Was the Arrest of Telegram's CEO Inevitable? (platformer.news) 174
Casey Newton, former senior editor at the Verge, weighs in on Platformer about the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
"Fending off onerous speech regulations and overzealous prosecutors requires that platform builders act responsibly. Telegram never even pretended to." Officially, Telegram's terms of service prohibit users from posting illegal pornographic content or promotions of violence on public channels. But as the Stanford Internet Observatory noted last year in an analysis of how CSAM spreads online, these terms implicitly permit users who share CSAM in private channels as much as they want to. "There's illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?" asks a question on Telegram's FAQ page. The company declares that it will not intervene in any circumstances: "All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants," it states. "We do not process any requests related to them...."
Telegram can look at the contents of private messages, making it vulnerable to law enforcement requests for that data. Anticipating these requests, Telegram created a kind of jurisdictional obstacle course for law enforcement that (it says) none of them have successfully navigated so far. From the FAQ again:
To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. [...] To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.
As a result, investigation after investigation finds that Telegram is a significant vector for the spread of CSAM.... The company's refusal to answer almost any law enforcement request, no matter how dire, has enabled some truly vile behavior. "Telegram is another level," Brian Fishman, Meta's former anti-terrorism chief, wrote in a post on Threads. "It has been the key hub for ISIS for a decade. It tolerates CSAM. Its ignored reasonable [law enforcement] engagement for YEARS. It's not 'light' content moderation; it's a different approach entirely.
The article asks whether France's action "will embolden countries around the world to prosecute platform CEOs criminally for failing to turn over user data." On the other hand, Telegram really does seem to be actively enabling a staggering amount of abuse. And while it's disturbing to see state power used indiscriminately to snoop on private conversations, it's equally disturbing to see a private company declare itself to be above the law.
Given its behavior, a legal intervention into Telegram's business practices was inevitable. But the end of private conversation, and end-to-end encryption, need not be.
"Fending off onerous speech regulations and overzealous prosecutors requires that platform builders act responsibly. Telegram never even pretended to." Officially, Telegram's terms of service prohibit users from posting illegal pornographic content or promotions of violence on public channels. But as the Stanford Internet Observatory noted last year in an analysis of how CSAM spreads online, these terms implicitly permit users who share CSAM in private channels as much as they want to. "There's illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?" asks a question on Telegram's FAQ page. The company declares that it will not intervene in any circumstances: "All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants," it states. "We do not process any requests related to them...."
Telegram can look at the contents of private messages, making it vulnerable to law enforcement requests for that data. Anticipating these requests, Telegram created a kind of jurisdictional obstacle course for law enforcement that (it says) none of them have successfully navigated so far. From the FAQ again:
To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. [...] To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.
As a result, investigation after investigation finds that Telegram is a significant vector for the spread of CSAM.... The company's refusal to answer almost any law enforcement request, no matter how dire, has enabled some truly vile behavior. "Telegram is another level," Brian Fishman, Meta's former anti-terrorism chief, wrote in a post on Threads. "It has been the key hub for ISIS for a decade. It tolerates CSAM. Its ignored reasonable [law enforcement] engagement for YEARS. It's not 'light' content moderation; it's a different approach entirely.
The article asks whether France's action "will embolden countries around the world to prosecute platform CEOs criminally for failing to turn over user data." On the other hand, Telegram really does seem to be actively enabling a staggering amount of abuse. And while it's disturbing to see state power used indiscriminately to snoop on private conversations, it's equally disturbing to see a private company declare itself to be above the law.
Given its behavior, a legal intervention into Telegram's business practices was inevitable. But the end of private conversation, and end-to-end encryption, need not be.
Friendly reminder about censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
Those in power who want to censor the people have never been the good guys. Not once. This is about controlling speech because, if they can do that, there will be no limit to the power they wield.
Re: Friendly reminder about censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
Must be nice to be THIS removed from the real world and actual human history.
Re: Friendly reminder about censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Let's just give two well known examples.
Before the D day landings, which were what freed France from the Nazis, most information about movements of troops in the UK was censored. This meant that it took Hitler days to accept that the D day landings were the main force and gave the allies time to
Information about the breaking of the Enigma code was censored and restricted absolutely both during WWII and afterwards. During the war this allowed the allies to continue to break German codes without the Germans realizing and allowed them to destroy the U-boat fleet which would otherwise have made supplying the UK from the US almost impossible and have vastly lengthened the war. More ambiguously, after the war this allowed the allies to keep selling Enigma as a valid encryption technology.
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Let's just give two well known examples.
These examples of temporary restrictions due to war-time measures. It works similarly to classifying some information as secret. Is France at war (with Internet) today? Because otherwise your examples are not applicable.
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What tells you that this was censored?
its literally called war time censorship
Re: Friendly reminder about censorship (Score:2)
I can't speak for Britain, but in the US there was none. There was an "Office of Censorship", which was a regulatory body that only dealt with the press, and their adherence to these regulations were purely voluntary.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/0... [nytimes.com]
Notably, the words "Manhattan Project" weren't exactly a secret, but the press never mentioned it. Though a bunch of little communists came out in support of a brutal dictator because they loved his ideology.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/m... [osti.gov]
Though "brutal dictat
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but in the US there was none.
You literally call spanish flu the spanish flu because speaking about the flu in US was banned, but they could speak about it happening in spain
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Banned by whom? As far as I can tell, within the US specifically, the media just had other, much bigger news items to report on, so they barely mentioned it. But it was mentioned in local newspapers, and public measures were taken:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/... [gilderlehrman.org]
It sounds more like you're just stuck on stupid.
On a related tangent, which Western European countries weren't participants in WWI, therefore having news media largely unconcerned with it?
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How do you prevent civilians from doing that? If something is impossible to prevent, it is no point in making it illegal.
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If something is impossible to prevent, it is no point in making it illegal.
So we may as well make murder legal now?
Did you really think this through?
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The secrets were kept with censorship. Newspapers, for example, actively collaborated with the government in blocking news that might give information away. See also D-notices [wikipedia.org] but understand that this system had full legal powers.
Yes, Russia and China are enemies of free speech. (Score:2)
Re: Friendly reminder about censorship (Score:2)
Those in power who want to censor the people have never been the good guys. Not once.
Go and look up why the epidemic last century was called the "Spanish" flu.
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Indeed. They may be using some pretexts (a.k.a. "lies") now to mask what they really desire, but in the end it is always about the suppression of ideas and criticism of those in power.
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Those in power who want to censor the people have never been the good guys. Not once.
So the USA were the bad guys in WWII? I ask because censorship was in wide use by all levels of government in the US for the duration.
This is more likely about Russia (Score:2)
Telegram's CEO is a billionaire. Once you're at that level you're in the Big Club George Carlin talked about. They have class solidarity and take care of their own.
There's really only two things that'll break that. One is if you go after one of your own. Like Bernie Madoff did or Liz Holmes.
And the second is foreign policy.
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Your subject is correct.
Pavel Durov had intense cooperation with ruZZia, flying there many times upon important moments, while he declares super-secrecy in his advertisement.
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Unfortunately, there will always be secrets that governments need to keep. Whether that is stealing technology (look up Alexander Hamilton), or hiding capabilities from opponents. In addition there are some forms of 'free speech' which most people find unacceptable such as incitement to violence or child pornography. So we can never have completely free speech.
However, in the modern era where computers, and soon AI, can be used to monitor vast volumes of 'free speech' there the risk that this can be misuse
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That is true even when they think they are the good guys. Freedom of speech is something I saw vanishing in online communities in the late 1980s. It has gotten progressively worse like boiling a lobster. Now it is a fact in Britain where you cannot insult or mention the misdeeds of members of the Muhammadan religion. It is now a fact when you cannot mention that a German legislator is fat without spending time behind bars. It's marginally legal here in the US where it's thugs who enforce their viewpoints vi
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COINTELPRO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Homan Square facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Battle of Blair Mountain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Tuskegee Syphilis Study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Etc..
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but not freely providing it to school children is state censorship.
Correct, when that item is removed or not purchased due to the personal political preferences of administrators or PTA.
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Just because school districts don't buy and stock books that they feel are inappropriate for the children who use their libraries, it is no different than totalitarian censorship. Bookstores or Amazon are free to sell whatever they like, but not freely providing it to school children is state censorship.
Man, you were so close to almost getting it. Lemme give you a little help. The Halloween Horror nights event recently began at Universal's theme parks and it's heavily based on content that most people would agree isn't appropriate for kids. There's no age limit for the event. Why is there no age limit? Because you can't get in without paid admission.
Is it starting to click with you yet? We're not keeping things away from kids out of a lack of age-appropriateness, we're keeping them away from kids out
yes (Score:2)
Methinks the laddie doth protest too much. (Score:2)
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i don't care because i don't do anything felonious
I'm assuming you also probably live in a country with relatively decent human rights protections. Privacy is more important for say, people who are LGBTQ+ in one of those shithole countries where such a thing is still punishable by death.
Same old (Score:2, Insightful)
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Sounds like they want backdoors
There is nothing to back door. The issue here isn't end-to-end encryption, the issue here is a company without encryption publicly hosting content that literally every other social / chat platform would take down on request or hand over non-encrypted data to law enforcement.
Backdoor implies they are going after encryption which simply isn't the case.
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Not sure about the morals of that guy, but this is definitely an attempt to force backdoors.
Standard operating procedure, eh? (Score:2)
If you can't dispute them, discredit them? 8^O
Steady, lad. There'll be another Telegram soon, you'll just need to wait. You'll be okay. Just stick to your trophy trunk until your next big thing comes along.
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I mean, your Epstein swipe means you think buck-yar is either a multi-millionaire or a powerful politico of some stripe since those are the people Epstien ran with, which is a weird take but whatever.
Some people do evil stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Making it more difficult to communicate to other evil people does not eliminate the evil
Re:Some people do evil stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Making it more difficult to communicate to other evil people does not eliminate the evil
It is much worse than that. Making it more difficult for everyone to communicate makes the evil more likely to go undetected.
Re:it's a good thing this doesn't affect everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't affect me at all - but, then again, I'm not into pedophilia, or smuggling, or terrorism, or . . .
Non sequitur. Alternative facts not accepted. (Score:2)
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There is always lots of useful idiots to cheer in the next totalitarian regime. And yes, this type of thing affects everybody even if many are too dumb to see that and too uneducated to know the plentiful historical and current examples.
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You cant even imagine that there is another reason than the one you have.
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Making it more difficult to communicate to other evil people does not eliminate the evil
It's not about difficulty to communicate, it's literally about taking down illegal content that is publicly shared unencrypted in a group. Plenty of platforms have evil people communicating via encryption, they also don't hand over data, and they are not being prosecuted. Think about why for a second.
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Got a reference for that? Because that is not what I read so far. I may have overlooked something. Or not.
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TFS would be a good start for you to read.
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So you do not. Figures.
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but you didnt
we can easily see why because we can also try to cut and paste the text you say exits, but for some strange reason, this web page doesn't agree with the claims you are making about this web page
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Having murder codified as a crime does not eliminate murder, yet here we are.
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By providing low risk opportunities to commit evil acts, they're in fact propagating evil. Basic psycho
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Technology has tipped over the balance (Score:5, Interesting)
In the old days, it is easy for the authority to wiretap one person, but hard to wiretap everyone. Now it is all or nothing. Either the authority can wiretap nobody within these online platforms, or they wiretap everyone, put them in big data analysis, and arrest anyone who dare oppose the authority.
Either we find some way to flip the technology back to the old balance, or we have to choose between "Big Brother Is Watching You" dystopia or communication heaven for various criminal groups.
I treasure freedom of speech and democracy more. Giving up freedom of speech and democracy is not a solution of crimes. The authority can be the biggest threat to civilian safety, even though they will never let outsiders label themselves as criminals.
How much do you treasure your freedom of speech? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: How much do you treasure your freedom of speec (Score:4, Informative)
I have served in the US Military (specifically, the US Army) to defend that particular freedom, among others.
Defend it from whom? By all indications the only people threatening American democracy are other Americans.
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You want my license? Come and take it. (Score:2)
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Re: You want my license? Come and take it. (Score:2)
We know, you are a good little lapdog.
Next.
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Freedom of speech, is so intertwined with freedom of thought, so as to make it a natural right in and of itself. The only thing that is unlawful per se, is using the speech as a means to commit some other separate crime, and not the speech itself or its mental or emotional effects, as the forbidden effect.
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I stood for the United States of America. (Score:2)
I still can't tell you everything I did while I was in the military. They had a big meeting with me before I left and they actively stressed that point. I don't suppose you ever served, so I guess you wouldn't know about that.
I suppose I can tell you I
serve so that I could oppose and denigrate our allies in their pursuit of justice.
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Re: I stood for the United States of America. (Score:2)
Big internet tuff guy 2.0
Guys, *he knows stuff* look out!
Re: I stood for the United States of America. (Score:3)
The OP mentioned freedom of speech. You then said you defended "that particular freedom" during your time in the army. Someone else asked you to explain "from whom" did you defend Americans' freedom of speech. You then prevaricated by saying you couldn't divulge *everything* you did, hoping we'd be dumb enough to fall for that rhetorical sleight of hand. The simple question remains, from whom did you defend Americans' freedom of speech?
Slashdot moderation (Score:5, Insightful)
I have served in the US Military (specifically, the US Army) to defend that particular freedom, among others. What have you done to preserve freedom? And please, your use of the new Silk Road to "stick it to the man" doesn't count.
I use my slashdot mod points to turn the volume down on trolling and flamebait. I specifically look for insulting comments with no insight or informational content.
And there are a *lot* of these. It's surprising how popular a straight-up insult of a hated individual will be; for example, Elon Musk.
That's about all I can manage for this issue. There are a lot of ills in the world and I am actively making efforts for one of these, using my core competence, and it's for a particular ill that I might be able to help.
Not everyone has to expend effort in every field. I, for one, have no interest in anything climate related: it's too hard to sort through the noise to get to the signal, life's too short, I just don't give a fuck. I don't worry about Hamas versus IDF, either. I hear there's a difference between the two, but smarter people are handling it and I just can't be eff'd to give a damn.
My point here is that not everyone needs to be maximally virtuous in all possible ways. If you want to have a positive effect on the world, choose *one* aspect that appeals to you and concentrate on that. Focus on choices that lead to physical actions you can take.
The problem with military service is that, beyond the initial choice to serve, once you enlist all your choices are taken away from you. You don't have to think, you don't have to choose, you do what you're told for the duration. I also note that in my younger years *avoiding* military service was seen as defending your freedom. They even made a movie [wikipedia.org] about the practice.
So I don't really see how that single choice you made - to serve in the Army - was all that important to defending freedom of speech.
Most of the rights violations we see in this nation come from within, and the Army doesn't defend against that.
Now THAT is high quality trolling! (Score:2)
I doubt seriously my ability to explain it to you. I would advise you to simply reread the thread from TLP, but I perceive clearly that your intent is trolling and comprehension would have no effect on that.
Re: Now THAT is high quality trolling! (Score:2)
...and THIS is low quality trolling! (Score:2)
(*nothing worth blockquoting*)
(*nothing to do with the thread*)
(*includes shameless plug for Grok*)
Incidentally, I've never used Grok, I don't trust the guy that runs the company. Elon Musk is a well-known opponent of free speech everywhere (except for himself and Donald Trump, of course).
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Why is it that you cant imagine another reason? Everyone now knows because you way overcompensated. You are now fucking problem.
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You mean you did believe the pretext given to you? Congratulations, you got scammed.
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The US Military is not abut "defending freedom", its about exerting power, your job is to "uphold the laws and constitution of the united states", but that constitution is about "defending freedom", but defining it, i.e. X is free from Y to do / not do Z.
You were in the military. You don't remember well (Score:2)
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Yes, it is.
First, there is no freedom of speech in France.
Second, it is a police state. Emergency police powers have been made permanent, they even added them into the constitution.
Third, the main characteristic of a modern republic is the separation of powers, from executive to legislative to judiciary, and this does NOT exist in France. The government uses and abuses a law dubbed 49.3 to pass any law it wants, even and especially if the whole population is against it.
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In the old days, it is easy for the authority to wiretap one person, but hard to wiretap everyone. Now it is all or nothing. Either the authority can wiretap nobody within these online platforms, or they wiretap everyone, put them in big data analysis, and arrest anyone who dare oppose the authority.
Either we find some way to flip the technology back to the old balance, or we have to choose between "Big Brother Is Watching You" dystopia or communication heaven for various criminal groups.
The contradiction is that even if you're willing to make that trade-off it's not actually your choice.
In this case, that choice belongs to the people of France. From the summary:
To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept
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Remember 9/11? A few law enforcement screw-ups, and airport security weaker than it should have been, and the outcome was a massive law enforcement overreach and ridiculous new levels of airport security.
Now imagine another 9/11 got organized on Telegram. Now you're not just losing Telegram, you're having major portions of the public grab those encryption keys and shove them into the waiting hands of the government.
If you treasure freedom of speech and democracy then you need some reasonable restrictions to avoid a big incident that triggers a major backlash.
It's possible to both have broad protections for speech while giving the government the right to unveil certain speech subject to oversight. It requires vigilance on part of the people, but the balance is possible.
The extremist position proposed by Telegram? That only lasts as long as it takes for things to blow up (possibly literally) and then you won't like the new normal.
As written in my original post, the only way to avoid being "extremist" is through technology advances / regressions. With current tech level, we are stuck. The 9/11 style disaster is bound to happen again by Murphy's law. Either we invent some magic tech to regain the balance via technical means, or we try our best to advocate / educate people from falling into the trap.
I remember there are a number of reports after 9/11, showing the security agencies did get traces and evidences of those terrorists wer
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As written in my original post, the only way to avoid being "extremist" is through technology advances / regressions. With current tech level, we are stuck. The 9/11 style disaster is bound to happen again by Murphy's law. Either we invent some magic tech to regain the balance via technical means, or we try our best to advocate / educate people from falling into the trap.
Think of it like immigration. Even if you believe completely open borders are the moral thing to do, if you somehow had the power to flip that switch they would also be the dumb thing to do. People would freak out and you'd get a counter-reaction that leads to a more restrictive system than before. The best play is to figure out the best system you think can stick, and in this case, that system isn't a major app like Telegram offering a fully encrypted law-enforcement proof chat room for terrorists.
I don't
Cheese is enabling a staggering amount of abuse (Score:2)
These "enabling" arguments make no sense, it is not designed for the sole purpose of facilitate abuse, therefore it is perpetrators of the abuse and not the platform that is responsible for the abuse. For example, if your product is a platform for delivering and managing malicious payloads then you may be responsible for enabling the abuse. If your product is a remote desktop management platform, but scammers
The problem with free speech (Score:3)
is that you also have to allow unsavory free speech, involving pedophilia, Nazi propaganda and whatever else. The minute you try to curb the latter, you kill the former because you make an arbitrary judgment call on what speech is acceptable and what isn't.
And France has a horrible track record in the matter: there are laws on the book in France that will have holocaust deniers and Nazi propagandist do hard time. I don't like Nazis anymore than pedos, but I like anti-censorship laws even less.
Free speech has been a lost cause in France since the end of WW2. The Telegram CEO really should have known better than to set foot in France.
You're right. He should've stayed in Russia. (Score:2)
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Durov is a French citizen. He was in France. (Score:5, Insightful)
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France having no freedom of speech has everything to do with freedom of speech.
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France has freedom of speech. It just has a couple of specific carve-outs, none of them which are relevant here since this is not a freedom of speech issue.
Freedom of speech doesn't magically mean you don't have to obey other laws.
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How does that follow? Some speech is illegal (eg verbally offering to pay someone to murder you), but being illegal doesn't make it not be speech.
And there is no limit to the number of laws that can restrict speech, eg laws against blasphemy or offending the king or telling an enemy your nation's troop movements; for good or ill every nation on Earth bans certain speech, usually by calling it something other than speech. Durov's crime is publishing illegal speech on his server plus not removing it.
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Some speech is illegal (eg verbally offering to pay someone to murder you), but being illegal doesn't make it not be speech.
No one has been arrested for "speech". Literally this has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Go read the list of charges from your favourite news site.
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Isn't that what I said? A thing that is communication (aka speech), but is called something other than speech. Every single charge, with possible but unlikely exception of money laundering.
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is that you also have to allow unsavory free speech, involving pedophilia, Nazi propaganda and whatever else. The minute you try to curb the latter, you kill the former because you make an arbitrary judgment call on what speech is acceptable and what isn't.
That is also a core reason why it is so easy to kill free speech. Too many people are not intellectually capable enough to understand this blatantly obvious and historically nicely documented mechanism.
Re:The problem with free speech (Score:5, Informative)
Freedom of speech in France has always known limits.
See the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (26 August 1789), of supra-constitutional value in France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Article IV -- Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law. "
"Article XI -- The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law."
Therefore insults, libel, death threats were always prohibited as they directly harm others. Insulting the dead is also prohibited (formally since 1881).
The reason that you cannot, in France, promote the Nazi propaganda the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) declared the Nazi party a criminal organization. Same thing as you cannot promote murder or the Mafia, by the principle that it is intended to cause harm to people, and is therefore outside the limits of Liberty as defined by the foundational declaration of 1789. By the same rationale, antisemitism and racism being intended to harm others, these are ideologies you cannot promote (except, I believe, a deputy addressing the National Assembly, otherwise they wouldn't be able to remove any previous limitation). You discuss them scholarly. You can write a book showing a balanced vision of Communism, Sharia Law. You can republish Mein Kampf. You can discuss ideas; you cannot promote them when they harm people.
A more legal explanation can be found in a decision of the Constitutional Council (the supreme level in France). It refers to the Nuremberg tribiunal and to the 1789 text. See 2015-512 QPC (in French) https://www.conseil-constituti... [conseil-co...tionnel.fr]
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Your track record in the matter does not seem to include defending Julian Assange.
According to the number of pro-free-speech posts here and against-Julian-Assange there, I am wondering if the defence of free speech is really the conviction of such posters, or if some other agenda might be involved.
I'm confused (Score:5, Interesting)
So, e.g. when I'm on WhatsApp I can create groups with up to 1024 members, the company cannot snoop on me and I can share absolutely anything without any repercussions.
In Telegram people can do the same however the company can snoop on them but chooses not to and thus it's been declared to be "above the law".
How can these two be reconciled? Does it mean that not snooping on your users when you have the means to is illegal? Does "the law" imply the company must actively snoop on its users?
In no way I'm trying to vindicate Telegram, or Durov, I'm just curious.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Just a semi-educated guess here. I think the answer has to do if there's CSAM or other criminal activity on a server that can be subpoenaed or not. I have no experience with Whatsapp or Telegram, while I use Signal a lot. From Signal's Group Chat documentation, (emphasis is mine):
Signal by design retains practically zero user data and besides open-sourcing the software, Signal probably complies with government requests to turn over what little user data they retain on their servers. Telegram retains a lot of data while providing no content moderation and while also ignoring government subpoenas. Whatsapp (Meta) probably complies with subpoenas, keeping them out of the news.
I don't know. Good thing that doesn't matter. (Score:3)
As long as Mister Durov has his day in court, I'm satisfied that all is well. I'm pretty sure that the French judicial system will see to it that Mister Durov does indeed get that day in court.
But to answer your question, I guess all the other guilty parties you've named are still able to get away with it. Lucky them.
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How can these two be reconciled?
The same way how Apple can't hand over encryption keys it doesn't have - as stated in US courts. If someone *can* do an action then that action is covered under the laws of the land. If someone *can't* do an action then it renders the laws irrelevant.
Does it mean that not snooping on your users when you have the means to is illegal?
Yes in literally every country. Authoritarian nations demand continuous snooping. Democratic nations usually have systems in place governed by the courts - e.g. warrants. To give you a practical example, if you have e.g. text communications or pictures, and you
Meanwhile (Score:2)
There's so much going on that it looks like the general public is once again only allowed to learn bits and piec
inevitable (Score:2)
Inevitable. Therein lies a deep philosophical question. Everything that ever happens was always going to happen, and therefore inevitable.
LOL @ noobs freaking out (Score:2)
It's hilarious to see the number of people on here acting like the last remaining venue for communicating behind Big Brother's back has fallen. There are lots of technically superior options out there, Telegram just happened to be popular with criminals who weren't smart enough to set up anything less noob-friendly than Signal or Whatsapp, while being technically inferior to those mainstream options in a lot of ways. I think its only practical advantage was for contacting marks for the purpose of pulling sc
Remember when they killed PGP? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to your belief, PGP and GnuPG are alive and well.
I thought you said "they" killed those? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who is “they” and when was TrueCrypt killed? I can’t find any evidence of it being compromised or killed.
Re: (Score:3)
Who is “they” and when was TrueCrypt killed? I can’t find any evidence of it being compromised or killed.
IIRC, it wasn't really "killed." Truecrypt had some issues that were found in security audits, around the time Windows XP support was terminated by Microsoft. (I know, I know.) It was superseded by Veracrypt, which has much better functionality anyway, and is currently maintained.
Re: Inevitable - yes (Score:2)
If you and I make plans to plant a bomb over the phone, a telecom isn't responsible for that because they have common carrier status. Would that change if it was a text message and it was stored on their servers in plaintext?
Do any instant messengers enjoy the protection of common carrier status? Can an instant ever qualify for common carrier status?
Re: (Score:2)
"Think of the children" has always been the rallying cry of the folks least concerned about children and more about their public image and/or public influence.
Nor is it about freedom of speech. (Score:2)