Russia Lifts Ban on Telegram After the Instant Messaging Firm Expressed 'Readiness To Counter Terrorism and Extremism' (zdnet.com) 14
The Russian government has lifted its largely ineffective two-year-old ban on the Telegram instant messaging service. From a report: In a message posted on its website, Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor said it lifted the ban after Russian prosecutors reached an agreement with Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder. Russian officials said Durov "expressed readiness to counter terrorism and extremism" content shared on his platform. Details about the collaboration between Telegram and Russian officials have not been made public at the time of writing. Russia officially banned Telegram on April 13, 2018. The ban came after Telegram refused to cooperate with Russia's main intelligence service, the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Not really new (Score:4, Insightful)
Telegram is known by extremists to have been co-operating with authorities before. There have been reports over last two years of at least two cases of islamic terrorists openly telling their people to use signal instead, because Telegram was used to identify their cell members in Europe.
If I recall the explanation correctly, officials could not access message contents of the specific rooms through Telegram, but once they infiltrated the group and gained access to message history through social engineering, they successfully got information on identifying information of people participating in these discussions.
This has occurred at least a year if not two ago. You can probably still search for relevant IT security board discussions on the topic when it came out.
End-to-end Encryption? (Score:3)
If Telegram really is secure, I suppose the only info the Russkis can extract is 'envelope' info, To/From/Time/maybe-location. Not great, but WTF already.
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Is that worrisome? (Score:3)
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A lot of times, those tech corporations are quite content to hand over all the user data the government want, the only reason for protest, the governments demand they do it for free, they want to get paid commercial rates for data mining their users and so they hold out until rates for collation and release of data can be agreed. They do not give a fuck about the privacy of their users, they just demand they information they have gained not be given away for free.
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Most of the developers behind Telegram originally come from St. Petersburg, the city famous for its unprecedented number of highly skilled engineers.
Wouldn't at all be surprised if their families got threatened by the FSB if they refused to comply.
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Wouldn't at all be surprised if their families got threatened by the FSB if they refused to comply.
What? Nooooo, the FSB would never! I'm betting the FSB just offered to protect their families during Sudden Self-Defenestration season. ;)
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Wouldn't at all be surprised if their families got threatened by the FSB if they refused to comply.
Russia is not yet there. Currently, you only get this level of intimidation if you mount a presidential bid [wikipedia.org].
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Executive Summary (Score:4, Informative)
Use Signal [signal.org].
Why not let it be? (Score:2)
And that's why I don't use Telegram at all. (Score:2)
If censorship (euphemism: "moderation") possible for the developer AT ALL, it's not secure and not private.
OK, I already stopped considering it, when I found out, chats aren't encrypted by default, but you must start a private chat manually... which never wored unless both sides happened to have their phones on at the same time ... and it then does not offer the ability to keep any (encrypted) chat log, making it too inconvenient for everyday use.
s/possible/is possible; s/wored/worked/ (Score:2)
Excuse me. I need some coffee ...