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There's quite popular conspiracy theory in Russia that says that Telegram was FSB-backed project from the start, and the whole failed ban was implemented to pro

There's quite popular conspiracy theory in Russia that says that Telegram was FSB-backed project from the start, and the whole failed ban was implemented to promote it. However, there's still no concrete proof that government has backdoor access to it, so if they do, they're being very careful about it.

duxup 6y ago
>However, there's still no concrete proof that government has backdoor access to it, so if they do, they're being very careful about it. Sadly I feel like that is a very real possibility for any software / hardware produced in any significantly non free country. It can happen in other countries, but the likelihood of you hearing about it seems much much higher. It's a sad situation as I don't like the idea of being suspicious by default of other developers / products simply because their country of origin, but I have trouble avoiding the obvious fact that even a well meaning developer / company based in those countries would / could easily be pressured into introducing some sort of access (doesn't matter how) and it's simply unlikely we'd know.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  ... produced in any country. I wonder if the money Crypto AG made will have been worth any future reputation cost for Zug's economy. https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/bund-stoppt-nachfolgefirma-der-zuger-crypto-ag-ld.1202213 https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/bund-stoppt-nachfo... "... verkaufte die Crypto AG im Auftrag des US-Geheimdienstes CIA und des deutschen Bundesnachrichtendienstes Jahrzehnte lang manipulierte Chiffriergeräte an diverse Staaten."
  - duxup 6y ago
    Like I said it can happen anywhere, but the likelihood and ease of it happening in less free countries seems significantly different. I don't believe any country means all countries are equivalent as far as the risks go. The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Like I said it can happen anywhere, but the likelihood and ease of it happening in less free countries seems significantly different. Why? Bureaucracy, Intelligence Services and state-level paranoia transcends political ideologies and systems. > The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations. On the other hand, we'd hear a lot more about anything from Moscow in our media, so I doubt there's a lot to be talked about as of now. It's only one big leak away, of course, but so far, I don't see a lot of support for your theory.
      - duxup 6y ago
        Because in free countries there's a actually the potential for individuals and groups to refuse to cooperate and make the request known. If China comes to you and tells you to hand over the keys, you don't go to court or the news media ... in the west you can actually refuse and we see that happen and play out in the courts and etc.
        luckylion 6y ago
        Yeah, you have the theoretical potential to not comply with a national security letter and just go public. Good luck with that.
        duxup 6y ago
        In free countries there are court cases about such things. Not in less free countries. It seems like you're holding all nations to be equal if there isn't perfection. I think that's a poor way to measure anything involving people. The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > In free countries there are court cases about such things. Not in less free countries. Russia literally had court proceedings about Telegram, which this post is about. Is Russia not a "less free country"? Or are those not "real court cases" while "ours" are totally real (but you can't talk about them and must play charades, and the opposing side has super powers written into the law)? If you need help carrying those goal posts, let me know. > The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk. Neither does the Snowden of the US of A, you know, that one guy... right, Snowden, who has to hide in Russia of all places to not get shipped off to Gitmo. And even if he took that route, I'm sure the apologists would say "well, this is one of those small imperfections but he's fortunate that he's not in Russia".
- freeflight 6y ago
  Most developed countries have access like that already baked in by law [0], some countries even go as far as denying any reasonable expectation of privacy for data you share with third-parties [1] so the data-Kraken of intelligence services can just slurp it all up in bulk [2]. In that context, in a post-Snowden world, it's kinda grating to still have people talk about all the evil things that supposedly happen in "non free countries", while mostly being completely unaware about what their own, supposedly "free", countries are doing, often on a global scale because they are supposedly way more likely to "hear" about it, while still not being able to change anything about it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine [2] https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html
  - duxup 6y ago
    I'm not really concerned about what people are or aren't aware of. It's fairly obvious that more free countries allow for a greater chance in changes of law than non free countries. The Snowden of China would not get his day in court....
    - freeflight 6y ago
      > The Snowden of China would not get his day in court.... Because the Snowden of the US did?
      - duxup 6y ago
        Isn't that up to Snowden? I don't think the Snowden of China gets such an option.
        freeflight 6y ago
        It's only up to Snowden because he managed to successfully evade getting captured, even tho the US went trough quite some lengths [0] trying to capture him and already had a plane ready to rendition him back to the US [1]. If they caught him, he would not have been able to properly defend himself because US law would prohibit him from making his case [2]. Heck, if they would have caught him before his Hong Kong meeting, they could simply have "vanished" him and nobody would have been any the wiser, as Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill would have had a very difficult time proving the legitimacy of the leaked documents. So no, neither the Snowden of the US, nor of China gets any of these options, that's why this whole false dichotomy of "free countries vs nonfree countries" is just another facette of the constantly going on propaganda war. The best chance whistleblowers like that have is trying to escape the sphere of influence of whoever they blew the whistle on. For Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and others that's large parts of the world they will be welcomed in, for US whistleblowers it's pretty much only a handful of countries out of whom only a very few are actually able to keep them save/not straight up hand them over. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/edward-snowden-us-government-jet-wait-copenhagen-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/edward-snowd... [2] https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-snowden-wouldnt-get-a-fair-trial/ https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-s...
baybal2 6y ago
The most obvious fact is that Mr. Durov is not walking with a hole in his head, as a double digit portion of anybody who had balls to be audacious about their opposition, and is not known to have an extensive security detail. The mob has sent hitment to people whose offences were way lesser than that. Their ways are unyielding, and uncompromising. Putin has a record killing people who grieved him more than a decade ago, keeping trying for years on end. People he killed some times survived 2-3, even 4, assassination attempts over years, just to be eventually killed by yet another one. Knowing that, it's hard to explain how Telegram kept maintaining an office in Russia.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > Knowing that, it's hard to explain how Telegram kept maintaining an office in Russia. Telegram has an office in Russia? Do you have sources? I cannot find one to confirm, and as far as I know that's not the case.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    In Russian https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41310615 https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41310615
    - fuoqi 6y ago
      Have you even read this article? Because it contains dubios allegations from a single person and an explicit denial from Durov.
    - thesz 6y ago
      I took a time and read it and also read much more. It is a good example of "he said she said". But Igor Ashmanov considers Rosenberg a good source on Durov brothers and lets say information above is correct. That means that Durov is used a part of the real estate he had access to to help development of Telegram. It does not mean that Durov is (not) affiliated with Russian government it just means that for Durov it is useful to use Russian real estate he knows and adores and to use Russian talent. It looks like Telegram servers are somewhere in Europe, BTW.

duxup 6y ago

>However, there's still no concrete proof that government has backdoor access to it, so if they do, they're being very careful about it. Sadly I feel like that is a very real possibility for any software / hardware produced in any significantly non free country. It can happen in other countries, but the likelihood of you hearing about it seems much much higher. It's a sad situation as I don't like the idea of being suspicious by default of other developers / products simply because their country of origin, but I have trouble avoiding the obvious fact that even a well meaning developer / company based in those countries would / could easily be pressured into introducing some sort of access (doesn't matter how) and it's simply unlikely we'd know.

082349872349872 6y ago
... produced in any country. I wonder if the money Crypto AG made will have been worth any future reputation cost for Zug's economy. https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/bund-stoppt-nachfolgefirma-der-zuger-crypto-ag-ld.1202213 https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/bund-stoppt-nachfo... "... verkaufte die Crypto AG im Auftrag des US-Geheimdienstes CIA und des deutschen Bundesnachrichtendienstes Jahrzehnte lang manipulierte Chiffriergeräte an diverse Staaten."
- duxup 6y ago
  Like I said it can happen anywhere, but the likelihood and ease of it happening in less free countries seems significantly different. I don't believe any country means all countries are equivalent as far as the risks go. The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Like I said it can happen anywhere, but the likelihood and ease of it happening in less free countries seems significantly different. Why? Bureaucracy, Intelligence Services and state-level paranoia transcends political ideologies and systems. > The amount of news / data about it will of course be higher in more free nations. On the other hand, we'd hear a lot more about anything from Moscow in our media, so I doubt there's a lot to be talked about as of now. It's only one big leak away, of course, but so far, I don't see a lot of support for your theory.
    - duxup 6y ago
      Because in free countries there's a actually the potential for individuals and groups to refuse to cooperate and make the request known. If China comes to you and tells you to hand over the keys, you don't go to court or the news media ... in the west you can actually refuse and we see that happen and play out in the courts and etc.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Yeah, you have the theoretical potential to not comply with a national security letter and just go public. Good luck with that.
        duxup 6y ago
        In free countries there are court cases about such things. Not in less free countries. It seems like you're holding all nations to be equal if there isn't perfection. I think that's a poor way to measure anything involving people. The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > In free countries there are court cases about such things. Not in less free countries. Russia literally had court proceedings about Telegram, which this post is about. Is Russia not a "less free country"? Or are those not "real court cases" while "ours" are totally real (but you can't talk about them and must play charades, and the opposing side has super powers written into the law)? If you need help carrying those goal posts, let me know. > The Snowden of China doesn't get his day in court, maybe never talked if his family back home was at risk. Neither does the Snowden of the US of A, you know, that one guy... right, Snowden, who has to hide in Russia of all places to not get shipped off to Gitmo. And even if he took that route, I'm sure the apologists would say "well, this is one of those small imperfections but he's fortunate that he's not in Russia".
freeflight 6y ago
Most developed countries have access like that already baked in by law [0], some countries even go as far as denying any reasonable expectation of privacy for data you share with third-parties [1] so the data-Kraken of intelligence services can just slurp it all up in bulk [2]. In that context, in a post-Snowden world, it's kinda grating to still have people talk about all the evil things that supposedly happen in "non free countries", while mostly being completely unaware about what their own, supposedly "free", countries are doing, often on a global scale because they are supposedly way more likely to "hear" about it, while still not being able to change anything about it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine [2] https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html https://opendatacity.github.io/stasi-vs-nsa/english.html
- duxup 6y ago
  I'm not really concerned about what people are or aren't aware of. It's fairly obvious that more free countries allow for a greater chance in changes of law than non free countries. The Snowden of China would not get his day in court....
  - freeflight 6y ago
    > The Snowden of China would not get his day in court.... Because the Snowden of the US did?
    - duxup 6y ago
      Isn't that up to Snowden? I don't think the Snowden of China gets such an option.
      - freeflight 6y ago
        It's only up to Snowden because he managed to successfully evade getting captured, even tho the US went trough quite some lengths [0] trying to capture him and already had a plane ready to rendition him back to the US [1]. If they caught him, he would not have been able to properly defend himself because US law would prohibit him from making his case [2]. Heck, if they would have caught him before his Hong Kong meeting, they could simply have "vanished" him and nobody would have been any the wiser, as Greenwald, Poitras, and MacAskill would have had a very difficult time proving the legitimacy of the leaked documents. So no, neither the Snowden of the US, nor of China gets any of these options, that's why this whole false dichotomy of "free countries vs nonfree countries" is just another facette of the constantly going on propaganda war. The best chance whistleblowers like that have is trying to escape the sphere of influence of whoever they blew the whistle on. For Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and others that's large parts of the world they will be welcomed in, for US whistleblowers it's pretty much only a handful of countries out of whom only a very few are actually able to keep them save/not straight up hand them over. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/edward-snowden-us-government-jet-wait-copenhagen-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/edward-snowd... [2] https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-snowden-wouldnt-get-a-fair-trial/ https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-s...

baybal2 6y ago

The most obvious fact is that Mr. Durov is not walking with a hole in his head, as a double digit portion of anybody who had balls to be audacious about their opposition, and is not known to have an extensive security detail. The mob has sent hitment to people whose offences were way lesser than that. Their ways are unyielding, and uncompromising. Putin has a record killing people who grieved him more than a decade ago, keeping trying for years on end. People he killed some times survived 2-3, even 4, assassination attempts over years, just to be eventually killed by yet another one. Knowing that, it's hard to explain how Telegram kept maintaining an office in Russia.

dgellow 6y ago
> Knowing that, it's hard to explain how Telegram kept maintaining an office in Russia. Telegram has an office in Russia? Do you have sources? I cannot find one to confirm, and as far as I know that's not the case.
- baybal2 6y ago
  In Russian https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41310615 https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-41310615
  - fuoqi 6y ago
    Have you even read this article? Because it contains dubios allegations from a single person and an explicit denial from Durov.
  - thesz 6y ago
    I took a time and read it and also read much more. It is a good example of "he said she said". But Igor Ashmanov considers Rosenberg a good source on Durov brothers and lets say information above is correct. That means that Durov is used a part of the real estate he had access to to help development of Telegram. It does not mean that Durov is (not) affiliated with Russian government it just means that for Durov it is useful to use Russian real estate he knows and adores and to use Russian talent. It looks like Telegram servers are somewhere in Europe, BTW.