• sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
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    4 months ago

    Wow. So they’re saying that he’s complicit in all crimes that may have taken place on Telegram. That’s insane.

    • sqgl@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      Not necessarily. It might be because of the crimes in the public groups and channels in Telegram. That makes it no more immune from responsibility than Facebook or Twitter.

      See this thread

      Signal doesn’t have those.

    • punkisundead [they/them]@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      Considering how hard it is for goverments to actually get Telegram to shutdown criminal chat groups or get chat logs (of unencrypted ) groups I think its at least more reasonable than the whole idea of banning E2E encryption.

      • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
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        4 months ago

        Most Telegram groups I stumble across for anything even remotely illegal have been shut down, so it’s clearly not as lawless as you’re painting it to be.

        • punkisundead [they/them]@slrpnk.net
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          4 months ago

          It took the german goverment years to force Telegram to comply with their requests to get data and shut down specific groups. Also based on your location things that might be legal are not legal in a different location, from a German legal perspective there still lots of things happening in Telegram that are atleast a grey area(piracy, hate speech, porn) or straight up illegal(drugs, terrorist groups propaganda).

          I am not in favor of the arrest or any goverment repression btw, I am just adding why goverments in europe might want to do stuff like this.

    • Deello@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I mean yes but that’s like saying Bitcoin is used by criminals to buy drugs and weapons. The problem is that’s not their only use.

      • stonerboner@lemmynsfw.com
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        4 months ago

        Yep. The issue is that they put out a tool that does some good things, but is also heavily adopted by criminals who piggyback on it.

        Should we let child abuse just proliferate with these tools, because there’s so much need for privacy? How do you weed out the bad without kneecapping the good? There’s no good answer here. The good parts of the tech working enable the bad parts, too.

        There has to be a certain level of knowledge and acceptance of the bad parts to continue developing it. It’s a catch 22, so law enforcement has to pick between sacrificing the privacy or allowing a tool to exist that proliferates child abuse material and other ills.

        There are valid arguments for the importance of privacy, and valid arguments for making sure there these crimes shouldn’t have a safe haven. Action to either end will hurt some people and enrage others.

        • Grimpen@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          The standard I recall being established back in the nineties as to whether strong encryption was even legal in the US was “substantial non-infringing use” or similar. It’s been awhile.

          The problem with key-escrow or anything similar is that any proscribed circumvention is also available to the “bad guys”.

          I think Telegram’s stance would be that they can’t moderate because of strong end-to-end encryption. Back in the day the parallel would have been made to the phone system or mail.

          Of course this is all happening in France, so I have no idea what the combination of French and EU laws will have on this, but I would still broadly expect that if a parallel can be made to mail or phone, Telegram would be in the clear. The phone company and mail service have no expectation of content moderation.

          I guess we’ll see.

          • stonerboner@lemmynsfw.com
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            4 months ago

            The huge difference between mail or phone and telegram is that both mail and phone work with law enforcement, with useful records being made available upon subpoena. Telegram, by design, will not.

            If you think drawing that parallel is useful to Telegram, they would then also be required to maintain the same standards of security as the mail, with package inspections, drug dogs, entire teams of government officials investigating illegal activities etc.

            The criminals use it precisely because it is not a parallel to other available channels, as it circumvents those safeguards.

      • Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        i dont get this. it can be used as one. its being seen as criminal because of its ability to send encrypted messages. comments like this are meaningless.

        • punkisundead [they/them]@slrpnk.net
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          4 months ago

          Yeah and still we should not push the message that Telegrams encryption is even remotely close to other encrypted messengers. I met more than one person that somehow thought their messages in Telegram are “safer” than they are in WhatsApp (and they never activated the encrypted chat oprion in Telegram)

    • pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      No, every service provider must remove infringing content when reported. That is not the case on Telegram.

  • Unruffled [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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    4 months ago

    Some significant news for Telegram users!

    See this article for some interesting backstory context on Pavel Durov and Telegram: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-telegram-billionaire-and-his-dark-empire-a-f27cb79f-86ae-48de-bdbd-8df604d07cc8

    Since the post article is in French, here’s an auto-translation:

    Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, was arrested around 8 p.m. on Saturday evening as he got off his private jet on the tarmac of Le Bourget airport. The 39-year-old Franco-Russian was accompanied by his bodyguard and a woman.

    The arrest was carried out by the gendarmes of the GTA (Air Transport Gendarmerie). Registered in the RPF (wanted persons file), Pavel Durov came straight from Azerbaijan. He had over his head a French search warrant issued by the OFMIN of the National Directorate of the French Judicial Police, issued on the basis of a preliminary investigation.

    Why was he under threat of a search warrant?

    The Justice considers that the lack of moderation, cooperation with the police and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) makes it complicit in drug trafficking, paedophile offences and fraud.

    This search warrant ran if, and only if, Pavel Durov was on national territory. “He made a mistake tonight. We don’t know why… Was this flight just a step? In any case, he’s locked up!” a source close to the investigation told TF1/LCI. Since he knew he was persona non grata in France, Pavel Durov used to travel to the Emirates, the countries of the former USSR, South America… He travelled very little in Europe and avoided countries where Telegram is under surveillance.

    And now?

    Investigators from the ONAF (National Anti-Fraud Office attached to the Customs Directorate) notified him and placed him in police custody. He is expected to be presented to an investigating judge this Saturday evening before a possible indictment on Sunday for a multitude of offences: terrorism, drugs, complicity, fraud, money laundering, concealment, paedophile content…

    “Pavel Durov will end up in pre-trial detention, that’s for sure,” comments an investigator to TF1/LCI. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of misdemeanours and crimes to be committed for which he does nothing to moderate or cooperate,” said a source close to the case.

    His pre-trial detention at the end of his indictment is indeed in no doubt. Pavel Durov, a billionaire, has substantial means to flee and his guarantees of representation will hardly convince the judges.

    A net with international resonance

    For the investigators, this international sweep has various objectives. First, it makes it possible to kick the anthill, impress and deter the perpetrators of crimes and offences who exchange, until now, freely on Telegram. Secondly, they aim to put pressure on European countries to step up joint work to make secure messaging on terrorist cases bend.

    Indeed, Telegram is a hive of criminal content. At the moment, the platform is in the news with the illegal broadcasting of Ligue 1 matches. But on this encrypted messaging service, many accounts are used by organized crime. Beyond terrorism, the most dangerous pedophiles communicate on Telegram to exchange content. “It has become for years THE number 1 platform for organized crime,” comments an investigator.

    • BurningRiver@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      Indeed, Telegram is a hive of criminal content. At the moment, the platform is in the news with the illegal broadcasting of Ligue 1 matches.

      This is pretty funny. The first example of crime is people posting dodgy links to football streams? They can’t be serious.

    • zaknenou@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      Indeed, Telegram is a hive of criminal content

      the platform is in the news with the illegal broadcasting of Ligue 1 matches

  • Findmysec@infosec.pub
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    4 months ago

    Guys, please move to something using TOR/I2P. I’ve been saying it for a long time now, but clearnet services are just asking to be taken down.

    Unfortunately for Europe though, the US has a massive incentive for something like TOR to function appropriately, because their military uses it too.

    • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
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      4 months ago

      What TOR or I2P chat services are there though? Contrary to popular belief, Telegram blew up because it was so well designed. It was winning design awards year on year back when WhatsApp looked atrocious.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        4 months ago

        Several of them could be ran over there, including Matrix.

        Probably there are already some chat services. notbob.i2p should list them if so.

          • Findmysec@infosec.pub
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            4 months ago

            You don’t need to. It connects over TOR and has no back-end servers that it relies on. Briar and Simplex have forward secrecy and are the only two I would personally use

      • Tazerface@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Briar is a messaging app that defaults to Tor. I have limited usage with Briar and have never used Telegram so I can’t say how they compare.

  • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    France is an oppressive country. Racism is so high there, especially against muslims which is indicative of their ideology and lack of respect for the individual’s right.

  • zaknenou@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    the only platform where Hamas could actually share official content, including combat footage kinos ;_; rather than made-up sites attributed to them.

    • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      4 months ago

      He’s not being arrested because he’s a billionaire he’s being arrested because the French government wants in on his platform and he is refusing to let them in

      He’s being arrested on trumped up charges in an attempt to coerce him to comply.