Telegram Surrendered User Data To Authorities Despite Saying To the Contrary, Report Says (androidpolice.com) 55
Several readers have shared the following report: Messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption can claim that they're protecting their users by saying that they've thrown away the key -- metaphorical and literal -- and can't undo what's been scrambled in transmission. Telegram, however, claims it protects every user whether they use E2EE or not, saying that government data requests have to pass an especially high muster before they would comply and that they have never acceded to such request. Not so, a report claims. Der Spiegel reports from sources that Telegram has fulfilled a number data requests from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office involving terror and child abuse suspects. Still more data requests for other criminal cases have been more or less ignored. [...] The German government has been pressuring Dubai-based Telegram to cooperate with its investigations into right-wing extremist groups who have been using the messaging platform to spread their cause and coordinate action. Telegram has ramped up its own enforcement actions recently, but its user and group bans have been as comprehensive as lawmakers have been looking for.
Re:So what about Signal? (Score:5, Informative)
This is 100% expected. I mean hell, the first thing they do is require a phone number. Everything you do on Telegram is tied to your person. What did people expect?
And no, Signal is not better. They're the same. Anything that requires personal information is no good. (Side note: this is why VPN's are useless as far as privacy protection)
For "popular" apps your only choice is Matrix but it sucks in other ways (eg. most of its clients are slow and clunky). It's the only fully open-source, open-run, fully distributed system (ie. there is no one entity that controls all the servers).
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You have to have some kind of address to route messages to in an E2E system, if not phone number then what?
Don't say let users create some random handle either! Two reasons -
Encryption without identity is pointless. If you don't know who you are talking to, you really don't have any expectation of privacy. Could some jerk live streaming the convo on IIRC.
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Uh, a phone number is nothing more than a random handle too. Except in the case of a phone number you've generally already used it in a non-anonymous way and there is no way to change that. So it's random but assigned and controlled by someone not yourself.
As far as identity, that's true but you have to establish trust somehow, EVERYTHING does. Just like when you browse the web how do you know it's actually Google you're talking to? The only way you know is because you trust the application you're using and
Re:So what about Signal? (Score:4, Informative)
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Anything that requires personal information is no good.
Have you ever tried communicating with someone directly without having any information about them specifically? I'd hate to see how your wife communicates with you:
"An open letter to Anonymous Coward (You know who you are),
Don't forget the bloody milk.
Your Partner"
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Signal is definitely not the same as Telegram when it comes to E2E encryption. Telegram doesn't do E2E encryption unless you specifically enable it for a contact. It doesn't work for group chats.
in Signal it's all encrypted, local messages only. group chat or contact doesn't matter. nothing to configure.
telegram is definitely not security minded for sure
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Secure communications and anonymous communications are mutually exclusive. For communications to be secure you have to know who you are talking to. In same way you have an identifier that can't be repudiated be it a phone number or a public key or anything else.
Re:So what about Signal? (Score:4, Informative)
Signal is always e2e encrypted (unless you use it as an sms client too, then those sms are not encrypted. But who outside the US still uses sms?) so the can't give any message information to anyone. Signal messages hide the sender too in the encrypted part so they can't even tell who sends messages to who.
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Private and secure communication has already been invented back in the 90s - PGP. The question is how do pay for operating a communication network without going broke, if not running a profit. And the answer is simple - you have to run a business, which relies of regulations and following the law.
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And how is ad hoc / mesh network will address this problem: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] ?
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Well, along with anybody else. Want to discuss founding a political party or a union? Oops, because of "terror and child abuse suspects" unfortunately the "authorities" and others get to know beforehand and can nicely sabotage that undertaking. Want to discuss an embarrassing medical condition with your doctor online? Well, you are out of luck, it can be used against you now. Have done a stupid video as a teen 20 years back and are now running for political office? Well, unless the TLAs like you, there may
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Did you stretch before posting? Perhaps the focus should be on citizenry electing and holding accountable their governments rather that creating a lawless escape route to subvert law enforcement?
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One definitions of the state is "an entity having the monopoly on violence in a certain geographical area"
The state, the govt decides which laws pass, or not. Every system is always one or two election cycles away from a totalitarian rule (The USA got lucky this time). If there is no underground movement, it will be massively harder to gain some freedom back.
Some people will shout "Don't take my guns", I don't care about guns, but will sure as hell shout "Don't make all my communication logged and searchabl
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Exactly. Also, the purpose of law enforcement is not to "solve" all crime and it never was. The original purpose of the police was to keep the unwashed masses under control, i.e. keep society working as it worked before and to strike down any upheavals. The newer version is that laws are actually used in this and that the law does not purely serve those in power. But the primary purpose was and is to keep society functioning.
That said, i completely agree that a free society critically needs a part of the cr
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I once read an article/paper that tried to estimate the freedom of a society based on what it costs the state to track 24/7 a single citizen. The conclusion (as far as I remember) was that around 6-8 full time people for one citizen ensured a quite good ratio. And that mass internet traffic logging might reduce the cost dramatically.
For the life of me I can't find it again...
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Makes a lot of sense to me. Was it based on data from the GDR (German Democratic Republic)? They did old-style analog surveillance which was pretty well documented. I do not remember what their snoops to target ratio was though.
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You can elect a government that you can hold accountable for its actions? What magical land do you happen to live in?
Re:I'm OK with this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it certainly looks like it might become some cyberpunk dystopia, where "terror and child abuse" may no longer be limited to probable causes but "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" becomes the motto.
The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse not without a reason is a term that originated from the cyberpunk literature. [wikipedia.org]
Being from Romania where we had to live under the ever watching eye of the Securitate in the 80's, where parents couldn't speak openly to their children, because the children might be questioned in school or kindergarten, where telephones were tapped, neighbors were bribed, extorted, or beaten into spying on you, where you had to be careful what you say anywhere out of fear to be disappeared as an enemy of the state, I'm quite skeptical whenever it comes to issues like these.
I mean in understand that the police needs some degree of intransparency in order to pursue such 'genuine' criminals, who might otherwise try to cover their tracks.
But it's still not confidence inspiring when we hear about something like this from the press first.
With an increasing degree of uncertainty of what is going to be legal and what not in the near future it's not confidence inspiring at all. See the US with Roe v.s Wade being overturned. Could looking up contraceptives on the internet soon be seen as conspiracy to commit murder? That's found out because not voting for the correct party is grounds for being a suspect?
I hope I'm wrong, but with the lunacy that's going on there I don't think it's a scenario too absurd.
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Sounds to me like the problem is with a lack of governmental oversight by the citizens. Shouldn't the focus be on fixing laws rather than creating an escapist fantasy land where crime goes unpunished?
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However as a matter of fact they're often above the law that otherwise affects everyone else.
Sure, sometimes they get sued and even lose in court in Germany, only to get a clap on the hand and being told to "don't do it again". Not much accountability going on there and thus virtually no deterrent to find something other way to break the law.
And thanks to people who seemingly like to invert Blackstone's ratio where you'd rather punish 10 innocents in
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Governmental oversight more often than not requires perfect secrecy on the side of the overseers (citizens). One example for all: Snowden.
Other examples might include exposing war crimes in wars the govt propagands its "the good guys", various corruption affairs, conflicts of interest, willful ignorance...
What we want in effect are journalists with perfect secrecy capabilities.
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Sounds to me like the problem is with a lack of governmental oversight by the citizens. Shouldn't the focus be on fixing laws rather than creating an escapist fantasy land where crime goes unpunished?
The only place you differ from the other posters is which escapist fantasy land you believe in.
Your suggestions about addressing the lack of citizen oversight and "fixing the laws", works if we believe that we (the individual caring citizens who want truth and justic) are the only forces at work while the other players in the game stay still for us to oversee them. That is just a particular variety of escapist fantasy. In the real world there are numerous other forces reacting to whatever we do -- the gover
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How do you propose we deal with this? https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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I mean, if we are making wild unsubstantiated guesses, it sounds to me like you support murderess and pedophiles.
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Here you go. This is your "freedom" in action: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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I'm more inclined to support pedos than certain governments.
I'm too old to get fucked by pedos, but you're never too old to get fucked by the feds.
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It's nice that your first concern if for your own wellbeing. Meanwhile, pedos are using yet another encrypted network: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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This is a given. You can undermine every single form of communication and the only thing you accomplish that way is that the people you want to catch will move on to something else.
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Re:I'm OK with this. (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with libertarian dream is that it assumes good natured participants. Kind of like communism. Hasn't worked for the same reason.
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Have I done something wrong? Well, not to my knowledge. But laws change. And what is "socially acceptable" changes even more radically. Maybe I told a joke a while ago that isn't quite PC? Who knows, maybe that's going to be illegal in a couple years because it's "hate speech" now.
Did I stop telling them? Or do I have to deal with the "Have you stopped beating your wife?" questions now?
You're smoking? Well, for now it's legal, you think it's gonna be in the future? Did you stop? Quitting smoking is really h
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Why do you hate freedom?
Because that's the essence of the whole problem here. Censorship is an absolute. It is or it is not. You can't just censor "a little", because a tool available will be used. And an excuse to use it is quickly found. For national security, to uphold civil peace, for the children, to squelch "fake news" (which in turn poses the question who gets to say what's fake), pick your poison.
In my country, a lot of tools that were created by one government to deal with a crisis were later abuse
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I "hate freedom" so much because I'd like to avoid this: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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And, what kind of success can you present? Well?
I mean, aside of eroding privacy while not in the slightest impeding what you allegedly try to combat.
Telegram: Not E2E Encrypted! (Score:5, Interesting)
Telegram is not Signal, it is not even WhatsApp in its deployment of effective E2E encryption. See Moxie Marlinspike's commentary on Twitter [twitter.com]
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And nobody is surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Any kind of regular commercial enterprise is not trustworthy. They will often just simply lie about what they actually do. Money corrupts.
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Money corrupts
Money also is the source of trust between parties. The big problem here is there's no exchange of money between customers and the commercial enterprises running messaging service.
Well now (Score:1)
I guess the Left-wing extremist are breathing easier.
"The German government has been pressuring Dubai-based Telegram to cooperate with its investigations into right-wing extremist groups who have been using the messaging platform to spread their cause and coordinate action."
MEGA GAME (Score:1)
Deleted Whatsapp now time to delete Telegram (Score:2)
Use Signal (Score:3)
If you have any respect for privacy, and don't have time to invest in a more expensive solution: use Signal. It is open source, well known, and has been trustworthy... so far.
Of course things can go south. But that is what we have.
Failing that... due to maybe friends network... try Whatsapp, with a "maybe" in it.