Durov had long claimed he was in exile from Russia and couldn’t return and that he was a UAE/French citizen. then records leaked that showed 120 border crossings from 2016-2021 and that he still held a Russian passport. One such border crossing was a flight from St Petersburg on June 18, 2020 which happens to be the same day that Telegram was unblocked in Russia… Lots and lots of smoke..
I was hit pretty hard when Russia was trying to block telegram; I don’t buy that it was a coverup. And there is only a single (anonymous) source for that whole article.
That said, would be good to rely on no central authority and use Matrix instead; or at least put OTR/Ratchet on top of Telegram with custom clients.
TG does not seem hostile to third party clients the same way Whatsapp/Signal are.
It would otherwise serve the USA for people to prefer Signal over TG (due to jurisdiction).
I think they legitimately blocked Telegram and then Durov made a series of choices to bring it back to Russia.
Basically everything in the KI story has been verified. Durov admitted that he kept his Russian passport, he admitted that he was essentially lying about his Russian exile and regularly and freely traveled there, he hasn’t denied spending the week before Telegram was reinstated in St Petersburg which would be a no-brainer if he wasn’t really there.
As for choice of app — it again depends on your adversary. Telegram’s non-standard and home-brewed protocol has had every crypto expert asking “why? If not to…”
Lookup the name Vladimir Vedeneev and try and figure out why he’s signing Russian contracts as Telegram’s CFO and why his company GlobalNet has bragged about being the first to do DPI on backbone infrastructure while his other company Electrotelecom has FSB contracts for surveillance software.
See my other comment but Durov later admitted to basically all of that (he does travel freely in Russia, he did keep his Russian passport, the border crossing list was accurate). The signal - telegram debate has always come down to some variation of “If you trust Telegram to not allow MitM access to their servers and if the non-standard encryption they choose is secure and if you enabled the secure chat feature, it’s probably fine. Signal uses standard encryption and the messages are always encrypted so there’s no need to trust anyone.”
Which is likely why Signal is banned in Russia and Telegram is freely available.
Durov had long claimed he was in exile from Russia and couldn’t return and that he was a UAE/French citizen. then records leaked that showed 120 border crossings from 2016-2021 and that he still held a Russian passport. One such border crossing was a flight from St Petersburg on June 18, 2020 which happens to be the same day that Telegram was unblocked in Russia… Lots and lots of smoke..
The Kyiv Independent article is a good summary.
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-examining-telegram-found...
I was hit pretty hard when Russia was trying to block telegram; I don’t buy that it was a coverup. And there is only a single (anonymous) source for that whole article.
That said, would be good to rely on no central authority and use Matrix instead; or at least put OTR/Ratchet on top of Telegram with custom clients.
TG does not seem hostile to third party clients the same way Whatsapp/Signal are.
It would otherwise serve the USA for people to prefer Signal over TG (due to jurisdiction).
I think they legitimately blocked Telegram and then Durov made a series of choices to bring it back to Russia.
Basically everything in the KI story has been verified. Durov admitted that he kept his Russian passport, he admitted that he was essentially lying about his Russian exile and regularly and freely traveled there, he hasn’t denied spending the week before Telegram was reinstated in St Petersburg which would be a no-brainer if he wasn’t really there.
As for choice of app — it again depends on your adversary. Telegram’s non-standard and home-brewed protocol has had every crypto expert asking “why? If not to…”
Lookup the name Vladimir Vedeneev and try and figure out why he’s signing Russian contracts as Telegram’s CFO and why his company GlobalNet has bragged about being the first to do DPI on backbone infrastructure while his other company Electrotelecom has FSB contracts for surveillance software.
I dare to point out that this article provides no real evidence for these audacious accusations.
See my other comment but Durov later admitted to basically all of that (he does travel freely in Russia, he did keep his Russian passport, the border crossing list was accurate). The signal - telegram debate has always come down to some variation of “If you trust Telegram to not allow MitM access to their servers and if the non-standard encryption they choose is secure and if you enabled the secure chat feature, it’s probably fine. Signal uses standard encryption and the messages are always encrypted so there’s no need to trust anyone.”
Which is likely why Signal is banned in Russia and Telegram is freely available.