Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.
I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.
Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/politics/yemen-strikes-jo...
and it didn't leak because of Signal's security, but because an Atlantic maganize journalist was added to the group chat by Waltz.
Pavel Durov was arrested when he traveled to France because Telegram was noncompliant with French court orders. You can ignore them in Russia... you can't ignore them in France. And you can ignore Russian court orders in France but not in Russia. And the Russian or Indian court is free to ask the Montenegrin government to suspend your domain name and the Montenegrin government is free to agree or disagree.
For all of the much-vaunted complains about their lack of it, I am not aware of any proof or credible claims that Telegram the company has ever revealed the contents of non-encrypted messages or group chats.
Meanwhile, I don't think any authorities actually care about to what extent E2E Encryption makes it harder for Signal the corporation to extract message data. There's plenty of other ways to skin that cat - on-device compromises, abuse of backup mechanisms, abuse of mechanisms to manage linked devices, etc. They'd go after them just the same if they thought there was anything they really wanted on there.
If there's any real difference, I think it's most likely because many more of the group chats that such authorities are aware of and find "interesting" are on Telegram because basically nobody really does E2E well in medium-large groups right now.
Famously, Signal complies with court orders by giving up all the data that's requested that it has, which isn't very much. This is what you expect from E2EE platforms.
A court order to do the impossible is invalid. Telegram gets in trouble because it's possible for them to comply but they choose not to. Subpoenas are usually worded as "you must provide all information you have, relating to ..."
Meanwhile, if you believe that any Governments actually refrain from prosecuting Signal executives due to their refusal and/or inability to produce the messages from private chats because they have E2EE, well, I've got a nice bridge to sell you.
If they actually are refraining from going after Signal executives in a similar fashion, most likely either 1. Nobody is actually using it for anything interesting, 2. They are actually secretly cooperating somehow, or 3. Governments are already happy with other technical means of extracting the contents of Signal chats they are interested in. See the US FBI's curious sudden lack of interest in Apple's ability, or lack thereof, to extract a wanted suspect's iMessage messages.
Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.
It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized to operate.
Other platforms either don't have the requested data (Signal) or willingly hand it over when they get a court order to (Facebook). When Telegram gets a court order it ignores the court order and then makes Pavel Durov hard to physically find and therefore arrest. One can only guess what motivations he has for this.
So courts seek alternative enforcement mechanisms.
I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!
clientHold = registrar (GoDaddy)
serverHold = registry (Montenegrin Registry)
Also "facilitation of exam cheating" is the most stupid accusation. Why they cannot keep exam question in secret? Also why they do not shutdown scammer call centers which scam Westerners? So they want Telegram to be blocked but scammer call center to continue operating?
In Russia, "extremism" is whatever the state decides it to be. "Give me the man, and I will find the crime" has always been its modus operandi. the last people who might have got fair trial were nobles under the Tzar.
Obviously yes, follow the money. Call centers use BSNL which is a state-owned telco, the government gets a cut of every call made. Telegram doesn't give the government any incentive to keep it around.