Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-telegram-suspension-social-media-school-violence-d72acaacd3c1b4d07c2c4fcb094f4ce6

185 173 3 years ago

whatsu• 3 years ago

No company should think it's above the national laws

So they should also hand out the names and locations of people organizing anti-war protests in Russia if ever requested.

comechao• 3 years ago

Good point, that’s why this conversation has more nuance. In this case, a single judge from one of the Brazilian states has decided to take down an app for the entire country.

p-e-w5• 3 years ago

If they want to do business in Russia? Absolutely.

Fortunately, nobody is forcing them to do business in Russia. But doing so entails acceptance of whatever local rules there are, including rules the vast majority of people might consider wrong.

I can promise you that Facebook & Co happily hand information on any individual to US law enforcement as long as there is a court order. They don't look at the person in question and then decide based on their own sense of morality whether they "should" supply that information. They simply do it.

skrowl• 3 years ago

No company should give up it's user data without a fight

It's not even clear that who they were looking for had broken any laws

HideousKojima• 3 years ago

Neither should any nation think it has the right to enforce its will on foreign entities.

Theitheave42• 3 years ago

Couldn’t agree more.

rektide6• 3 years ago

You and JP Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace can have words.

There's 195 nations on this planet. Should every company lower themselves below every nation? Without question? There's far more provinces with some lawmaking capability. How logistically do we even begin to figure out how to obey each & every single local rule?

These nations are on the internet. It's an unplace to connect all places. If your area has stupid beef, it's on you to handle your shit & make it so. The whole world doesn't bend to your local rules, it doesn't alter the rules of the entire internet.

voltaireodactyl4• 3 years ago

There's 195 nations on this planet. Should every company lower themselves below every nation? Without question?

My honest response to this would be: “yes, if they want to do business in said country”. Otherwise we end up where we’ve been, with Facebook being the sole way to access internet in some places. Why should an organization seeking to make a profit hold more sway than the institutions that allow such a profit to be made in the first place (not to mention the protection of their citizens).

To be clear, I realize that in practice, many governments don’t operate in as much good faith as I’d like. But I’d also argue that’s largely due to business holding outsized sway across the globe.

There's far more provinces with some lawmaking capability. How logistically do we even begin to figure out how to obey each & every single local rule?

There is no inherent right to do business internationally. Requiring that companies adhere to the laws wherever they choose to operate is hardly unreasonable. If they cannot comply — if the logistics are too expensive — then obviously they’re not successful enough to expand into these new countries.

But the idea that companies — where the ultimate goal is profit — should outrank governments — where the ultimate goal is a functioning society — seems ludicrous when stated plainly. The fact that our current society is largely modeled by outsized corporate influence is proof of that.

One can argue that not all governments, or even most, seek a functioning society in the way I’ve described. But even then, one must realize that the governments in question are beholden to corporate interests.

All the way back to the East India Company and beyond, one can demonstrate that globalized corporate influence harms society. So these are hardly ridiculous questions to ask.

anigbrowl6• 3 years ago

I was around for the DoIoC the first time and while there's a lot to recommend that document, it's also pompous and arrogant in many respects, to the detriment of reasonable discourse since.

If your area has stupid beef, it's on you to handle your shit & make it so

Yeah yeah, nothing is ever our problem, it's always someone else's problem and other people's problems are stupid. Do you not realize how head-up-the-ass that sounds? A lot of regular people hate techies because they celebrate disruption and software 'eating the world' (including many people's livelihood and communities) while shrugging off any kind of collective responsibility.

What about when some group of people have legitimate beef?

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

The inevitable result will be the destruction of the internet as we know it today. The international network will fracture into multiple regional networks with heavy filtering at the borders as nations seek to impose their laws on it. Regnet, if you will.

I'm glad I got to experience the true internet. It was great while it lasted. Truly a wonder of humanity.

0xy3• 3 years ago

"Every company should implement mass censorship and encourage countries to overstep"

This is a really weak defeatist position.

Brazil's administration is attempting to silence opposition voices, this has nothing to do with Nazis. Much like the EU uses "hate speech" laws to silence mass immigration skeptics, this is a political measure to silence people.

dancemethis4• 3 years ago

Nah, it has all to do with nazis this time.

The current government isn't like the last one, that actually used the intelligence machine to attack opposition voices.

Law kind of exists.

vitorgrs5• 3 years ago

Are you saying all the opposition are nazi?

Because this was literally a nazi group called ""卐 Frente Anti-Semita 卐""

Georgelemental4• 3 years ago

No national laws should think they are above freedom of expression and the right to privacy.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

Brazilian politicians are introducing "fake news" laws literally right now.

cjalmeida3• 3 years ago

Unabridged, borderline irresponsible freedom of expression is granted only in the US. Some Canadian truckers found this out the hard way

Nursie3• 3 years ago

OK, now define those things in an unambiguous way such that countries can come together in agreement over what constitutes expression, where the lines are with respect to slander/libel, what constitutes incitement, harassment... is money expression? Are lies in advertising protected?

These simple declarations of what people feel is true and right are ... I dunno, is the right expression "charmingly naive"?

eviks• 3 years ago

No government should think it's above its national laws

rafaelrc• 3 years ago

Stockholm syndrome is a bitch

alwayslikethis2• 3 years ago

Good luck. They tried to block it in Russia, but it simply broke their own internet for a while and the effectiveness was spotty until they gave up. To this day I believe there is quite little cooperation between the Russian government and Telegram, despite not being E2EE by default, if we don't consider conspiracy theories, unlike all the other services used in Russia which are basically all backdoored by the state directly. I don't think Telegram has a legal presence in Brazil though. How are they going to enforce the fine?

kelnos• 3 years ago

I don't think Telegram has a legal presence in Brazil though. How are they going to enforce the fine?

I'm sure they are banking on the idea that Telegram cares more about having users in Brazil than about the money. The Brazilian government can decide not to unblock Telegram until they pay the fines.

Of course, if it's that difficult to block Telegram as you suggest, they may eventually give up on both the fines and the blocking.

zamnos• 3 years ago

It's not about the money. The fines are because Telegram won't reveal who's operating (neo-Nazi) accounts on their platform, with an added bit of political shenanigans to muddy the waters on top of it.

pmeira• 3 years ago

Last year when something like this happened, it came out that there's a legal representative in Rio: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2022/0...

buitreVirtual• 3 years ago

So they can talk to the representatives. They cannot make them remove the app.

karp7734• 3 years ago

"Blocking" in Russia was nothing else than an internal drill by KGB to check robustness to possible blocking in the target fields of operations, e.g. Brazil.

If Russia TRULY wanted to block Telegram, then Mr. Durov, who accidentally operates from and resides in Russia, would have been kidnapped and tortured until Telegram goes down or he hands the keys over to KGB.

Since Durov is still alive and free... the conclusion is kind of obvious.

mehanig• 3 years ago

Durov don't operate from Russia and wasn't operating during those "blockings", so this theory does not hold up.

jimbobimbo• 3 years ago

Durov lives in Dubai.

mmxmb• 3 years ago

Telegram is operated from UAE. Durov left Russia in 2014.

karp7734• 3 years ago

It's funny how such trivially obvious things may cause so much hate and denial. No free media in Russia?! Shocker!

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

I don't think Telegram has a legal presence in Brazil though. How are they going to enforce the fine?

You're commenting on the news of their enforcement. They are completely fine with blocking Telegram nation-wide until they reveal the user data and pay the fine.

Don't give me that "good luck" speech either. The article mentions the same judges blocked Telegram last year. I submitted news of that here and people here gave me the exact same "lol good luck telegram didn't even submit to Russia" response. A few days later I got the news that Telegram paid the fine.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

Paying the fine could be a reasonable decision, depending on their priorities.

Paying the fine and providing the user data basically renders the whole service pointless, right? It is better to be blocked in Brazil than to be useless everywhere I guess.

vitorgrs5• 3 years ago

Since last year Telegram has a legal presence in Brazil.

stefan_• 3 years ago

It's a nice story, the founder in exile fighting to keep his unrestricted messaging service, even against the fangs of an authoritarian government that regularly outright murders people around the world. A history of some technical sloppyness, we overlook it as "growth hacking". I'm afraid believing in that is about as smart as those criminals were trusting EncroChat.

xinayder4• 3 years ago

They can and they have blocked it.

There's a law for the internet in Brazil, called Marco Civil, which literally states that ISPs can be blocked and forbidden from providing services if they don't comply with takedown requests issued by the authorities.

They were blocked quite a few times in the past 4-5 years. If I remember correctly there was a time that it was blocked for up to 2 days because they were deciding if they should pay the fine and hand over the data, or remain blocked.

I totally disagree with these rulings in favor of blocking social media apps (even though it could do us good by banning or difficulting disinformation from reaching people), but you do realize that Telegram is not the app it used to be or should be anymore, right? Pavel Durov, its CEO, is an absolute weirdo that tries to play god because he owns huge social media platforms, one of them being VK, which is heavily monitored by the Russian government.

So, if you think you are safe using Telegram, think again.

eitland• 3 years ago

Pavel Durov, its CEO, is an absolute weirdo that tries to play god because he owns huge social media platforms, one of them being VK, which is heavily monitored by the Russian government.

VK was stolen from him and given to people who were friends with the regime.

So yes, VK is heavily monitored and controlled by Russian authorities and it seems a good deal of effort went into preventing that from happening again.

azangru• 3 years ago

To this day I believe there is quite little cooperation between the Russian government and Telegram

I find it fascinating that Telegram is (and was back when they tried to block it) the most popular messenger and possibly even social network in Russia. Dmitry Medvedev, for crying out loud, writes his thuggish notes on Telegram, from which they then get propagated by mass media. Ramzan Kadyrov, too, posts to Telegram. It's so embarrassing to see after their attempt to block it for some reason.

tapoxi4• 3 years ago

I'm fairly certain it is deeply connected to Russia. People believe it's encrypted but it's not for group chats or default for direct chats. They have money when Telegram is expensive to run, not to mention they can easily threaten Durov's life.

The Russian network block and letting people use Telegram again was the government squeezing their biggest source of users and income until they acquiesced.

jojobas3• 3 years ago

They just couldn't win and gave up. They accidentally crippled Github, large portions of google cloud and even their own government services while trying to blacklist Telegram and figured it was not worth the risk and getting laughed at.

The Skripal affair and other fuckups highlighted that Russia can't get away with threatening even a retiree's life, let alone millionaire's with some security.

tapoxi4• 3 years ago

Why couldn't they do DPI and block the protocol?

karp7734• 3 years ago

People believe it's encrypted but it's not for group chats or default for direct chats.

Did they already adopt a proven published alogithm for encryption, or still using a homegrown KGB-Krypt algorithm? Sorry for a trivial question, I am not a user.

tapoxi4• 3 years ago

It's still homegrown.

NayamAmarshe7• 3 years ago

Did they already adopt a proven published alogithm for encryption, or still using a homegrown KGB-Krypt algorithm?

Their algorithm itself is proven and published, has been audited multiple times already.

It is not as good Double Ratchet in terms of features but security wise, it's solid.

wheresmyshadow• 3 years ago

Sorry but this sounds like conspiracy theory stuff. It is encrypted client-server so your message is misleading. And Durov as far as I'm aware is in Dubai. Russia blocked Telegram in the past and because they actually failed (it was still most popular messenger in there despite the block), so they decided to give up the block and started pumping their own propaganda on their own channels.

IYasha3• 3 years ago

Maaan, don't you see? This was a controlled move: hook up people to a social network, pretend to clumsily ban it (while also testing and upgrading ISP abilities to do it), control reaction, pretend to unban it (oh, we do what peoples asked! we care! we not baddies! we cool!)

While in the same reality aggressively fight TOR, block VPNs, enforce passport registration, etc. etc. There's even a man jailed for running a tor node!

NayamAmarshe7• 3 years ago

I'm fairly certain it is deeply connected to Russia.

Just as Signal, Facebook, Google, WhatsApp are deeply connected to the USA?

People believe it's encrypted but it's not for group chats or default for direct chats.

The cloud and E2EE encryption of Telegram have already been audited by independent researchers.

They have money when Telegram is expensive to run

They literally raised money (a billion dollars) by selling bonds last year and to make Telegram self-sustainable, introduced Telegram Premium.

not to mention they can easily threaten Durov's life

Which is why Durov (and his whole dev team) moved to the UAE in the first place!

I'm all for healthy skepticism, but there must be a limit. Unproven conspiracies aren't helping anyone, especially from people who have no issues with apps like WhatsApp. Telegram has time and again tried to fight government intervention, and yet that's not enough. The clients are open-source, everything audited by independent researchers and yet, people aren't afraid to make claims that they can't prove.

bmarquez• 3 years ago

Yeah people keep trying to push the "Russian connection" when it isn't being supported by Durov's actions. It almost feels like a conspiracy theory encouraged by users of competing apps.

There are legitimate reasons to doubt Telegram like the lack of default end-to-end encryption but the Russian thing as a criticism of the app itself is overblown.

dancemethis4• 3 years ago

The server side is still proprietary. They could have just given "dummied" source code to "independent researchers".

Chances are ALWAYS against regular people.

hiimkeks2• 3 years ago

The cloud and E2EE encryption of Telegram have already been audited by independent researchers.

Yes, and they all agree it's crap. Just look at this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6915741 (Feel free to ignore Moxie, but listen to tptacek). In addition, it doesn't even matter since (a) it's not turned on by default and (b) it can't be turned on for group chats.

That said, I agree that Durov probably is not closely collaborating with the Russian state.

Aerbil313• 3 years ago

Literally everything can be faked. Independent researchers, etc. Especially by the government. I don’t have an iota of trust in govts.

tapoxi4• 3 years ago

Most Telegram messages are group chats, they are not E2EE at all since Telegram doesn't support them.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

This has nothing to do with Russia.

antisocialist• 3 years ago

Supposedly it's about the children. Sao Paulo solved the problem:

Many Brazilian states didn’t wait for the federal response. Sao Paulo, for example, temporarily hired 550 psychologists to attend to its public schools, and hired 1,000 private security guards.

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-school-violence-guns-attac...

This is what disgruntled poor people did in China, too, used a $5 hatchet. You don't even need to be able to afford a gun .

I don't see a (neo)Nazi angle in that crime, though. There's no clear motive for the attack yet and no connection to Telegram either (based on coverage in DW and The Guardian), so I'm guessing Lula is simply trying to crack down on free speech.

Users who want private comms with encryption and metadata cleansing can use decentralized blockchain based services such as xx Network's xxMessenger. xxMessenger can be blocked by the ISPs by blocking outgoing connections to xx gateways, but desktop-only Speakeasy Tech can use Tor Network (Tor Browser's Socks5 proxy or Arti) so it's likely to work better when telcos and ISPs are ordered to block connections or DNS lookups. There are other, similar networks, I just don't know enough about them to make specific recommendations.

Disclosure: I own xx coins.

speeder• 3 years ago

You are correct.

Brazilian had a CIA backed dictatorship during cold War, and when it ended people made sure to make a constitution that would prevent another one.

Sadly the constitution is being ignored for a while now, the current government is strongly against free speech, the previous government also had issues.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court are the ones that really hate the constitution, for example a guy was arrested for saying in an airplane near a judge that he is ashamed of being Brazilian. The last president pointed out our constitution doesn't allow lockdowns without a special council ordering one (to prevent the president from declaring curfew and arresting dissidents) the Supreme Court then ordered lockdowns to be made anyway. (And the media called the president genocidal for pointing out lockdowns were illegal if not done correctly)

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

Strongly against free speech... They are discussing a "fake news" law literally right now. It contains terms like "internet supervision entity".

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 years ago

I remember that "freedom" speech by bolsonaro.

It was something to behold. Took a lot of guts to take the entire cabinet of ministers to task for failing to protect brazilians against errant bureaucracy. Too bad the video seems to not be in youtube anymore

epups4• 3 years ago

Bolsonaro was called genocidal for doing everything wrong about the pandemic. He pushed for alternative medicine that doesn't work, he ignored vaccine offers from Pfizer (which delayed the start of vaccination in Brazil for months) and he replaced two healthcare ministers for doing their job. And let's not even get into the straightforward genocide of the indigenous people that occurred under his government: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cw011x9rpldo

Keep the far-right conspiracy theories in the sewer where they belong.

bhk• 3 years ago

Doesn't this sound like a dictatorship?

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

It is. We brazilians are living under a judiciary monarchy of sorts. The supreme court basically does whatever it wants.

archon1410• 3 years ago

I think I once read an interesting term for "rule through courts" in reference to Islamic/sharia courts (which also had some tribal significance iirc) in Somalia who acted as the de facto after the central govt collapsed. I can't find it again.

timeon• 3 years ago

judiciary monarchy of sorts

Do they have mandates for life?

dancemethis4• 3 years ago

It doesn't, really. It's specifically because Telegram failed to deliver all the requested information on certain nazi propaganda spreader groups.

LewisVerstappen• 3 years ago

Who defined nazi propaganda spreader groups?

Who draws the line? First Nazi propaganda spreaders, then gay rights activists?

Sounds extremely dangerous to have this kind of centralized control.

jalbertoni• 3 years ago

Taken case by case, no. The absolute majority of those cases are used to get ISPs to block pirate streaming sites, or sites selling personal data.

However, once every few years, a high profile case suspending something like Whatsapp, Youtube, LinkedIn or Facebook appears. They are usually thrown out of appeals court so fast there's no time for the block order to actually reach the ISPs.

The ones that actually do result in a block have a police investigation behind it, making the whole bureaucracy more slow as there needs to be some back and forth between the police and the company. The fact that Telegram's entire team in Brazil is one lawyer might make this worse.

For example, this particular incident may have come from a misunderstanding. The police asked for all available data on all users of a group chat called "Movimento Anti-Semita Brasileiro" and another with a similar name. I hope the translation should be obvious.

What did Telegram deliver? The requested data of the group admin, not all users.

So now they get blocked until they deliver all the data.

Source for this incident, that is, the legal order for the block: https://www.conjur.com.br/dl/telegram-decisao-suspensao.pdf

p-e-w5• 3 years ago

The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything. Its sole purpose is to attack certain institutions and/or governments, while excluding other institutions and governments from criticism even though they share most or all of the same characteristics.

Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?", "are they respecting universal human rights?", and "in whose interests are they acting?". The answers to those questions are absolutely enlightening and make the differences between countries commonly considered dictatorships and countries commonly considered democracies almost vanish.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

Instead of asking whether or not XYZ is a dictatorship, ask "are they following their own laws and constitution?"

They are not. Censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, especially that of a political nature. Yet I don't think it's been a month since I last saw news of some politician being banned from holding office because they posted "fake news" online or something.

Basically the strategy now is to criminalize "fake news", accuse your opponents of spreading it and deplatform them because criminals can't hold political office. Show me the man, I'll show you the crime.

anigbrowl6• 3 years ago

You make many good points but this is absurd: The word "dictatorship" doesn't actually mean anything.

Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.

anigbrowl6• 3 years ago

No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business. I think the judge is reaching a bit but I don't know much about Brazil's legal code. Common law countries tend to be extremely accommodating of business entities because they're obsessed with procedure (imho) to the detriment of doing any enforcement. Civil law jurisdictions take the approach of 'we need compliance up front, we can quibble about legal liability afterwards.' Common law countries demand high levels of personal accountability but have elaborate mechanics for distributing accountability across organizations that (again imho) allow the creation of private quasi-sovereignty, and they maintain this in part because it attracts capital to those countries.

p-e-w5• 3 years ago

No, it sounds like a civil law country dealing with a recalcitrant business.

That's assuming the judge actually followed the law and the constitution, which isn't obvious at all in this case.

xinayder4• 3 years ago

Not yet but Congress is trying to approve a "fake news" package which tries to put more responsibilities on the hands of Big Tech regarding monitoring online content.

When I put it like that it doesn't sound so bad, but then you read the text and find out the government and its judiciary institutions have the absolute power of determining if something is deemed as fake news or not.

Then you can say it's actually good because it will prevent or reduce disinformation from spreading. Okay, I wouldn't mind anti-vax statements being blocked, but what if I have information that an authority is corrupt? They would try to censor me, it happened in the past, in 2018 I guess, where a reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil, and a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article. When other mainstream outlets heard about this they just shared the original article to make it more difficult to censor this information.

A couple of weeks later the Supreme Court initiated a long process in which it's the judgy, jury and executioner, a thing that lots of citizens protested, but if you did it back then you'd be called a "bolsonarista" or people would say you're supporting fake news.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

reputable newspaper wrote an article that one of the Supreme Court judges was implicated in the major corruption scandal in Brazil
a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article

What scandal are you referring to? I'd like to read about it. Let's make some Streisand magic happen!

schoen2• 3 years ago

This has happened several times before with other services:

https://bloqueios.info/en/timeline/

Unfortunately this site hasn't been updated since 2016, but I don't think that's because these kinds of orders have stopped being issued. They've previously been issued on various occasions by a state judge when a company either ignores or says it can't technically comply with a subpoena or injunction in a court case, and have so far usually been overturned by Brazilian appeals courts.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

This time the DNS block was ordered directly by a supreme court judge. No one can overturn that. Also, the political scenario was different. Brazil used to at least pretend to be a democracy with a constitution and rule of law. Since then, these supreme court judges have done far worse than block some messaging service. This is literally nothing to people like them.

schoen2• 3 years ago

This time the DNS block was ordered directly by a supreme court judge. No one can overturn that.

I think you're mistaken, unless there was an incredibly rapid sequence of events in this case.

https://static.poder360.com.br/2023/04/decisao-telegram-grup...

Seção Judiciária do Espírito Santo 1ª Vara Federal de Linhares [...] assinado por WELLINGTON LOPES DA SILVA

That would be a first instance (trial) court, not any kind of appellate court. (Though in the Federal judiciary rather than the state judiciary.)

cjalmeida3• 3 years ago

Order was issued by a trial federal judge (1a instância). Please stop spreading conspiracy misinformation.

sofixa3• 3 years ago

Brazil used to at least pretend to be a democracy with a constitution and rule of law

What do you mean? Didn't they have an election that the incumbent lost (for very good reasons I might add, anyone who bungles the Covid response that bad doesn't deserve to remain in power regardless of anything else (and there was a lot of "else")) recently, implying democracy and all that?

anonymousiam3• 3 years ago

I am more disturbed by the fact that the infrastructure was already in place to instantly block Telegram as soon as a judge ordered it.

vitorgrs5• 3 years ago

Hm? Every ISP is able to block websites. This happens constantly, specially with piracy-related websites.

dudus• 3 years ago

Yes sure. It's just very efficient apparently. More than expected for government technical stuff.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

It's been in place for decades. Nearly a decade ago I posted here on HN about brazilian judges blocking WhatsApp nationwide.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/05/03/whatsapp-...

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Happens all the time in the UK.

anonymousiam3• 3 years ago

The UK, along with our other closest allies (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) should be representing the position of the United States with regard to free speech. It almost seems as though our own (US) government is now opposed to free speech, even though it was identified as the top most important (ratified) right.

Note: The original first amendment was: "WE DECLARE, That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the PEOPLE; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well being. For the advancement of these ends, the PEOPLE have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government."

That one was never ratified.

ykonstant• 3 years ago

Oh come on, now I want to make a similar app and name it Disbelief.

DoctorDabadedoo• 3 years ago

Honestly, I don´t know what this type of post is doing on HN. Very strong political bias and misinformation being spread in the comments, feels like I'm on Reddit.

ttaranto• 3 years ago

It is imperative to enforce the law and block internet platforms that fail to comply with legal regulations. The internet cannot serve as a sanctuary for promoting neo-Nazi groups and other illegal activities, as it must remain subject to legal jurisdiction. All individuals and organizations, whether online or offline, must be held accountable to the law. It is unacceptable to allow hate speech, homophobia, and the promotion of heinous crimes, such as child murder, to proliferate unchecked. The platform Telegram, for example, was rightfully blocked for refusing to provide authorities with phone numbers. It is essential that this platform and others that violate legal standards be severely punished to ensure compliance with the law.

nathan_compton3• 3 years ago

I'm not a digital privacy dogmatist and in like general terms I agree that sometimes states have legitimate powers to wiretap or whatever. And I agree that the idea that any group of people anywhere can communicate in near perfect secrecy about whatever they want is a little scary. But technology has put us in a challenging position wherein it seems like our only two choices are living in a perfect surveillance state all the time, where everything can be, in principal, observed by the state at a whim and the former reality, where people can have genuinely private communications.

When I think of it in those terms, I'd rather humans continue to have privacy, even if it allows ne'er do wells to conspire secretly.

matheusmoreira19• 3 years ago

It's a politico-technological arms race. Government makes laws, people make technology to circumvent those laws, government makes new laws, people make new technology. With every iteration, government must increase its tyranny to enjoy the same level of control it had before. Governments get worse and worse in a desperate attempt to hold on to their power. We'll either end up in a totalitarian state or with an uncontrollable population, whichever comes first. Who'll reach their limits first?

Brazilian government is already speaking of giving judges and politicians total power to censor things on the internet. They're speaking of "autonomous internet supervision entities". Yeah.

bheadmaster2• 3 years ago

And I agree that the idea that any group of people anywhere can communicate in near perfect secrecy about whatever they want is a little scary

The problem is, short of banning encryption altogether, you cannot prevent people from communicating in near perfect secrecy. If a criminal (or neo-Nazi, or homophobic, or whatever scapegoat you want to use) organization wants to communicate secretly, they will have means of doing so. All it takes is single programmer to write the custom application, and a single AWS instance to relay the data.

By banning Telegram or enforcing government rules, you're only taking away privacy from ordinary folks, while doing effectively nothing to those who you're claiming to fight against.

...and no, this is not an argument for banning encryption. I hope that part is obvious.

tomjen3• 3 years ago

Would you also agree to this ban, if it was to expose a group of homosexual men having consensual sex, assuming it was illegal?

din_sup2• 3 years ago

Telegram indeed handed over IP address and phone number to the court. https://download.uol.com.br/files/2023/04/657265820_telegram...

Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram

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