Telegram Cooperates with FSB (Rus) | Hacker News Reader

Telegram Cooperates with FSB (Rus)

pdmnews.ru

72 pointsEugeneOZ70 comments

Prev - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30661316

Why does this link go to a blank page?

Telegram is the only platform where I have been able to get uncensored footage of the Ukraine conflict from a civilian perspective. Of course there is a lot of propaganda, but I get to see the destruction and war crimes from both sides with my own eyes.

Recommended channels(NSFL) :

https://t.me/kyivoperativ

https://t.me/intelslava

https://t.me/WORLD18WAR

https://t.me/Yediotnews

https://t.me/asbmil

https://t.me/AtlasNewsTelegram

https://t.me/s/OSINTUkraine

The Vast Majority Blatantly Russian Propaganda FYI.

You also have 4chan, naturally.

/r/combatfootage (until reddit bans it)

Or /r/UkrainianConflict, since 2014

Note that over half of those channels are blatantly pro-Putin

I used to follow ASBMil on Twitter before Twitter banned it :/ I can't vouch for others but ASBMil was doing accurate reporting. Just searching for ASBMil on twitter will show many saying that Twitter is censoring accounts that do not repeat the accepted Western narrative.

Lol isn't Asbmil the one with the legendary fall of 2021 tweet saying „US intel is trying to fool you all, Russia will never invade, idiots“?

Also, if the „western narrative“ is one of condemning the most blatant international military aggression since WWII for the gain of a handful of oligarch… I guess I am pro-Western then.

I really can't see any reason to subscribe to any other narrative here.

The two sides are completely unequal.

Almost every sane person said there will be no invasion. That does not make them complicit.

Asbmil was posting also legit osint stuff, but it was also posting a lot of blatantly Russian propaganda. It was 100% complicit.

This is just a random speculation. There is no hard or even indirect evidence that Durov cooperates with FSB in any way. Even Whatsapp which belongs to Facebook is still available in Russia despite their explicit pro-Ukrainian stance.

Facebook's been extensively cooperative with Russia, so I hardly see a 'even Whatsapp (which belongs to Facebook)' argument there. It's probably more of a 'Russia cannot continue to pay us, so best wishes guys, you can have advocacy again when you're able to pay for it'. It's just business.

The smaller services that go UP against the tech giants and have Russian backing, those will be cooperating with Russia. I don't know if Telegram counts as that or not, as I haven't looked into it. But they exist, and a lot of 'em are left scrambling now as the money dries up.

Durov doesn’t ban Russian government channels calling to literally nuke US and EU, posting fake news, etc. FSB easily tracks anti-regime/opposition channel authors by copying SIM-cards and getting access. Durov also doesn’t call war in Ukraine as war. He exchanged Russian userbase.

He doesn't ban US channels calling for the same thing because why would he? It's not Facebook, fringe groups be fringe groups.

Killing WhatsApp will be disastrous for the Russian economy. The effect will probably be on par if not greater than all other sanctions combined.

Every single daily thing is done via WhatsApp. The state realizes that which is why they carved an explicit (if a completely made-up) exception for it when they went after Instagram, Facebook and Meta. You don't want to inconvenience your brainwashed masses that much or they could be shaken out of their nirvana and start looking closely at what's going on.

There is a name of the source in the article. And it literally says that Durov cooperates with FSB.

How did he go away without sharing encryption keys? Other networks platforms were forced to do this or close. Telegram left untouched...

Because he's been in exile since 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/technology/once-celebrate...

This doesn't explain why Telegram isn't simply blocked in there

Several years of blocking attempts hardly count as “untouched” in my book, but neither WhatsApp nor Signal shared anything either; in fact I don’t think any Western social network is in compliance in any practical sense.

All modern social networks and messengers cooperate with law enforcement.

See matrix.org and host your own server as a counterexample. Own your communication.

In this case, self hosting matrix within Russia would present the same legal vulnerabilities. Maybe a bit obscurity, but at same time it's signalling to FSB that it maybe be worth investigating.

If everyone did that, then encryption would be banned, you can count on that.

except ofc true p2p (the real kind of serverless) solutions, like

1. https://manyver.se

2. https://scuttlebutt.nz

3. https://cabal.chat

Manyverse is really cool. Just downloaded the app. Any suggestions on SSBs to join?

the entire point is you want to start by gather your existing friends and family in their respective groups, and create your own communities, and gradually let them invite other people who they know and can trust

also Briar

But not Signal, for example. Well, they do: but they have nothing to share. Telegram on the contrary have a ton to share.

It’s a bit disingenuous to say that Signal has nothing to share. Signal has access logs as well as metadata about the phone number, the name given on the app, group memberships, etc.

With Signal, it’s also trivial to find out if someone is using it by adding their number to one’s address book. Then they can ask Signal for access and other information. That’s not easily possible with Telegram (there are settings to prevent this).

That said, Telegram does store all non-secret chats in an accessible form (for it) on its servers.

https://signal.org/bigbrother/

Last paragraph in https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/new-s...

Also, my point about finding who uses Signal and the access logs (though it’s not a historic log, for which I stand corrected) stand — Signal does store the last access information.

Well Signal is sitting on a centralized Google Cloud instance and Google can just issue a ToS violation, with the metadata that it is collecting about certain users on Signal that the three-letter agencies are looking for, including logs and phone numbers and that can essentially force Google to get them shutdown.

Even without it, Google can shutdown any instance whenever it wants to on its own terms since that is another private platform and can choose to do business with whoever they want to.

They have a clear picture of users' social networks because of their dubious requirement that people provide them with working mobile numbers. Who speaks to whom, how frequently, during what times and what days of the week etc. Incredibly valuable and revealing data.

The opposite is the truth. The signal servers don't know who talks to whom, and they chose phone number as identifier specifically so the app could use your local address book for contacts and not store your contacts server side.

Are you real? There is no need to transmit a mobile phone number to a remote service in order for an iOS or Android application to get access to locally stored contacts. You do not need to receive a "verification SMS" to allow the application to access your contacts.

Your evidence is that the signal app client knows your phone number and can see your contacts list and your groups and your chat messages, and if it is malicious, it could just send all that to the server which could just store it in plaintext and turn it over to anyone who asks. But people have reverse engineered the app and it doesn't do that.

Pardon, but you're completely lost. The service knows your mobile phone number because the app requires you to provide it in order to activate your Signal account. After you've provided your mobile number the Signal service sends you an SMS with a verification code, and the app asks you to enter that code. Your account is unusable until you comply with this procedure. Since the service is passing messages between users, those who run the service also know which people communicate with eachother - because a valid mobile number is tied to each and every Signal user account.

I have no idea what you're rambling about regarding people having "reversee engineered the application". There's no reverse engineering required, as it's entirely open source.

Telegram claims not to cooperate with any special services, especially the FSB, which in fact started a war in Ukraine

and have equipment installed to listen to the traffic?

Isn't that the law in Russia? Every ISP is required to have the SORM (Russian ECHELON) lawful interception boxes in their network. So anything with servers in Russia will get their traffic intercepted to begin with and then FSB will pressure them for more indepth database access.

This has always meant that Telegram was not suitable for anything requiring secrecy or privacy.

Telegram is not ISP and being used widely by non-russian residents.

Telegram is used widely by Russian speakers everywhere.

This doesn’t really look like a trustworthy publication and the post doesn’t actually point to anything specific changing on the platform. I guess anyone could say stuff on the internet these days, it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Text is in Russian, but nowadays it shouldn't be a problem.

Just in case, Google Translate:

Oleg Matveychev, deputy chairman of the committee on information policy, information technology and communications, told Podyom that as long as the messenger is politically neutral, they will not touch it, and there is no need to become biased by Telegram.

“Durov found a compromise with the FSB. Not an agreement, not that he unequivocally said “come in, do whatever you want in my household”, but managed to convince him that people's lives are important and that terrorists are negotiating through Telegram.

Requests within the framework of operational activities are transferred there if terrorists or someone is under control. Telegram installed equipment to be able to watch all the dangerous subjects.”

And one more thing: FSB is former KGB.

Are the controlling only traffic from inside Russia or worldwide?

According to Durov Telegram does not have servers in Russia.

This is a claim from a Russian member of parliament. Given that they all have been selected by Kremlin, and are there to just rubber stamp whatever has been sent to them from the Kremlin, they are all just nobodies without any knowledge or authority. There is no reason to trust this claim at the moment. It is true that in my opinion Durov himself is a bit shady and some actions of Telegram were a bit weird (i.e. in the beginning of the war against Ukraine), but right now it's Telegram is certainly the easiest way in Russia to access independent voices.

This week, Telegram start censoring RT and Sputnik channel in France. I'm a lot disappointed, as it was the "free speech" platform. Not anymore...

Both still up if you live in a place that respects free speech. Not telegrams fault that they are forced to respect certain local law. Also a bird told me that you need to write blocked channel names backwards if want to see what your gov does not want you to see.

Could you elaborate on what you mean? Do you mean Telegram allows access to the same channel when you write its name backwards?

These channels are only blocked if you have "the wrong" phone number (blame the local gov) So other people mirror these blocked channels and to easy find them, they "mirror" the name too. Its basically the Streisand effect in action.

Russian --> English translation:

https://pdmnews-ru.translate.goog/25704/?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_t...

Damn, that `translate.goog` trick is nice.

We have deep respect for languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English.

That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Telegram channel "Код Дурова" asked a source close to Telegram what they thought of Matveichev's words - "Clowns" (https://t.me/d_code/13701)

Keep in mind that they are paid for correct answers. Reminding how Elvira Nabiulina (head of the Central Bank of Russia) talks about the good economic situation and stability in Russia.

Durov has been on exile for years because he refused to cooperate in the past and he made a statement about this. You can read his statement on his telegram account. https://t.me/durov

the title is misleading. read Durov story about it https://t.me/durov/179

This article has zero sources and the link at the bottom links to their telegram channel that links back to this article.

I‘d take this with a metric ton of salt.

These kinds of messages make me doubt Pavel's honesty even more

Which may well be the intended purpose of these kinds of messages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com