Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? On Saturday August twenty fourth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, French law enforcement officials arrested a man named
Speaker 1: Pavel Durov shortly after his private plane landed at an
Speaker 1: airport outside of Paris. So why did they do that? Well,
Speaker 1: Durov is the CEO of the company Telegram, a communications
Speaker 1: and file sharing app. Pavel and his brother Nikolai founded
Speaker 1: Telegram partly as a way to allow users to communicate
Speaker 1: with one another without fear of censorship. But this freedom
Speaker 1: also means that some people use Telegram to either commit
Speaker 1: or facilitate illegal activities, and that's what led to Pavel
Speaker 1: Durov's arrest. Now I should probably put this in right here,
Speaker 1: even though it is a spoiler. Dirov has since been
Speaker 1: released from police custody, but we'll still have to appear
Speaker 1: in court, which, as I'm recording this has not yet happened.
Speaker 1: By the time you hear this, maybe it has now.
Speaker 1: I thought I would give a history of Telegram and
Speaker 1: some information on the charges that Pavol faces, as well
Speaker 1: as more information about what Telegram itself does. But to
Speaker 1: do that, when we first have to talk about a
Speaker 1: predecessor to Telegram. It is a social media platform called
Speaker 1: v Contact. That's Vko n Takte or VK for short,
Speaker 1: because this launched in Russia. So in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: two years after Facebook, or rather the Facebook launched, Pavel
Speaker 1: Durov created VK with Nikolai So it featured many of
Speaker 1: the same functions that you would find on platforms like
Speaker 1: Facebook or MySpace back in the day. Users could create profiles,
Speaker 1: they could connect with friends, and as I said, Pavel
Speaker 1: lived in Russia at the time. He has citizenship in
Speaker 1: many different countries at this point, including France, and the
Speaker 1: Russian government has let's say, a little history with wanting
Speaker 1: to control the flow of information. That's quite hard to
Speaker 1: do on a platform made up of user generated content.
Speaker 1: The information isn't coming from some central source. It's not
Speaker 1: like a media company. It's being generated by the people
Speaker 1: who are actually on the platform. One twenty eleven, some
Speaker 1: Russian citizens were taking to VK to protest recent parliamentary elections.
Speaker 1: The Russian government didn't want anyone upsetting the borsched cart,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and so Durav received the polite request
Speaker 1: that perhaps he censored the posts that were protesting the elections,
Speaker 1: you know, or else. Durov declined to acquiesce to their request,
Speaker 1: and so the Russian government decided to pull out all
Speaker 1: the stops. Now those stops included using essentially propaganda to
Speaker 1: heap aspersions upon both VK and Durov himself, but perhaps
Speaker 1: the more effective tactic was they sent an armed police
Speaker 1: presence to Durov's house to intimidate him into complying with
Speaker 1: Russian demands. On top of that, the government allegedly demanded
Speaker 1: that Durov handover user information linked to accounts identified as
Speaker 1: having posted anti government messages. Durov decided that he had
Speaker 1: had enough of that kind of stuff, so ultimately he
Speaker 1: would cash out and sell his interest in VK. This,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, happened around twenty fourteen when
Speaker 1: he officially sold off his interest in the company, but
Speaker 1: he was already thinking ahead to the next thing and
Speaker 1: getting out of Dodge or Moscow, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: much earlier than that, So he and his brother would
Speaker 1: found telegram back in twenty thirteen, so he still had
Speaker 1: interests in VK at this point, but would sell them
Speaker 1: off the following year. Now, another thing that happened in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen that I'm guessing influenced the Brothers was the
Speaker 1: tale of Edward Snowden. So Snowden was a contractor for
Speaker 1: the NSA here in America. Now, in the course of
Speaker 1: Snowden's work, he learned about massive surveillance programs, including ones
Speaker 1: that involved not just the United States, but it's allies
Speaker 1: collaborating with one another and sharing surveillance information between them.
Speaker 1: And the scope and depth of these surveillance programs really
Speaker 1: concerned Snowden, so he purposefully leaked information ultimately to the
Speaker 1: public about them, and that got various governments very upset
Speaker 1: at Snowden. To put it lightly, Snowden ultimately sought asylum
Speaker 1: in Russia, where he was granted asylum, and in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two he received citizenship in Russia. While the US
Speaker 1: government viewed Snowden's actions as a violation of several laws,
Speaker 1: including the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen, lots of other
Speaker 1: people saw what he did as a heroic act of defiance,
Speaker 1: uncovering questionable and disturbing practices across the world, some of
Speaker 1: those practices subsequently being found unconstitutional and illegal here in
Speaker 1: the United States, and he also helped drive home the
Speaker 1: concern that your communications with the people in your life
Speaker 1: might not be as private as you would like to think.
Speaker 1: One other important change that had happened between the launch
Speaker 1: of VK and the launch of Telegram was the rise
Speaker 1: of the smartphone. Back in two thousand and six, consumer
Speaker 1: smartphones weren't actually a thing yet. The only phonelks who
Speaker 1: touted smartphones around were like business executives and bleeding edge
Speaker 1: technology enthusiasts. Everyone else was sporting a cell phone, you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a flip phone, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: candy bar style phone. Maybe you were super cool and
Speaker 1: you had a sidekick. I really really wanted a sidekick anyway.
Speaker 1: The point is, accessing the Web in general and social
Speaker 1: media in particular typically meant you were on a desktop
Speaker 1: or a laptop computer. But by twenty thirteen we were
Speaker 1: well into a seed change in which more people were
Speaker 1: relying on smartphones in order to access web content. Now,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't really be until like early twenty fourteen that
Speaker 1: we started to see web Internet usage on mobile eclipsing
Speaker 1: desktop usage here in the United States. That is, it
Speaker 1: was different for different parts of the world. Here in
Speaker 1: the US around twenty fourteen, that's when that started to happen,
Speaker 1: where mobile phones were becoming the primary way that people
Speaker 1: were interacting with content on the web, which meant web
Speaker 1: designers were hectically trying to figure out how to optimize
Speaker 1: pages for users on mobile devices, or to create mobile
Speaker 1: specific apps to try and drive traffic to those. I've
Speaker 1: seen plenty Heck, I recorded ads for how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: is mobile app way back in the day, because optimizing
Speaker 1: a page so that it looks good no matter what
Speaker 1: device you're on was tricky. Like it's easier today because
Speaker 1: best practices have been created to handle that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But back in like the twenty tens era, that was
Speaker 1: still a developing discipline, and so there were a lot
Speaker 1: of outlets out there that created apps hoping that they
Speaker 1: could drive people to use those apps and manage to
Speaker 1: monetize that traffic. I never saw download figures on how
Speaker 1: well the house Stuff Works app did. If I had
Speaker 1: to suspect what I would guess it was fairly low.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a decent app, but not not
Speaker 1: equivalent to the web page experience. Anyway, the mobile landscape
Speaker 1: was clearly becoming much more important, and so the Durovs
Speaker 1: decided they would focus on a mobile centered application for Telegram,
Speaker 1: at least initially. They set up their headquarters in the
Speaker 1: United Arab Immirates, specifically in Dubai. So Durov chose this
Speaker 1: because he said it was quote the best place for
Speaker 1: a neutral platform like ours to be in if we
Speaker 1: want to make sure we can defend our user's privacy
Speaker 1: and freedom of speech end quote. So in other words,
Speaker 1: Durov was confident that the UAE government wouldn't get so
Speaker 1: handsy with Telegram as Russia had with VK. The company
Speaker 1: would launch apps for iOS in August twenty thirteen and
Speaker 1: Android in October of that same year. That was after
Speaker 1: Telegram had held a contest for Android developers to essentially
Speaker 1: port the code over to the Android environnment. Nikolai developed
Speaker 1: the initial mobile protocol for Telegram that included the encryption protocol.
Speaker 1: Now I should add that not all messages are encrypted
Speaker 1: on Telegram, and that's actually a key component to the
Speaker 1: issues that Durov currently faces. So in fact, even a
Speaker 1: one on one conversation inside telegram is not encrypted by default.
Speaker 1: You actually have to manually turn on encryption if you
Speaker 1: want your communication to be encrypted. For those one on
Speaker 1: one conversations, you can have to end encryption that protects
Speaker 1: the message from prying eyes. And I've talked about encryption
Speaker 1: many times before, but basically, from a very high level,
Speaker 1: here's how it works. You have two users, and they
Speaker 1: have a means of encrypting and decrypting messages so that
Speaker 1: the information that's actually sent between the two appears to
Speaker 1: be gibberish. An outside party snooping in on the conversation
Speaker 1: would just see a string of apparently meaningless characters with
Speaker 1: no real message inside of it, but the individual users
Speaker 1: would get the decrypted raw text messages or files or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be into end. Encryption has lots of legitimate,
Speaker 1: important uses that can help people maintain secure and private
Speaker 1: methods of communication, and law enforcement agencies often really don't
Speaker 1: like it because it makes their jobs harder. I guess
Speaker 1: it depends on how you look at their jobs, because
Speaker 1: some people would say, oh, sure, law enforcement's job of
Speaker 1: surveying all innocent citizens and trying to look for crimes,
Speaker 1: and others would say, oh, law enforcement's job of being
Speaker 1: able to detect and then protect people from criminal activity.
Speaker 1: I guess it really depends on your point of view.
Speaker 1: But detecting illegal activities is a lot harder if all
Speaker 1: the communications between the practitioners are scrambled. And there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure in different parts of the world
Speaker 1: on different platforms to open up backdoor access to encrypted communications,
Speaker 1: essentially to give law enforcement a universal key to decrypt
Speaker 1: communications so that they can see if there's anything hinky
Speaker 1: going on. Now, in many cases this really isn't possible
Speaker 1: unless you grant access to the end points themselves, like
Speaker 1: you somehow get access to the actual end devices where
Speaker 1: the decryption is taking place, because good end to end
Speaker 1: encryption means that even the platform that's offering it is
Speaker 1: unable to break that encryption. Moreover, the design was such
Speaker 1: that these encrypted chats would only exist on those end
Speaker 1: devices because Telegram didn't store the encrypted communications in the cloud,
Speaker 1: So even if someone were to compromise Telegram systems, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to access the encrypted communications stored there
Speaker 1: because there weren't any stored there. Anyway, this protocol that
Speaker 1: was primarily about encryption, was called mt proto, and Nikolai
Speaker 1: authored the first version of it, and you can visit
Speaker 1: the Telegram website to read up on how it works. Although,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the version that Telegram uses now is
Speaker 1: MT proto two point zero, and so it's different. Right.
Speaker 1: It's evolved considerably since the launch in twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 1: it gets a bit complicated to talk about the details
Speaker 1: in a podcast that doesn't have visual aids. Besides that,
Speaker 1: even if this were a video podcast, I am no
Speaker 1: expert in encryption, and so chances are I would end
Speaker 1: up communicating something poorly or just outright incorrectly if I
Speaker 1: were to really tackle it. The important bit is that
Speaker 1: mt proto was one of the early building blocks Nickel
Speaker 1: I made for Telegram, and they also chose to make
Speaker 1: this an open protocol, meaning the entire community could review
Speaker 1: and examine how the protocol worked. This was meant to
Speaker 1: eliminate trust issues, like the idea is remove trust from
Speaker 1: being a concern, like there's no reason to trust Telegram.
Speaker 1: You can look into all of this and make sure
Speaker 1: that things are run the way the app was claiming it,
Speaker 1: so users could see exactly how the protocol was handling encryption.
Speaker 1: And verify that communications were secure, right, like, no copies
Speaker 1: of that communication would be going to Telegram itself, et cetera.
Speaker 1: All right, We've got a lot more to talk about
Speaker 1: when it comes to Telegram and its features. Before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors, so we're back. We talked a bit about
Speaker 1: encryption with Telegram. Another feature that the app would offer
Speaker 1: early on was a self destruct option for messages. That is,
Speaker 1: once a message had been received, and then later it
Speaker 1: was improved so once it had been read, then it
Speaker 1: would self delete after a given amount of time. So
Speaker 1: early on the self destruct was literally like within a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time since the message was received. Problem is,
Speaker 1: not everyone reads messages just when they get them, right.
Speaker 1: You could be in a situation where you can't. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're on a flight or something and you haven't had
Speaker 1: your phone connected to Wi Fi and you're not connected
Speaker 1: to the internet, so you could receive the message through Telegram,
Speaker 1: but you haven't had a chance to read it yet,
Speaker 1: and then meanwhile the timer is ticking down for when
Speaker 1: it's going to self delete. Later on, they did increase
Speaker 1: this so that it was after you had opened the
Speaker 1: message and then the timer would start. So this was
Speaker 1: kind of like the original concept behind Snapchat, in which
Speaker 1: a user could send an image and after a given
Speaker 1: amount of time, that image would go puff in the
Speaker 1: receiver's app, except, of course, in the case of Snapchat,
Speaker 1: copies of those images could still exist on Snapchat's cloud servers.
Speaker 1: That was a whole thing Telegram was saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that's not going to be the case with us, Like,
Speaker 1: the messages are only going to exist on the end devices,
Speaker 1: not in the cloud, So once they delete, that's it.
Speaker 1: We don't have a copy of it, so they're gone. Also, originally,
Speaker 1: the self delete feature only worked for the receiver's side,
Speaker 1: so the person who sent the message would still be
Speaker 1: able to see the message after it had been deleted
Speaker 1: off the second party's device. Eventually, Telegram would change that
Speaker 1: as well, where the message would get deleted off all
Speaker 1: the devices, both of the devices, because this only works
Speaker 1: on end to end or user to use their communications,
Speaker 1: so one on one situations. But yeah, originally it was
Speaker 1: just the person who received it. Their message would get deleted. Clearly,
Speaker 1: if you want to send let's say, a really sensitive
Speaker 1: message and you don't want other people to snoop in
Speaker 1: and see this. Having it self delete not just on
Speaker 1: the person who received the message, but also your device
Speaker 1: would be really important. I mean, what if someone got
Speaker 1: hold of your and then thumb through to try and
Speaker 1: see what kind of messaging you'd been up to. If
Speaker 1: you are in a country that has a really authoritarian
Speaker 1: government that is just looking for a reason to throw
Speaker 1: you in the whoscal Yeah, you want to have a
Speaker 1: messaging app that's going to clear your history so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about getting hauled away for
Speaker 1: violating some authoritarian rule. Now telegram would allow for more
Speaker 1: than just one on one communications, though these other methods
Speaker 1: would not enjoy the benefit of end to end encryption,
Speaker 1: which again becomes part of the problem for dear off. Now,
Speaker 1: so you could have a session in which one user
Speaker 1: was posting to many other users. This would be kind
Speaker 1: of a broadcast approach, one person broadcasting to many I
Speaker 1: like to think of this kind of similar to ways
Speaker 1: that Twitter now x works, or threads or something like that,
Speaker 1: where you can post a general message and it goes
Speaker 1: out to anyone who can follow you, or or sometimes
Speaker 1: if you're posting to the public, anybody at all. You
Speaker 1: could have a session in which you know, you have
Speaker 1: a group chat, potentially a really massive group chat. Telegram
Speaker 1: is said to be able to accommodate up to two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand users in a single chat session. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how you would be able to parse such
Speaker 1: a thing or even just keep up with chat now.
Speaker 1: I've been in YouTube chat rooms where there were you know,
Speaker 1: around one thousand people watching something, and obviously only a
Speaker 1: slice of that population is even bothering chatting while they're watching,
Speaker 1: and even in that case, keeping up with what's going
Speaker 1: on is really challenging to do, so I don't know
Speaker 1: how you do it in a Telegram chat room. To
Speaker 1: be fair, I've also never used Telegram personally, so I
Speaker 1: don't have any real experience with this app on a
Speaker 1: user level. Telegram also allows for file transfers between users, which,
Speaker 1: along with the encryption and messages that self delete after
Speaker 1: a given amount of time, make up a large part
Speaker 1: of the reasons that authorities have been concerned about this app,
Speaker 1: because anytime you have ways for people to share information,
Speaker 1: there's a concern that people are going to do that
Speaker 1: in order to further nefarious goals. By December twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: the Telegram community had plugged one quote unquote significant vulnerability
Speaker 1: in mt proto as part of the first Telegram crypto contest.
Speaker 1: That's according to Telegram's own timeline of how things evolved
Speaker 1: in the app. The person who discovered the vulnerability received
Speaker 1: a one hundred thousand dollars bug bounty for doing so,
Speaker 1: so there was an incentive to help improve the protocols
Speaker 1: and to look for things like vulnerabilities, and overall this
Speaker 1: would benefit the entire community, So it was an effective
Speaker 1: way to improve the product. You may your own community
Speaker 1: QA testers in a way. The following month, Telegram offered
Speaker 1: the feature of file transfers, with an initial file size
Speaker 1: limit of one and a half gigabytes. That's a fairly
Speaker 1: hefty file sized and Telegram did not restrict the types
Speaker 1: of documents that could be transferred across its service, so
Speaker 1: whether it was a JPEG or a doc file or
Speaker 1: a PDF or whatever it might be, you could send
Speaker 1: it as long as it was as it wasn't larger
Speaker 1: than one and a half gigabytes. Around that same time,
Speaker 1: developers created a client for PCs, so this expanded Telegram
Speaker 1: beyond the smartphone environment. This would eventually evolve into the
Speaker 1: Telegram desktop app. In February twenty fourteen, developers created a
Speaker 1: web based app for the service, and others made a
Speaker 1: version of the app for Windows Phone. Do you remember
Speaker 1: Windows Phone? I mean that was still a thing back
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. In fact, it would remain a thing
Speaker 1: for five more years. Microsoft officially in support for Windows
Speaker 1: Phone in twenty nineteen. Telegram was evolving rapidly, so the
Speaker 1: next feature added to the app in March twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: was support for voice messages. So now you've got file transfers,
Speaker 1: you've got one on one communication, you have one to
Speaker 1: many in the broadcast channels, you've got chat, you've got
Speaker 1: voice messaging. At this point, also the app changed how
Speaker 1: it handled secret messages. This is when we got to
Speaker 1: the change for self destruct. So again, earlier self destruct
Speaker 1: only affected the receiving device, but now, starting in March
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, the messages would disappear from both the sender's
Speaker 1: device and the receiver's devices, so you no longer had
Speaker 1: a trail of these messages. To list all the feature
Speaker 1: upgrades month by month would become really tedious, And as
Speaker 1: I said, if you go to Telegram's timeline of the
Speaker 1: evolution of the app. You can actually read all about this. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: it's it's listed in reverse chronological order. I guess that
Speaker 1: makes sense if you just want to know what the
Speaker 1: most recent additions are to the app, But if you're
Speaker 1: looking at it from a historical perspective, it's very weird
Speaker 1: to start from the most recent and work your way backward,
Speaker 1: because it just means that as you go on, the
Speaker 1: app gets fewer features over time because you're going back
Speaker 1: in time. I actually read it in reverse order anyway,
Speaker 1: There's no reason to go through all of them. It
Speaker 1: would just get very tedious. You did see a lot
Speaker 1: more features get added over time. The app just would
Speaker 1: get more and more robust every year, gain support for
Speaker 1: everything from multiple file uploads where you could do several
Speaker 1: files at a time, particularly photos like you could you
Speaker 1: could choose multiple photos as opposed to doing them one
Speaker 1: at a time, to playing animated gifts, you know, like
Speaker 1: you know, the standard stuff that you encounter in various
Speaker 1: social platforms today. Later updates incorporated the ability to play
Speaker 1: media files directly within the Telegram app. You know, previously
Speaker 1: you would have to download the file and then play
Speaker 1: it in some other media player app. Now that capability
Speaker 1: was built directly into Telegram itself, it also opened up
Speaker 1: support for bots. These could be incorporated into chat rooms
Speaker 1: to enhance the experience in various ways, though frequently not
Speaker 1: really for moderation, which is again like content moderation, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that is another issue that we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: this episode. So the list of features has grown now
Speaker 1: to a point where it would take an entire episode
Speaker 1: to cover all the things that Telegram facilitates today. It
Speaker 1: encompasses everything from allowing payments through the app for physical
Speaker 1: and digital goods, to an in app currency called Stars
Speaker 1: that users can use to reward other accounts for stuff.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the bits you would find on Twitch,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Okay, So that's all fine. Telegram
Speaker 1: has evolved since it first hit the scene in mid
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. You would expect that, right, as many of
Speaker 1: the same features that you find in other platforms, while
Speaker 1: also being largely free from traditional advertising and, according to
Speaker 1: the dourovs from data mining. Right Like, if you're on WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: which is owned by Meta, you know that Meta is
Speaker 1: scraping a lot of data from you. Because that's what
Speaker 1: they do with all their platforms. That's their bread and butter,
Speaker 1: right like whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: that ends up being really valuable information when Facebook is
Speaker 1: looking for ways to sell targeted advertising with you in mind.
Speaker 1: So the original concept behind Telegram was that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be profit oriented at all. It was not organized as
Speaker 1: a not for profit organization, however, that's important to remember,
Speaker 1: but the concept was that profit would not be a
Speaker 1: driving consideration for the service. That the Dourovs were determined
Speaker 1: to create a useful communications platform free from external interference,
Speaker 1: which included not just governments, but things like corporations. But
Speaker 1: Telegram does earn revenue primarily. It does this through in
Speaker 1: app purchases, so rather than settle for the bog standard experience,
Speaker 1: a user can shell out money to access premium features
Speaker 1: like customization tools and such. This can include stuff like
Speaker 1: stickers that can be used in chat rooms or themes
Speaker 1: for chat spaces, that kind of thing. Users can even
Speaker 1: design their own stickers and offer them up for sale
Speaker 1: in a digital marketplace, with Telegram getting a cut of
Speaker 1: the action, so they take a little percentage of each
Speaker 1: sale done through that method. Telegram also does work with
Speaker 1: businesses in ways that allow for other revenue generation methods.
Speaker 1: I did say also is largely free of advertising, but
Speaker 1: not totally free of advertising. There are ads on Telegram, however,
Speaker 1: they are limited to appearing within broadcast channels that have
Speaker 1: at least one thousand subscribers ONTs more, these ads can
Speaker 1: own only appear as text messages, and they have a
Speaker 1: hard limit of one hundred and sixty characters. On top
Speaker 1: of that, businesses can establish their own channels and their
Speaker 1: own groups within Telegram, and that in turn is another
Speaker 1: revenue stream for Telegram itself. But now let's talk about
Speaker 1: the dark side of this application. So one consequence of
Speaker 1: creating a platform that aims to be free from censorship
Speaker 1: and government involvement is that people who wish to engage
Speaker 1: in illegal activities will make use of those services in
Speaker 1: order to further their own goals. Complicating matters is that
Speaker 1: you're talking about an app that is available around the world,
Speaker 1: and what is legal in one nation may not be
Speaker 1: legal in another. Plus, Deurov himself has citizenship in multiple countries,
Speaker 1: including France. Further, Telegram's general policy in response to governments
Speaker 1: demanding data is to tell those governments to pound sand it. Really,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the situation is, Telegram will say
Speaker 1: it's not our policy to share that user information with you,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to do it. Durov has said
Speaker 1: that Telegram's commitment to privacy is more important than things
Speaker 1: like our fear of how bad people could use Telegram.
Speaker 1: He says privacy is more important than what someone might
Speaker 1: use Telegram to do. So, when US lawmakers ask Telegram
Speaker 1: to hand over information connected to people who were involved
Speaker 1: or suspected as being involved in the insurrection on January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, Telegram denied that request. They said, no,
Speaker 1: that's against our policy. Now there are concerns that, you know,
Speaker 1: things like terrorist cells are making use of Telegram in
Speaker 1: order to communicate with each other. There are also cases
Speaker 1: in which people are using Telegram to distribute everything from
Speaker 1: pirated content to really serious issues like child pornography. And
Speaker 1: that encryption, as I said earlier, really only works for
Speaker 1: one on one communication, So for the case of things
Speaker 1: like chat rooms or broadcast channels, as well as just
Speaker 1: the default settings for user to user communications, there is
Speaker 1: no encryption, which means any illegal activity that's happening across
Speaker 1: those channels is potentially viewable. In fact, the only type
Speaker 1: of communication that actually uses encryption and only if it's
Speaker 1: manually switched on, means that Telegram isn't really an encrypted
Speaker 1: communication tool. It's just a communication app that happens to
Speaker 1: have one end to end encryption feature that's only on
Speaker 1: if you turn it on, and only for certain use cases.
Speaker 1: That ends up becoming a massive problem for Deroff, or
Speaker 1: potentially a massive problem. I mean, it could turn out
Speaker 1: that no charges are filed and nothing happens. But the
Speaker 1: reason why he was detained by police in the first place,
Speaker 1: you could argue, is because cause Telegram does not encrypt everything.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. Okay, So the reason that it's
Speaker 1: important that Telegram does not offer encryption across all methods
Speaker 1: of communication on the app is that it means Telegram
Speaker 1: potentially could view the stuff that happens on its own network.
Speaker 1: It could be aware of the things that are transpiring
Speaker 1: on Telegram, and lots of countries have rules in place
Speaker 1: that state a platform is obligated to moderate the content
Speaker 1: that happens on the platform itself. It's not responsible for
Speaker 1: generating that content necessarily, but it is responsible for moderating it.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, we have rules that protect
Speaker 1: platforms from being held accountable for the stuff that users
Speaker 1: post to them. The infamous section two thirty is about this.
Speaker 1: So the thought behind all of this is that you
Speaker 1: can't really blame a platform for something that someone a
Speaker 1: user does on the platform itself. The responsible party is
Speaker 1: the person who did the illegal activity, not the platform
Speaker 1: where that illegal activity happened. However, this protection only extends
Speaker 1: so far. If a platform is unwilling or unable to
Speaker 1: moderate content, to remove illegal content, to act when needed
Speaker 1: to curtail illegal activity on the platform itself, then it
Speaker 1: can see that protection get stripped away. So your protection
Speaker 1: only lasts as long as you are accountable. So, as
Speaker 1: an example, if someone were to upload a movie to
Speaker 1: YouTube and they don't have the right to do this
Speaker 1: right like they've taken a pirated copy of a film.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's Big Trouble in Little China, arguably the
Speaker 1: best movie ever made, and they've put Big Trouble in
Speaker 1: Little China up on YouTube and they don't own the
Speaker 1: rights to Big trouble in Little China, and YouTube is
Speaker 1: made aware of this, They're alerted, Hey, someone has uploaded
Speaker 1: copyrighted material and they don't have the right to do it.
Speaker 1: Then YouTube is obligated to take that video down or
Speaker 1: whatever action the copyright holder deems appropriate, or else YouTube
Speaker 1: risks losing that protection we talked about. YouTube itself would
Speaker 1: not be held responsible for the initial upload as long
Speaker 1: as it did act accordingly once alerted to the infraction. Now,
Speaker 1: Telegram largely doesn't police content on its platform. However, there
Speaker 1: are exceptions. One big one is in matters that deal
Speaker 1: with child abuse. The company relies on users to report
Speaker 1: instances of content relating to child abuse and then takes action. So,
Speaker 1: according to an article by Jordan Pearson of the Verb
Speaker 1: which Telegram claims to do this around one thousand times
Speaker 1: per day, yikes, it is horrifying to think that child
Speaker 1: abuse material is that rampant to begin with, And of
Speaker 1: course that just marks the instances where someone actually reported it,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty horrifying. Complicating matters is that Telegram has
Speaker 1: been accused of only putting up a show when it
Speaker 1: comes to content moderation that, rather than outright removing offending
Speaker 1: channels and material. Telegram simply just makes them hidden, so
Speaker 1: they're not removed, they're just hidden from average users, which
Speaker 1: means people who know where to go could still go
Speaker 1: there and still engage in this activity, and that seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty big problem. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: look the other way approach, which is you can easily
Speaker 1: argue that is essentially facilitating and being complicit in illegal
Speaker 1: activity that's happening on those channels, and these policies are
Speaker 1: what put durav on thin ice with authorities in France.
Speaker 1: Telegram could technically take a much firmer stance with content moderation.
Speaker 1: There's nothing stopping the company from doing so. The communications
Speaker 1: are not encrypted in things like chat channels and broadcast
Speaker 1: channels and most to end user communications unless they've manually
Speaker 1: turned that setting on. So the fact that Telegram doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to take this kind of action opens the possibility
Speaker 1: for authorities to charge Durov and the company overall with
Speaker 1: facilitating illegal activity. The act of not acting becomes the issue.
Speaker 1: The French authorities have argued that Durov is complicit in
Speaker 1: crimes that range from money laundering to the distribution of
Speaker 1: abusive materials and everything in between. This is what Dirov
Speaker 1: is going to have to face when brought before a judge,
Speaker 1: where he might possibly be indicted. By the time you
Speaker 1: hear this episode, that decision may already have been made,
Speaker 1: but as I record this, it is yet to happen.
Speaker 1: Though he again was released from police custody. Now that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily an indication of where things are going to go,
Speaker 1: because the authorities had until today, which is Wednesday, August
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, twenty twenty four, when I'm recording this, to
Speaker 1: officially charge du Off or to let him go. They
Speaker 1: couldn't hold him longer, not legally anyway. So if he
Speaker 1: gets charged, that's up to the judge. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: case is a really complicated one. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I do believe there is a real need for systems
Speaker 1: that allow for secure and private communication. There are people
Speaker 1: all around the world whose lives could be in danger
Speaker 1: if they do not have access to those kinds of tools,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty of examples, including here in the
Speaker 1: United States, where if your communications were open to surveillance,
Speaker 1: then you could really suffer as a result of that,
Speaker 1: even if you were not guilty of any crimes. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were cases in the nssay of people who were
Speaker 1: allegedly spy paying on communications that had no illegal activity
Speaker 1: connected to them, but happened to belong to say an
Speaker 1: X right, like an NSA contractor or agent was using
Speaker 1: the tools of the agency to spy on people they
Speaker 1: knew personally, or to look at things like let's say
Speaker 1: someone is sending a nude photo of themselves to their
Speaker 1: loved one or whatever. Being able to intercept that and
Speaker 1: look at it. I mean, that happened a lot. And
Speaker 1: you know, again that's not connected with illegal activity necessarily,
Speaker 1: so there's no justification for intercepting that information and then
Speaker 1: you know, saving it or looking at or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. So there is a real need for ways
Speaker 1: to communicate securely and privately. However, we're not really talking
Speaker 1: about the secure component of telegram in this case. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a platform in which Durroff could conceivably be
Speaker 1: made aware of illegal activity going on across his platform
Speaker 1: that obligates him to take action. Failure to do so
Speaker 1: indicates an element of complicity in those crimes. Now, if
Speaker 1: everything were encrypted, then Durov would really be free and clear,
Speaker 1: because true encryption would mean he would have no way
Speaker 1: of knowing what is actually transpiring across the platform. The
Speaker 1: people might make use of the platform to conduct illegal activities,
Speaker 1: but that's beside the point, because people commit crimes all
Speaker 1: the time on things like the road. Right, you don't
Speaker 1: shut the road down. It's not the road's fault that
Speaker 1: anyone did that, that's just where it happened. So if
Speaker 1: everything were encrypted and there was no way to know
Speaker 1: what anyone was doing on the platform, Durov would probably
Speaker 1: have a really strong defense. But the fact that there
Speaker 1: are all these methods that are not encrypted. In fact,
Speaker 1: only one method is encrypted, that's what really gives him
Speaker 1: potentially a huge problem, because you can make the argument, hey,
Speaker 1: there's nothing stopping you from being aware of this illegal activity,
Speaker 1: and the fact that you're not doing enough to curtail
Speaker 1: that means you are complicit in that, and we're going
Speaker 1: to hold you accountable. So that's kind of where he
Speaker 1: finds himself today. The ferocity of authorities in this matter
Speaker 1: also raise concerns about security and privacy. Some experts that
Speaker 1: Pearson in his article on The Verge quotes, they say
Speaker 1: that really the matter is more about how much did
Speaker 1: Derov know about the illegal activity, not so much about
Speaker 1: the private, secure communication aspect of Telegram. But still, we
Speaker 1: do live in a post NSA prism world. We live
Speaker 1: in a world where we are aware of the various
Speaker 1: attempts to monitor communications, whether those communications are criminal or otherwise,
Speaker 1: and we know that people have exploited those programs to
Speaker 1: various degrees to the harm of innocent citizens. So seeing
Speaker 1: authorities go after the CEO of a company that provides
Speaker 1: that kind of communication, even though that's just one small
Speaker 1: part of what telegram does, it does raise concerns. It
Speaker 1: makes you worry about surveillance states and this almost pathological
Speaker 1: need to have access to all information just in the
Speaker 1: case that something in that giant mass of data represents
Speaker 1: illegal activity. It's kind of the concern about being presumed
Speaker 1: guilty until proven innocent. That's kind of the opposite of,
Speaker 1: at least how we like to think the American system goes.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, it actually is true that people
Speaker 1: are presumed innocent until proven guilty. That's nice when that happens,
Speaker 1: but yeah, something like this, it gives the lie to
Speaker 1: that right. The implication is that you're presumed to have
Speaker 1: been guilty of something. It's just that something may not
Speaker 1: yet be discoverable. Pretty dark stuff. But yeah, my personal
Speaker 1: opinion does doesn't really matter in this case. I'm curious
Speaker 1: what other people's opinions are. But I feel I have
Speaker 1: a complex reaction to this. I don't like the concept
Speaker 1: of a platform allowing illegal content, particularly illegal content that
Speaker 1: disproportionately hurts children, to continue to be able to do
Speaker 1: that without repercussions. I find that to be really disturbing.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the need for a place where free speech
Speaker 1: can freely happen, but even free speech, at least here
Speaker 1: in the United States, has its limitations. Free speech is
Speaker 1: not meant to be absolutely free of consequence. Just means
Speaker 1: the government can't dictate what you can and cannot say,
Speaker 1: but there can be consequences to what you do say.
Speaker 1: It's a fine line and it's complicated anyway. I hope
Speaker 1: that you learned something in this episode, that you learn
Speaker 1: more about what telegram is, where it came from some
Speaker 1: of you out there maybe a telegram users. I know
Speaker 1: that a lot of folks who use telegram are in
Speaker 1: other countries, in places like Iran and India, and these
Speaker 1: are places where governments can be quite authoritarian in their
Speaker 1: desire to control the flow of information. Also, I do
Speaker 1: find it somewhat ironic that when it was announced that
Speaker 1: Durov was arrested in France, some countries, notably Russia, expressed
Speaker 1: condemnation for that, saying this is a strike against free speech,
Speaker 1: which is rich coming from Russia. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: same country that Durov fled from after Russian authorities essentially
Speaker 1: tried to seize control of VK and Duv left Russia
Speaker 1: to found Telegram in the UAE largely because of that.
Speaker 1: And here you have Russia saying shame on you Frans
Speaker 1: for arresting this guy who's a Russian citizen as well,
Speaker 1: he still maintains Russian citizenship. And meanwhile, it's the same
Speaker 1: country that caused Durov to flee in the first place.
Speaker 1: So yeah, everything's politics. I guess that's what that boils
Speaker 1: down to. That's a cheerful thought, you know what. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna leave that there, and I'm gonna go off
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna have a snack, maybe I think a cupcake.
Speaker 1: Gonna have a little cupcake to kind of soothe my
Speaker 1: feelings on this matter. I hope all of you out
Speaker 1: there are doing well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.