorate (PTT), was introduced in a limited roll-out to state institutions and some private companies this week. It is expected to be publicly available in six months. PttMessenger will provide a "system safer than WhatsApp," government spokesman Bekir Bozdag told a news conference. "Since no data is stored with the host, it will be impossible to access these data. A system safer than WhatsApp has been developed." Critics cast doubt on the suggestion PttMessenger data could not be retrieved, fearing it will give authorities greater ability to monitor dissent, pointing to the widespread crackdown that was launched after a failed military coup in July 2016.
Totally trust this (Score:4, Funny)
Governments have never lied to their populace about surveillance...
Ergodan gets surveillance tips from Wiley Coyote (Score:1)
Ergodan: Come, peons, to my new communication service. I call it, The Totally Not-Backdoored and Trustworthy App to Discuss All Conspiracies and Plots. Did I mention it's FREE?
Re:oh, get over it (Score:4, Insightful)
There was never a real coup - you think the military would launch a coup without even knowing where the head of state was?
His plane was supposedly intercepted by conspirators in jets, who were 'persuaded' to return to being loyal... all in time for Erdogan to arrest more than 50,000 opposition supporters, shut down all opposition media and arrest their reporters, eliminate opposition supporters from schools, and purge the military of anyone not personally loyal to Erdogan.
Despite all that, he still runs at less than 50% popularity. Even after the 'coup, he barely broke 60%, and it's been back done for a long time. But hey - maybe if he manages to genocide the Kurds, his popularity will rise again - most Turks really hate the Kurds.
The West should take note: This is how a civilized first-world nation descends into a third-world dictatorship. 1918 and 1933 were the last times we saw this. At least there aren't 6 million Kurds for him to kill...
Re:Istanbul, not Constantinople (Score:5, Insightful)
Turks emigrated to Europe for 20 years or more, they could do it again. Since choosing where you live is a big deal, they will choose.
If they are allowed to.
US shouldn't point fingers with NSA extension (Score:1, Insightful)
Given the NSA spying was just extended again, the US has no business pointing fingers at anyone nor does anyone in Washington have the right to consider themselves American. If they can spend more time finding ways to block Trump, your current sitting President but have no problem spying on everyone.
I believe the critics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost 20 years ago, my company gave a brief presentation to visitors from the Turkish National Police. They wanted network traffic monitoring tools to expose people visiting "illegal websites". I'm sure the mindset hasn't changed since then.
Re: (Score:2)
Every ISP is spying on customers' traffic. ... you name it.
Turkish, American, Chinese
Turkey Rolls - Yummy!! (Score:4, Funny)
Concerns (Score:1)
We should instead be concerned about how none of these messaging networks can talk to each other. IM should work like email, but it doesn't, and nobody has a good reason why.
This should be fun. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm looking forward to reading what someone finds after reverse engineering the app... and then what happens to that person.
Finally something more reasonable! (Score:2)
More than "no reasonable".
It is a Signal fork (Score:5, Interesting)
They even admit it on Twitter. It was a fork of the open source Signal software, meaning there is a big potential violation of GPLv3 terms by the government:
https://twitter.com/PTTKurumsa... [twitter.com]
"PttMessenger, signal tabanl açk kaynak kod kullanlarak gelitirilmitir. PttMessenger, tüm gelitirme haklar ile PTT A..'ye aittir.
Zebrachat, PttMessenger'n gelitirme aamasnda kullanlan proje ve ürün addr."
roughly:
"PttMessenger is developed based on the open signal sources. All rights of PttMessenger belong to the PTT A.S.
Zebrachat is a code name for a development snapshot of PttMessenger."
I could not find the source code to neither PttMessenger nor Zebrachat. If they are indeed based on Signal (which has very good security btw.), this might become one of the highest profile open source copyright infringements.
It's called "Will you marry me, single girl?" (Score:2)
Source: Every single female friend I have who visited Turkey.