4 ms·

It’ll be interesting to see if the likes of Marlinspike, Firefox, EFF, etc., rally to support this guy. It’s really chilling to see the steps EU gobs are takin

by mc32 2y ago

It’ll be interesting to see if the likes of Marlinspike, Firefox, EFF, etc., rally to support this guy. It’s really chilling to see the steps EU gobs are taking against free speech. In some ways they seem more authoritarian than even China and Russia. It’s like “free world” is becoming a farce.

jakeinspace 2y ago
Not sure what they can do, he’s worth ten times what all those groups are together, so I doubt he’ll have an issue with legal costs.
a0123 2y ago
Durov has been shilling his crypto scams while shitting on all those services you're talking about (well, at least Signal) claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Considering how he's tarnished Signal, there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up. What will be very funny is the fact that Telegram is pretty much not encrypted (yeah ok, "secret chats", whatever sure) and now that investigators probably have access to Durov's phone, that lack of encryption might come back to bite him in the ass. Can't wait to know what they find and if they do find something, it might be interesting to see if he finally changes his stance.
- foverzar 2y ago
  > well, at least Signal Basically only Signal + Whatsapp. > claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Well, Signal is kind of a scam in that regard.
  - codethief 2y ago
    How is Signal "a kind of scam in that regard"?
    - foverzar 2y ago
      Government funding? Mandatory phone number exposure? (or did they finally implement usernames?) A joke of a "registration lock pin" instead a proper 2FA to protect against sim-swap?
      - literallycancer 2y ago
        Funding source is irrelevant.
        Synaesthesia 2y ago
        Kind of important for trust reasons.
        kome 2y ago
        that's honestly quite naive
      - tapoxi 2y ago
        Yes they implemented usernames earlier this year. They are fully rolled out and don't expose your phone number. They received $3 million from the open technology fund, which is a government sponsored fund for censorship circumvention projects. https://www.opentech.fund/about/congressional-remit/ https://www.opentech.fund/about/congressional-remit/
    - dijit 2y ago
      https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/ https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/ tl;dr: Lots of claims, lots of support.. but very little to back it up once you scratch the surface.
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - I_am_uncreative 2y ago
    Must be nice to make claims without evidence.
- lmm 2y ago
  Signal also has a long history of shitting on their competitors with extremely questionable arguments, if not quite to the same extent as Telegram. The issues at stake here are far more important. Encrypted messengers had better hang together or they will surely hang separately.
  - Canada 2y ago
    Really? Examples?
    - lmm 2y ago
      Look at their blog posts about PGP (one of them is pretty much "when I get a PGP-encrypted email it's always from a weirdo" - not any kind of technical argument, just a straight-up smear), or about Matrix.
      - tekknik 2y ago
        tbf how many people sign emails when they don’t work for a gov in any capacity and therefore aren’t likely a target. people in this field tend go overboard with security when really nobody cares about what they have access to.
      - Canada 2y ago
        Those comments were absolutely correct. That PGP failed as a viable solution for securing email communication isn't even debatable. And you're missing the point of the argument. It is a technical argument: The UX of PGP is so bad that hardly anyone bothered to use it, and that the workflow of decrypting the rare PGP-encrypted emails he received annoyed him. What did he have to say about Matrix?
- utbabya 2y ago
  > there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up If you don't uphold the principles all you have to do is wait until it bites you too. What happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
  - nick486 2y ago
    >What happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Nothing. It still is the same fake Voltaire quote used to con overly idealistic adversaires into giving you some situational supprt against their better interest. No institutional actor ever followed it.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > Durov has been shilling his crypto scams So was Moxie - or do we forget that Signal is doing cryptocurrencies too?
foverzar 2y ago
Large geopolitical powers are all the same. It's only people who live there that are convinced they are doing better than those other guys. Yes, that includes people from Russia, China or the US believing they are the ones who are truly free, and everything else are totalitarian shitholes. Each one of them is even kind of right in their own regard.
- Ray20 2y ago
  >that includes people from Russia, China or the US believing they are the ones who are truly free, and everything else are totalitarian shitholes. In Russia, China or North Korea - nobody believes that.
  - foverzar 2y ago
    > In Russia, China or North Korea - nobody believes that. Well of course, they're all actually super miserable and are secretly begging the government of your country or her stronger allies to liberate them and wisely lead to a glorious bright westernized future. Don't be naive. It's probably worth exploring where'd you get such a maximalist idea in the first place and measure just how much empirical evidence you have to back it up.
    - Ray20 2y ago
      >It's probably worth exploring where'd you get such a maximalist idea Have you explored where's you get the idea that it'n not the case?
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  > Large geopolitical powers are all the same. No, they are not. Nobody in Europe disappears for six months because they have offended the government before mysteriously reappearing like in China. No one dictates single handedly what’s going to happen without any form of oversight like in Russia. Heck France currently has an interim government because they voted out the previous one and the US had a decisive election coming in a few months. The people who want to convince you otherwise generally have a vested interest in undermining democracy and pushing for a form of autocracy.
paradox460 2y ago
He has different opinions on a few things than them, so they'll either completely ignore him, at best, or actively cheer the French for taking him out
Ray20 2y ago
>In some ways they seem more authoritarian than even China and Russia Not even close. You are just poorly informed about the situation in Russia or China.
exceptione 2y ago
Normal people: We see you host groups for organized crime, we need targetted data you have about those criminals. This is what law enforcement should do (instead of surveillance dragnets). HN: NO! free speech. Sincere advice: get out of those libertarian echo chambers, and think about real consequences.
- defrost 2y ago
  I'm not a liberatarian nor am I a US citizen (Australian), however ... IF you let LEO's access group chats THEN you absolutely need civilian accountable honest transparent clear oversight to avoid mission creep. The task isn't as clear cut as "known criminal is part of OC groups", there's a clear Sorities Paradox asking when does an OC group chat become a neighbourhood watch | knitting group chat. If our criminal of interest is part of RealMafiaChat, PrepperLifeStyles, CamThePolice, GuideDogsForVets, etc. etc. et al. then how many of these should be surveilled .. and how many other group chat members should also be surveilled ? Yes. Take down real criminals. Yes, it's an actual problem that real innocents get swept up Kafka-esque for being unwittingly criminal adjacent. What's the cost benefit number and trade off for actual innocent lives ruined?
  - exceptione 2y ago
    I would be very concerned if your knitting grandma was an active member of a drugs and arms dealergroup. I am pretty much against surveillance in the form of drag nets, but none of that applies here. Instead, this is exactly how a functional state should work. (And note that no exceptions are made for Pavel because he is rich and well-connected. Contrast that with brittle countries where politicians rely on tech billionaires to fund their campaigns.) I sympathize with you being an Aussie; I can see where your allergy comes from, but in this case it is misplaced.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Australia is part of the five eyes, many Australians with, say, a signals intell background will have seen things that may or may not make your eyes bleed wrt crime and|or state actions. Yes, functional states should have extremely good oversight .. in reality they "mostly do" but with cracks that allow unwanted behaviours to sneak through and sometimes become normalised. eg. recent revelations that SASR types are "blooding" new members with unsanctioned kills in war zones. Or regular joe LEO types using surveillance powers to stalk ex's. Or total innocent gets railroaded by tangential "evidence" simply because they chance to tick all the boxes for a needed arrest and the actual perp was overlooked | unseen. > I would be very concerned if your knitting grandma was an active member of a drugs and arms dealergroup. And yet an actual sergeant at arms type of an organised biker gang based in Australia used knitting terminology key phrases in just such a group to organise international transfers of "packages". The person in question was a NZ background stone cold killer with a special forces background. ( Yes, most crims are "dumb" | "lazy" and yet a good few understand covert messaging, not all can be caught with a fake encrypted phone honey net trap ) These are all real concerns and examples of things that have actually happened.

by mc32 2y ago

jakeinspace 2y ago

Not sure what they can do, he’s worth ten times what all those groups are together, so I doubt he’ll have an issue with legal costs.

a0123 2y ago

Durov has been shilling his crypto scams while shitting on all those services you're talking about (well, at least Signal) claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Considering how he's tarnished Signal, there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up. What will be very funny is the fact that Telegram is pretty much not encrypted (yeah ok, "secret chats", whatever sure) and now that investigators probably have access to Durov's phone, that lack of encryption might come back to bite him in the ass. Can't wait to know what they find and if they do find something, it might be interesting to see if he finally changes his stance.

foverzar 2y ago
> well, at least Signal Basically only Signal + Whatsapp. > claiming they don't do anything for privacy. Well, Signal is kind of a scam in that regard.
- codethief 2y ago
  How is Signal "a kind of scam in that regard"?
  - foverzar 2y ago
    Government funding? Mandatory phone number exposure? (or did they finally implement usernames?) A joke of a "registration lock pin" instead a proper 2FA to protect against sim-swap?
    - literallycancer 2y ago
      Funding source is irrelevant.
      - Synaesthesia 2y ago
        Kind of important for trust reasons.
      - kome 2y ago
        that's honestly quite naive
    - tapoxi 2y ago
      Yes they implemented usernames earlier this year. They are fully rolled out and don't expose your phone number. They received $3 million from the open technology fund, which is a government sponsored fund for censorship circumvention projects. https://www.opentech.fund/about/congressional-remit/ https://www.opentech.fund/about/congressional-remit/
  - dijit 2y ago
    https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/ https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/ tl;dr: Lots of claims, lots of support.. but very little to back it up once you scratch the surface.
stiltzkin 2y ago
[flagged]
- I_am_uncreative 2y ago
  Must be nice to make claims without evidence.
lmm 2y ago
Signal also has a long history of shitting on their competitors with extremely questionable arguments, if not quite to the same extent as Telegram. The issues at stake here are far more important. Encrypted messengers had better hang together or they will surely hang separately.
- Canada 2y ago
  Really? Examples?
  - lmm 2y ago
    Look at their blog posts about PGP (one of them is pretty much "when I get a PGP-encrypted email it's always from a weirdo" - not any kind of technical argument, just a straight-up smear), or about Matrix.
    - tekknik 2y ago
      tbf how many people sign emails when they don’t work for a gov in any capacity and therefore aren’t likely a target. people in this field tend go overboard with security when really nobody cares about what they have access to.
    - Canada 2y ago
      Those comments were absolutely correct. That PGP failed as a viable solution for securing email communication isn't even debatable. And you're missing the point of the argument. It is a technical argument: The UX of PGP is so bad that hardly anyone bothered to use it, and that the workflow of decrypting the rare PGP-encrypted emails he received annoyed him. What did he have to say about Matrix?
utbabya 2y ago
> there is absolutely no reason for them or anyone else to back him up If you don't uphold the principles all you have to do is wait until it bites you too. What happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- nick486 2y ago
  >What happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Nothing. It still is the same fake Voltaire quote used to con overly idealistic adversaires into giving you some situational supprt against their better interest. No institutional actor ever followed it.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> Durov has been shilling his crypto scams So was Moxie - or do we forget that Signal is doing cryptocurrencies too?

foverzar 2y ago

Large geopolitical powers are all the same. It's only people who live there that are convinced they are doing better than those other guys. Yes, that includes people from Russia, China or the US believing they are the ones who are truly free, and everything else are totalitarian shitholes. Each one of them is even kind of right in their own regard.

Ray20 2y ago
>that includes people from Russia, China or the US believing they are the ones who are truly free, and everything else are totalitarian shitholes. In Russia, China or North Korea - nobody believes that.
- foverzar 2y ago
  > In Russia, China or North Korea - nobody believes that. Well of course, they're all actually super miserable and are secretly begging the government of your country or her stronger allies to liberate them and wisely lead to a glorious bright westernized future. Don't be naive. It's probably worth exploring where'd you get such a maximalist idea in the first place and measure just how much empirical evidence you have to back it up.
  - Ray20 2y ago
    >It's probably worth exploring where'd you get such a maximalist idea Have you explored where's you get the idea that it'n not the case?
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
> Large geopolitical powers are all the same. No, they are not. Nobody in Europe disappears for six months because they have offended the government before mysteriously reappearing like in China. No one dictates single handedly what’s going to happen without any form of oversight like in Russia. Heck France currently has an interim government because they voted out the previous one and the US had a decisive election coming in a few months. The people who want to convince you otherwise generally have a vested interest in undermining democracy and pushing for a form of autocracy.

paradox460 2y ago

He has different opinions on a few things than them, so they'll either completely ignore him, at best, or actively cheer the French for taking him out

Ray20 2y ago

>In some ways they seem more authoritarian than even China and Russia Not even close. You are just poorly informed about the situation in Russia or China.

exceptione 2y ago

Normal people: We see you host groups for organized crime, we need targetted data you have about those criminals. This is what law enforcement should do (instead of surveillance dragnets). HN: NO! free speech. Sincere advice: get out of those libertarian echo chambers, and think about real consequences.

defrost 2y ago
I'm not a liberatarian nor am I a US citizen (Australian), however ... IF you let LEO's access group chats THEN you absolutely need civilian accountable honest transparent clear oversight to avoid mission creep. The task isn't as clear cut as "known criminal is part of OC groups", there's a clear Sorities Paradox asking when does an OC group chat become a neighbourhood watch | knitting group chat. If our criminal of interest is part of RealMafiaChat, PrepperLifeStyles, CamThePolice, GuideDogsForVets, etc. etc. et al. then how many of these should be surveilled .. and how many other group chat members should also be surveilled ? Yes. Take down real criminals. Yes, it's an actual problem that real innocents get swept up Kafka-esque for being unwittingly criminal adjacent. What's the cost benefit number and trade off for actual innocent lives ruined?
- exceptione 2y ago
  I would be very concerned if your knitting grandma was an active member of a drugs and arms dealergroup. I am pretty much against surveillance in the form of drag nets, but none of that applies here. Instead, this is exactly how a functional state should work. (And note that no exceptions are made for Pavel because he is rich and well-connected. Contrast that with brittle countries where politicians rely on tech billionaires to fund their campaigns.) I sympathize with you being an Aussie; I can see where your allergy comes from, but in this case it is misplaced.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Australia is part of the five eyes, many Australians with, say, a signals intell background will have seen things that may or may not make your eyes bleed wrt crime and|or state actions. Yes, functional states should have extremely good oversight .. in reality they "mostly do" but with cracks that allow unwanted behaviours to sneak through and sometimes become normalised. eg. recent revelations that SASR types are "blooding" new members with unsanctioned kills in war zones. Or regular joe LEO types using surveillance powers to stalk ex's. Or total innocent gets railroaded by tangential "evidence" simply because they chance to tick all the boxes for a needed arrest and the actual perp was overlooked | unseen. > I would be very concerned if your knitting grandma was an active member of a drugs and arms dealergroup. And yet an actual sergeant at arms type of an organised biker gang based in Australia used knitting terminology key phrases in just such a group to organise international transfers of "packages". The person in question was a NZ background stone cold killer with a special forces background. ( Yes, most crims are "dumb" | "lazy" and yet a good few understand covert messaging, not all can be caught with a fake encrypted phone honey net trap ) These are all real concerns and examples of things that have actually happened.