"Ah, but if you need encryption then you'll..." - well, two things now. Suddenly you're the person who has encryption switched on. And also more likely, someone they talk to will forget to switch it on and just blab everything into cleartext anyway.
The entire importance of Signal's model is that it is always encrypted. It's why LetsEncrypt is also important: to have effective security you need to be able to hide in the crowd. If encryption usage is rare, then who's using it itself (or suddenly starts using it) becomes an extremely valuable datapoint.
(so I'd add: Telegram absolutely sell timeline details of which user accounts change their frequency of encrypted chat usage).
> And also more likely, someone they talk to will forget to switch it on and just blab everything into cleartext anyway.
I expect that if you enable a Telegram Secret Chat with Bob, Bob cannot unilaterally un-secret it. I would be very surprised if that was the case.
Of course Bob can then share the contents with Carol via an un-encrypted channel. But every encrypted channel has that weakness.
I'd guess this is possible because Telegram e2ee chats aren't multi-device capable, so it's necessary to be able to use unencrypted chats while using Telegram on something else than the phone with e2e.
Possible, as many ridiculous things happened around the whole war. (Recently german generals on a video chat were targeted by the russians, wasn't too hard, they did not use any encyption at all)
Sources would be nice though.
But it really would not be a reason for me to trust telegrams security.
Rather a confirmation again, that also secret services can show great incompetence.
They used Webex. Doesn't Webex use any encryption at all?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
> Ukrainian artillery targets Russian soldiers by pinpointing their phone signals. Despite the deadly results, Russian troops keep defying a ban on cellphone use near the front.
It's especially critical to drip-feed feel good news when you losing.
> “It is already clear that the main reason of what took place included the massive use, contrary to the ban, of personal mobile phones in the range of enemy weapons,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The cellphone data allowed Ukraine, it said, to “determine the coordinates of the location of military service members to inflict a rocket strike.”
If you claim that neither Russian, nor Ukrainian special services are competent, I'd disagree with you.
IDK, the whole anti-Signal post really makes me suspicious of Telegram whereas I wasn't really before. Are trying to be the universal honeypot for agencies?