Chat control is back on the agenda again and the works is kept in secret.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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First they obliterate telegram (most likely the only ones that would not comply and still offer service in Europe, Facebook and Apple would just comply, Signal would drop Europe) and a few days later they restart talks on this.
Telegram isn't in trouble because they are a ""private"" messenger because 1) they aren't and 2) they basically asked for it. They are hosting pirates, drug dealers and scammers and they refuse government requests for the data they have about the user. That is the issue: not complying with data requests. For example, signal, a truly secure messenger, will comply with data requests and will send the authorities everything they have about a user, which is really not that much to begin with. This whole Telegram story is absolutely unrelated to chat control
I agree with you, but just think about this:
A govt asks Signal for info on a user, then Signal hands over a bunch of IP logs, metadata and a few encrypted messages that are still pending delivery or something on their servers.
Do you remember the FBI vs Apple situation, they wanted backdoors / access to E2EE stuff and Apple was refusing to provide and they went against one of the largest tech companies out there. Do you really believe that the US govt just went after Apple but wouldn't go after a small company like Signal? This looks shady - almost like there's a security vulnerability / backdoor in Signal they can use whenever they want.
Why would they go after the "not E2EE" chat but not after the "unbreakable and private" one? Telegram delivers trust, users trust that they won't share any info to govts. Signal only delivers a promise that their E2EE will be enough to make the information govts get useless.
Chat control is exactly about baking backdoors and providing govts full access to chat logs etc. something that Telegram would never be okay with. They don't even reply to govts requests most of the time, let alone be compromised at that level.
Signal do more than just a promise. Their encryption techniques are available to see. You can confirm if it's enough protection for you or not. Telegram are the ones making a promise. I'm not saying they've broken their promise (as evidenced by the arrest).
But it is just a promise when Telegram still has the ability to see messages. Signal can't see messages and therefore don't have to rely on a promise that can be broken (willingly or not). They instead rely on encryption, which appears to be far stronger than any promise could be.
For all we know, this is performative and the French government already has access to Telegram's servers and can see everything. If they have access to Signal's, oh well, they can't see shit.
The fact that govts go after them kinda validates the promise. Unlike Signal.
It validates that governments can see what's happening on Telegram, and that makes Telegram a target.
They can't go after the likes of Signal because they have very little to go on in the first place. They can't say definitively what's happening there as they can't see any messages. Unlike Telegram.
It's not a conspiracy that Signal are compromised, so they're being ignored. They're being ignored because there's nothing to see, so governments might as well spend resources going after the apps where information is visible instead. At least they might get a result. E2EE apps are too difficult.
(Properly implemented E2EE is too difficult at the moment but those are some big caveats. Still: didn't use Telegram.)