https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/08/28/telegram-has-become-a-key-tool-for-the-russian-military-why-does-moscow-continue-to-rely-on-a-dubai-based-civilian-messaging-app
Who cares?
This is propaganda. Intended to justify shutting it down.
Why not talk about what's actually important. Like genocide victims using it to tell their stories. Citizenry using it to organize when their oppressive govts shut down everything else.
Ukraine uses it as an important propaganda chanel too. Do they also want to shut that down? Telegram is shit but all this recent talk seems very fishy to me. Purely motivated by censorship ambitions.
Telegram might not be encrypted, but they’ve also spread their servers and content in multiple jurisdictions. And they don’t give in to law enforcement requests.
This is why Durov is being charged.
Why not talk about what’s actually important.
Alright, let's talk about the fact that freedom fighter Pavel Durov closed channels and bots of the Russian and Iranian opposition. You can't do that and justify it by local laws of various dictatorships, and then allow child porn and other criminal activities while ignoring laws of democracies. He created himself an image of a good guy, but it's all lie.
I think it'd be interesting to know how come an actual military is using Telegram for communication. Bizarre shit.
I had a thought. The fsb basically had unlimited free access to any ICQ conversation, but they let it die instead or pushing it as the national chat app. Why? Seems a wasted opportunity to have everyone on telegram where everything is supposedly encrypted if there could have been an alternative where everything was in clear text.
One possibility is that Russia can read the encryption. They push, or allow, people to use Telegram because it gives false confidence that messages cannot be read which encourages people to share information they otherwise wouldn't.
That exact strategy has been employed by the Security and Intelligence services of other nations. Here's an example from 2021 of the FBI pushing Anom.
I doubt that is what is going on here since it's their military using this. That Anom story is terrifying. Entrapment techniques like that make me sick. For. Every "criminal" they caught think of how many innocent people were violated by this.
Entrapment techniques like that make me sick.
What was the entrapment? The FBI sold phones to suspected criminals and monitored the conversations, didn't they?
Nonsense. How do you market an encryption platform exclusively to criminals? That may have been their target but there would be a large number of innocents that downloaded this as a secure messaging system.
Yes, it was marketed in the dark web marketplaces as "the phone for criminals"
That app could run only on a special custom ROM. It was a dedicated phone, a Google pixel 4a with locked bootloader and a custom ROM that exclusively allowed to communicate with other anom users. You don't buy a $2000 phone that could only communicate with other $2000 phones if you don't have something to hide.
It might have happened that maybe a millionaire with disposable income bought a set to talk with his secret girl affair but those were definitely the minority
How do you market an encryption platform exclusively to criminals?
Apparently through word of mouth and suggestions by undercover agents.
innocents that downloaded this as a secure messaging system
The app wasn't made available for download. The FBI bought a few thousand Pixels, flashed a custom ROM onto them, and then installed the messaging apps. In theory they cost thousands of dollars to buy.
It's entirely possible some innocents used the system, but it's unclear how selling rooted hardware to alleged criminals would induce them to commit crime.
See https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/1197959218/fbi-phone-company-anom
Users of Anom can learn if they’re under investigation by typing in their username and smartphone details into a form on the site.
😂 Nice try
Don't overestimate FSB. They never had the means to make ICQ the national chat in the first place. Russia is not North Korea, it's not a full-blown totalitarian state even today. There was no opportunity.