September 17, 2024 • 19 mins
Join David Greene, EFF Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director, as he joins Lisa Rein to discuss the latest about Pavel Durov's arrest in France and the implications of Telegram's unencrypted group chats for its users.
Even Telegram's one-to-one direct messages are only encrypted if the "secret chat" feature is enabled by both parties.
Another troubling issue is that Telegram stores its messages in the cloud, as plain text, as this Tweet from Signal Founder Moxie Marlinspike explains: https://x.com/moxie/status/1828464949703909574
For these reasons, Telegram can't actually be considered a "secure messaging app" because real secure messaging apps, such as Signal and What's App, are end-to-end encrypted by default.
A lot of Telegram users might not care if their group chats aren't encrypted, as they are using group chats to broadcast to the public anyway, but for those who might be using Telegram for more sensitive group conversations, it's an important fact to make note of.
About David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director, EFF
David Greene has significant experience litigating First Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts. David is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law and was formerly an instructor in the journalism department at San Francisco State University.
David has written and lectured extensively on many areas of First Amendment Law, including as a contributor to the International Encyclopedia of Censorship. Before joining EFF, David was for twelve years the Executive Director and Lead Staff Counsel for First Amendment Project, where he worked with EFF on numerous cases including Bunner v. DVDCCA. David also previously served as program director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression where he was the principal contributor and general editor of the NCFE Quarterly and the principal author of the NCFE Handbook to Understanding, Preparing for and Responding to Challenges to your Freedom of Artistic Expression. He also practiced with the firms Bryan Cave LLP and Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft. Way back in 1998, he was a founding member, with David Sobel and Shari Steele, of the Internet Free Expression Alliance. He is a 1991 graduate of Duke University School of Law.
David's work has been recognized by California Lawyer magazine as a 2013 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year, and by the SPJ Northern California as the recipient of its 2007 James Madison Freedom of information Award for Legal Counsel. He was also awarded The Hon. Ira A. Brown Adjunct Faculty Award by USF Law School in 2012.
David currently serves on the steering committee of the Free Expression Network, the governing committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law, and on advisory boards for several arts and free speech organizations across the country.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lisa Rein (00:08):
Hello everybody.
Welcome to the mindplex podcasttoday. We are here with senior
staff attorney and civilliberties director David Green
from the EFF Hi, David,
David Greene (00:19):
Hey Lisa, hi everybody,
Lisa Rein (00:21):
and we are here to talk about the telegram
situation, and David's here totell us all about it. David let
us know, like, why was Paveldrive arrested? What's going on?
David Greene (00:32):
Yeah, so I should first say that we actually know
very little about about what hashappened, because the French
government has said very little,so there's been a lot of
guessing going on. So I'm gonnatry and be really careful to
Lisa Rein (00:47):
Well, that's important if we don't actually
know a lot, because people havebeen saying a lot of different
things, and I keep on reading
David Greene (00:55):
all these articles like, oh, maybe they found
something, but they didn'teveryone, I think is there's,
there's a lot of tea leaves, butnot a lot of consistent reading
of those tea leaves and so but Ican tell you what we do know,
which is mostly based on pressreleases that have been issued
by the French government. But Ithink really importantly,
they're just press releases. Wedon't have any legal documents
(01:17):
or anything like that that Ithink we have a greater
confidence in and the otherthing I should say is that I am
not a French lawyer. I have noexpertise at all in French law.
I have speak French. I speak itokay, but not as a lot anyway.
(01:38):
Just to say that, like all thesedocuments, are originally in
French. Some have some Englishtranslations. And I we, I've
spoken with some French lawyers,you know, to try and but again,
there's a lot of reasons forI'll do the best I can. Okay, so
we know very little. What we doknow is that that Durov was
originally arrested under what'scalled an what's sort of what's
(02:04):
in, like an investigatorywarrant. And France, and in
France, they're allowed to whenthey're doing a criminal
investigation, they believesomeone has information about
the investigation, they'reallowed to detain that person
for 48 or 96 hours, depending onthe chart, depending on what's
being investigated, just so theycan try and get information from
(02:24):
that person. So that's whathappened. He was arrested
because they were doing sometype of investigation. They
thought Dora, I've hadinformation, they ended up using
the procedure to get a 96 hourdetention. And then what happens
at the end of that time is thatthey're forced to either
formally, formally identify himas the subject of an
(02:45):
investigation, which then willallow them to put limitations on
him going forward, or they haveto let you know completely
release it. And they did theformer. They so he is currently,
currently the subject of aformal, the formal subject of
investigation, and because ofthat, he is, he can't leave the
(03:09):
country. He's not likeincarcerated at the moment, but
he he can't leave the country.
And there's some otherlimitations on what he's on,
what he's doing. So that's wherewe're up to so far. And what I
don't, I don't think he's hehasn't been charged with a
crime, but he is a subject of aformal investigation relating to
certain times. And I think maybethe best, maybe I've been told
(03:31):
that indicted might be the bestEnglish word, but he hasn't
actually been charged with awith a crime,
Lisa Rein (03:40):
so indict. It's not the best word, yeah, well,
David Greene (03:45):
a lot of the translations have said charge.
And again, in my rudimentaryFrench, I saw the phrase misan
misle, examine, which I charge?
That's you. That's okay.
Investigation.
Lisa Rein (03:58):
In France, they have warrants just to question
people, yes, in aninvestigation, if they're just
investigate, if they're justbeing investigated for a crime,
whereas, as here, you if you'renot the subject of
investigation, they have to makesomething up to take you in? No,
(04:20):
I'm just kidding. Just sayingit's harder to question people
sometimes because they don't. Wedon't have a mechanism like this
in the United States, correct,right? Well,
David Greene (04:29):
not, yeah. I mean, we it's you have the ability to
bring someone in forquestioning, but there you can't
detain not. We don't have awarrant for you. We don't have a
situation where you have sort ofa long term restrictions on
somebody because they'reformally being, formally being
invested. That's not, it's not aprocedure we have in the US.
Lisa Rein (04:46):
Okay, so that's part of the confusion to begin with.
Is that people are thinking, youknow, and they didn't come pick
him up. They got him when helanded at the airport. Yeah,
David Greene (04:57):
correct. Yeah.
Little private airport, I guess,too. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Rein (05:01):
So they knew he was coming there. They were waiting
for him, yeah,
David Greene (05:05):
you know. And some people I, the people I've talked
to in France, have said that theidea that that he was under
investigation and wanted, theywanted to bring him in, was semi
public in July, and he probablyshould have known it, and he
it's, he shouldn't have beensurprised that he was actually
arrested when he landed, um, inFrance. But again, it's hard to
(05:28):
know what, what he knew, or ifhe thought he was invincible, or
who, or whatever. Who knows?
Lisa Rein (05:34):
Okay, so we'll never, we never know what really, yeah,
what really happens there,until, like, again, there's
actual information given. Okay,um, so is this the is this EU
related? This? These crimes? Isthis about EU violations?
David Greene (05:52):
It's a good question. It again, we don't
know, because we don't know whatthe actual charges we I mean, we
have subject matters, and noneof these seem to be related to
violations of EU law. They seemto be related to particularities
of French law. And I think someof the European EU commissioners
(06:14):
have said that there's nothingin the, for example, the Digital
Services Act that would compelthat, that compels a the thing
France is looking into. Butagain, we know so little about
it that it's hard to tell
Lisa Rein (06:30):
the Digital Services Act. Yeah, the Digital
David Greene (06:32):
Service Act is the main regulator. It's a huge,
enormous regulation that's ineffect in the EU that put
certain requirements to mitigaterisk on on online platforms,
they vary by size. I'm not evenquite sure which size, if
telegram has enough user to bein sort of the biggest category,
(06:54):
which has the most requirementsor not, okay. But anyway, I
think the commissioners havesaid they don't think this is
about the DSA. So do know thatare
Lisa Rein (07:03):
listing, you know, terrorism, lack of content
moderation, this that? Yeah,they're just making stuff up at
this well. So
David Greene (07:11):
what we know, what they what they've said, is that
there was what they are invest,what the subjects of the
investigation would be, arefusal to comply with a request
for information, and thatinformation or or or to provide
documentation or information inresponse that that the
(07:36):
government believes is necessaryto implement a legally
authorized interception. So thegovernment was trying to
intercept communications. It'sunclear what that meant, live
interception, like a wiretap, orwhether they're trying to get
records. It's we all we knowthat's we don't know any of that
detail, and that a telegramrefused to comply with that
(08:00):
request, so refuse to give themthe information. So what that
could mean can range from itlike the worst case scenario,
right is that the governmentwanted to wiretap and listen in
live or read live on the smallsubset of telegram
communications that might be endto end, encrypted like that
would be the worst casescenario. The better one could
(08:23):
be that, you know, it was one ofthe, you know, they were
interested in the communicationthat was one of the much lesser
protected things, and maybe theones that are sort of, that
aren't and encrypted, but havesome encryption in them, but we
don't, we don't know, or theycould actually just needed help,
like looking at the completelypublic stuff. So, you know. So
Lisa Rein (08:44):
let's talk about that for a minute. It ranges.
David Greene (08:46):
The possibilities range from the completely
benign, uh, geo two, right? Bereally concerning, and we really
have no idea where it falls onthat scale. We do know they did
tell us the the criminaloffenses they're investigating.
So we know those are child,sexual assault, material, drug
(09:07):
trafficking, organized fraud andmoney laundering. So that's the
that's what they think might behappening on that those are the
crimes. They're the underlyingcrimes they're investigating.
Okay?
Lisa Rein (09:21):
And the issue again is though, so if it was an
encrypted group chat, it wouldlike signal or WhatsApp, it
would be encrypted, and only thepeople in the group would be
able to see what is in it. ButDrum roll, please. Telegram
(09:42):
group chats are not encrypted,right?
David Greene (09:46):
They're not end to end encrypted, right? I don't
know if they have some layer ofencryption on them, but they
are, they are, you know, ormaybe it's private chats have
some layer but unless you'reagain, well. Code
Lisa Rein (10:01):
you have to have you unless you turn on the secret
chat feature between two people.
It only works. Doesn't work forgroups. No, I've been looking
this up your own. Eva Alpern, soEva Alpern brings this up in
2022 when she does her harmreduction guide for the Ukraine
and Russia, because peopleinvolved in that conflict we're
using Telegram, thinking that itwas encrypted and secure, yeah,
(10:22):
by and by default, which asecure messaging app should be,
by default, if it wants to callitself a secure messaging app,
like, again, like signal andWhatsApp, and so I'm a little if
this comes into things, whetheror not here in the States, it
(10:46):
might be protected speech, ifit's in an encrypted, private
chat group, as opposed to apublic channel or a public
Group. Could you explain thedifference why? It's because on
Telegram, there's either publicchannels or there's private
(11:06):
channels, where it's really easyto fake an invite to like
there's videos on YouTube, youjust switch out the name in an
invite from another group, andyou can join any group.
David Greene (11:19):
Yeah. I think what a lot of people don't understand
about telegram is that, youknow, a lot of people,
especially in the US, think oftelegram as a messaging service,
but it's more, most commonlyused around the world. It's like
a social media platform. Sothere's groups, and people can
publish stuff, and you can, youknow, there's feeds and things,
you know, all the stuff you lookat for social media, and a ton
of communications obviouslyhappens there. And the groups
(11:41):
are very, very active, similarto they, you know, have on, you
know, on other things that startas messaging apps that then have
groups that then publish stuffbroadly, yeah, and so that stuff
is mostly, mostly completelypublic, right? There's, there's
no control for that at all. Thenwhen you have one to one
communications, each person, ifyou want to be end to be end to
(12:02):
end encrypted, so you don't youdon't want telegram to have the
content of the communicationthat's unique for end to end
encryption, both people have toturn on the private function. If
only one person turns it on,then it might be protected in
one direction, but not the otherone. And so that, and this is
important, because the Frenchgovernment could just be asking
(12:24):
Telegram for the unencryptedcommunications that it has,
because the communication wasn'tend end encrypted, right? It was
only other one end, or it hadsome level of encryption in
transit, but not otherwise. Soit could be, they're just
saying, We know you have this,give it to us, right? That's one
possibility. Um, or again, if itwas an end to end encrypted
(12:45):
communication, that's completelydifferent. Telegram wouldn't
have that. Wouldn't have thecon, wouldn't have the
conversation,
Lisa Rein (12:52):
right? Which is the point of the end to end
encryption is that the platformitself, even you know, can't,
can't look if it, if it wants,because it's it's actually
encrypted. Um, so yeah, just tobe clear on this point about no
encryption, Moxie marlin spikesays telegram messages aren't
end to end encrypted. And healso brings up that it's a cloud
(13:15):
messenger, meaning that allmessages live on telegram
servers, rather than the userdevice. Could you explain the
significance of that?
David Greene (13:24):
So, again, this all goes back to, does telegram
have information that they're intheir possession that they could
give to the French government,that, I mean, that they they
have the capability of giving tothe French government. So, so if
the information is stored ontheir servers, then they have
it, right? They have somethingthey could provide to the
French, to the Frenchgovernment, the most secure
(13:46):
communications, fact, really theonly secure communications. The
information is not theinformation may pass through
servers, but it's not stored orretained there at all. So, so
when there's something likesignal, or something as a
reliably end to end, encrypted,system. It can, you know the it
can exist on your device. Youknow the records of the
(14:08):
communication will exist on yourdevice, but they only pass
through other things, andthere's no retention at all. And
so if that's that again, itcreates the possibility that
telegram might have informationlike might actually possess the
information that the Frenchgovernment wants and that and so
that's why, maybe this requestfor information pertains to
(14:30):
that, you know, if they made asimilar request to like signal,
you know, then signal say, wedon't have anything. So
Lisa Rein (14:37):
could this sound like something when the the feds, in
this case, the Frenchgovernment, are trying to get
information about users telegramusers, and telegram is just
stalling, you know, not givingit to them. Like when, like when
(14:57):
our government gives Google.
Where it's when it's fishing,you know that kind of thing?
Yeah,
David Greene (15:04):
so we know there was an authorized interception.
So we know that, which underFrench law, I've been told, is
not, it's not something thatrequires, like a court, a court
approval. So it's
Lisa Rein (15:15):
really me an authorized interception. So they
listened. They got some data,Telegram data from somewhere
David Greene (15:23):
they had, they got, they have a government
order saying to get it, and thattelegraph did part of an
investigation, yeah, didn't helpthem get it right? And so we So,
we know, we know that, and so,but we don't know what that
means, right? We don't know whatthat is. And so it but it seems,
(15:45):
I think what we I think it'spretty safe to assume that the
French government is seekinginformation about either the
actual contents ofcommunications from telegram
users, or information aboutthose users or their identities,
or something. So it seems likethat's what this authorized
interception would be about theword interception, as you know,
(16:10):
from, again, we're translatingfrom the French, but it's, it's
the same way it's, you know,interception in English and
interception and in French, thatdoes seem to be like close to a
wiretap. Again. There's lots ofways that governments can
intercept, and we don't know ifit's a real time interception
we're trying to get in transitcommunications as the people are
(16:33):
communicating, or if it'ssomething looking for historical
Lisa Rein (16:36):
record. Okay, so the moral of the story is, if
telegram allowed you to do trulyend to end, encrypted group
chats, then we don't have toworry when the government's
asking for this and that,because telegram wouldn't have
the ability to hand the dataover.
David Greene (16:57):
Yes, if so, I mean, you know the worst case
scenario, right? So, yes, if, iftelegram did not possess the
data, possess the data becauseit only uses its stores on its
own servers, then we'd belooking at a situation where
what the they government wouldbe like, so much like the Apple
(17:18):
versus FBI situation, the USright, where what the government
tried to do was say, Okay, weknow you don't have the data,
but why don't you just break allthe security on your phone?
Yeah? So give us a key. They
Lisa Rein (17:30):
do it about every four years. Yeah, yeah. Give us
a back door. Help. Yeah, that's,that's
David Greene (17:36):
a possibility here, but it does seem, I think,
as Moxie said, that, like, itdoesn't seem like that would be
necessary here, because it'smore likely that, you know, if
they're that it's all publicanyway. Get, yeah, get the, get
the stuff they possess, insteadof having to sort of break the
bike, you know. And again,there's if they are trying to do
(17:56):
something where it said, we needyour help in decrypting
information, whether that's thekey or back door, or a man in
the middle, or something likethat, like that, would be
highly, highly concerning.
That's a possibility, but youdon't want, yeah, I mean, and
that's a possibility, butthere's also a lot of other
things, so it's hard to know howpanicked we should be about
this. All right,
Lisa Rein (18:20):
so, but if you, but if you're trying to have
encrypted group chats, you'renot going to be doing it on
telegram. You not do it ontelegram. And in fact, your
private channels, it's very easyfor anybody to join them. So, so
that's, that's good to know,because I didn't know that
coming into this I was, youknow, was very confused about
that. So thank you so much,David. I know you're very busy.
(18:42):
I appreciate you coming on andclearing everything up for us,
and we'll probably see you soon,maybe in a couple weeks, and do
a little update as thingsdevelop on this. Yeah, hopefully
we'll know more. All right,thanks a lot, David, thanks.
Lisa. Bye.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to the mindplex podcasttoday. We are here with senior
staff attorney and civilliberties director David Green
from the EFF Hi, David,
David Greene (00:19):
Hey Lisa, hi everybody,
Lisa Rein (00:21):
and we are here to talk about the telegram
situation, and David's here totell us all about it. David let
us know, like, why was Paveldrive arrested? What's going on?
David Greene (00:32):
Yeah, so I should first say that we actually know
very little about about what hashappened, because the French
government has said very little,so there's been a lot of
guessing going on. So I'm gonnatry and be really careful to
Lisa Rein (00:47):
Well, that's important if we don't actually
know a lot, because people havebeen saying a lot of different
things, and I keep on reading
David Greene (00:55):
all these articles like, oh, maybe they found
something, but they didn'teveryone, I think is there's,
there's a lot of tea leaves, butnot a lot of consistent reading
of those tea leaves and so but Ican tell you what we do know,
which is mostly based on pressreleases that have been issued
by the French government. But Ithink really importantly,
they're just press releases. Wedon't have any legal documents
(01:17):
or anything like that that Ithink we have a greater
confidence in and the otherthing I should say is that I am
not a French lawyer. I have noexpertise at all in French law.
I have speak French. I speak itokay, but not as a lot anyway.
(01:38):
Just to say that, like all thesedocuments, are originally in
French. Some have some Englishtranslations. And I we, I've
spoken with some French lawyers,you know, to try and but again,
there's a lot of reasons forI'll do the best I can. Okay, so
we know very little. What we doknow is that that Durov was
originally arrested under what'scalled an what's sort of what's
(02:04):
in, like an investigatorywarrant. And France, and in
France, they're allowed to whenthey're doing a criminal
investigation, they believesomeone has information about
the investigation, they'reallowed to detain that person
for 48 or 96 hours, depending onthe chart, depending on what's
being investigated, just so theycan try and get information from
(02:24):
that person. So that's whathappened. He was arrested
because they were doing sometype of investigation. They
thought Dora, I've hadinformation, they ended up using
the procedure to get a 96 hourdetention. And then what happens
at the end of that time is thatthey're forced to either
formally, formally identify himas the subject of an
(02:45):
investigation, which then willallow them to put limitations on
him going forward, or they haveto let you know completely
release it. And they did theformer. They so he is currently,
currently the subject of aformal, the formal subject of
investigation, and because ofthat, he is, he can't leave the
(03:09):
country. He's not likeincarcerated at the moment, but
he he can't leave the country.
And there's some otherlimitations on what he's on,
what he's doing. So that's wherewe're up to so far. And what I
don't, I don't think he's hehasn't been charged with a
crime, but he is a subject of aformal investigation relating to
certain times. And I think maybethe best, maybe I've been told
(03:31):
that indicted might be the bestEnglish word, but he hasn't
actually been charged with awith a crime,
Lisa Rein (03:40):
so indict. It's not the best word, yeah, well,
David Greene (03:45):
a lot of the translations have said charge.
And again, in my rudimentaryFrench, I saw the phrase misan
misle, examine, which I charge?
That's you. That's okay.
Investigation.
Lisa Rein (03:58):
In France, they have warrants just to question
people, yes, in aninvestigation, if they're just
investigate, if they're justbeing investigated for a crime,
whereas, as here, you if you'renot the subject of
investigation, they have to makesomething up to take you in? No,
(04:20):
I'm just kidding. Just sayingit's harder to question people
sometimes because they don't. Wedon't have a mechanism like this
in the United States, correct,right? Well,
David Greene (04:29):
not, yeah. I mean, we it's you have the ability to
bring someone in forquestioning, but there you can't
detain not. We don't have awarrant for you. We don't have a
situation where you have sort ofa long term restrictions on
somebody because they'reformally being, formally being
invested. That's not, it's not aprocedure we have in the US.
Lisa Rein (04:46):
Okay, so that's part of the confusion to begin with.
Is that people are thinking, youknow, and they didn't come pick
him up. They got him when helanded at the airport. Yeah,
David Greene (04:57):
correct. Yeah.
Little private airport, I guess,too. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Rein (05:01):
So they knew he was coming there. They were waiting
for him, yeah,
David Greene (05:05):
you know. And some people I, the people I've talked
to in France, have said that theidea that that he was under
investigation and wanted, theywanted to bring him in, was semi
public in July, and he probablyshould have known it, and he
it's, he shouldn't have beensurprised that he was actually
arrested when he landed, um, inFrance. But again, it's hard to
(05:28):
know what, what he knew, or ifhe thought he was invincible, or
who, or whatever. Who knows?
Lisa Rein (05:34):
Okay, so we'll never, we never know what really, yeah,
what really happens there,until, like, again, there's
actual information given. Okay,um, so is this the is this EU
related? This? These crimes? Isthis about EU violations?
David Greene (05:52):
It's a good question. It again, we don't
know, because we don't know whatthe actual charges we I mean, we
have subject matters, and noneof these seem to be related to
violations of EU law. They seemto be related to particularities
of French law. And I think someof the European EU commissioners
(06:14):
have said that there's nothingin the, for example, the Digital
Services Act that would compelthat, that compels a the thing
France is looking into. Butagain, we know so little about
it that it's hard to tell
Lisa Rein (06:30):
the Digital Services Act. Yeah, the Digital
David Greene (06:32):
Service Act is the main regulator. It's a huge,
enormous regulation that's ineffect in the EU that put
certain requirements to mitigaterisk on on online platforms,
they vary by size. I'm not evenquite sure which size, if
telegram has enough user to bein sort of the biggest category,
(06:54):
which has the most requirementsor not, okay. But anyway, I
think the commissioners havesaid they don't think this is
about the DSA. So do know thatare
Lisa Rein (07:03):
listing, you know, terrorism, lack of content
moderation, this that? Yeah,they're just making stuff up at
this well. So
David Greene (07:11):
what we know, what they what they've said, is that
there was what they are invest,what the subjects of the
investigation would be, arefusal to comply with a request
for information, and thatinformation or or or to provide
documentation or information inresponse that that the
(07:36):
government believes is necessaryto implement a legally
authorized interception. So thegovernment was trying to
intercept communications. It'sunclear what that meant, live
interception, like a wiretap, orwhether they're trying to get
records. It's we all we knowthat's we don't know any of that
detail, and that a telegramrefused to comply with that
(08:00):
request, so refuse to give themthe information. So what that
could mean can range from itlike the worst case scenario,
right is that the governmentwanted to wiretap and listen in
live or read live on the smallsubset of telegram
communications that might be endto end, encrypted like that
would be the worst casescenario. The better one could
(08:23):
be that, you know, it was one ofthe, you know, they were
interested in the communicationthat was one of the much lesser
protected things, and maybe theones that are sort of, that
aren't and encrypted, but havesome encryption in them, but we
don't, we don't know, or theycould actually just needed help,
like looking at the completelypublic stuff. So, you know. So
Lisa Rein (08:44):
let's talk about that for a minute. It ranges.
David Greene (08:46):
The possibilities range from the completely
benign, uh, geo two, right? Bereally concerning, and we really
have no idea where it falls onthat scale. We do know they did
tell us the the criminaloffenses they're investigating.
So we know those are child,sexual assault, material, drug
(09:07):
trafficking, organized fraud andmoney laundering. So that's the
that's what they think might behappening on that those are the
crimes. They're the underlyingcrimes they're investigating.
Okay?
Lisa Rein (09:21):
And the issue again is though, so if it was an
encrypted group chat, it wouldlike signal or WhatsApp, it
would be encrypted, and only thepeople in the group would be
able to see what is in it. ButDrum roll, please. Telegram
(09:42):
group chats are not encrypted,right?
David Greene (09:46):
They're not end to end encrypted, right? I don't
know if they have some layer ofencryption on them, but they
are, they are, you know, ormaybe it's private chats have
some layer but unless you'reagain, well. Code
Lisa Rein (10:01):
you have to have you unless you turn on the secret
chat feature between two people.
It only works. Doesn't work forgroups. No, I've been looking
this up your own. Eva Alpern, soEva Alpern brings this up in
2022 when she does her harmreduction guide for the Ukraine
and Russia, because peopleinvolved in that conflict we're
using Telegram, thinking that itwas encrypted and secure, yeah,
(10:22):
by and by default, which asecure messaging app should be,
by default, if it wants to callitself a secure messaging app,
like, again, like signal andWhatsApp, and so I'm a little if
this comes into things, whetheror not here in the States, it
(10:46):
might be protected speech, ifit's in an encrypted, private
chat group, as opposed to apublic channel or a public
Group. Could you explain thedifference why? It's because on
Telegram, there's either publicchannels or there's private
(11:06):
channels, where it's really easyto fake an invite to like
there's videos on YouTube, youjust switch out the name in an
invite from another group, andyou can join any group.
David Greene (11:19):
Yeah. I think what a lot of people don't understand
about telegram is that, youknow, a lot of people,
especially in the US, think oftelegram as a messaging service,
but it's more, most commonlyused around the world. It's like
a social media platform. Sothere's groups, and people can
publish stuff, and you can, youknow, there's feeds and things,
you know, all the stuff you lookat for social media, and a ton
of communications obviouslyhappens there. And the groups
(11:41):
are very, very active, similarto they, you know, have on, you
know, on other things that startas messaging apps that then have
groups that then publish stuffbroadly, yeah, and so that stuff
is mostly, mostly completelypublic, right? There's, there's
no control for that at all. Thenwhen you have one to one
communications, each person, ifyou want to be end to be end to
(12:02):
end encrypted, so you don't youdon't want telegram to have the
content of the communicationthat's unique for end to end
encryption, both people have toturn on the private function. If
only one person turns it on,then it might be protected in
one direction, but not the otherone. And so that, and this is
important, because the Frenchgovernment could just be asking
(12:24):
Telegram for the unencryptedcommunications that it has,
because the communication wasn'tend end encrypted, right? It was
only other one end, or it hadsome level of encryption in
transit, but not otherwise. Soit could be, they're just
saying, We know you have this,give it to us, right? That's one
possibility. Um, or again, if itwas an end to end encrypted
(12:45):
communication, that's completelydifferent. Telegram wouldn't
have that. Wouldn't have thecon, wouldn't have the
conversation,
Lisa Rein (12:52):
right? Which is the point of the end to end
encryption is that the platformitself, even you know, can't,
can't look if it, if it wants,because it's it's actually
encrypted. Um, so yeah, just tobe clear on this point about no
encryption, Moxie marlin spikesays telegram messages aren't
end to end encrypted. And healso brings up that it's a cloud
(13:15):
messenger, meaning that allmessages live on telegram
servers, rather than the userdevice. Could you explain the
significance of that?
David Greene (13:24):
So, again, this all goes back to, does telegram
have information that they're intheir possession that they could
give to the French government,that, I mean, that they they
have the capability of giving tothe French government. So, so if
the information is stored ontheir servers, then they have
it, right? They have somethingthey could provide to the
French, to the Frenchgovernment, the most secure
(13:46):
communications, fact, really theonly secure communications. The
information is not theinformation may pass through
servers, but it's not stored orretained there at all. So, so
when there's something likesignal, or something as a
reliably end to end, encrypted,system. It can, you know the it
can exist on your device. Youknow the records of the
(14:08):
communication will exist on yourdevice, but they only pass
through other things, andthere's no retention at all. And
so if that's that again, itcreates the possibility that
telegram might have informationlike might actually possess the
information that the Frenchgovernment wants and that and so
that's why, maybe this requestfor information pertains to
(14:30):
that, you know, if they made asimilar request to like signal,
you know, then signal say, wedon't have anything. So
Lisa Rein (14:37):
could this sound like something when the the feds, in
this case, the Frenchgovernment, are trying to get
information about users telegramusers, and telegram is just
stalling, you know, not givingit to them. Like when, like when
(14:57):
our government gives Google.
Where it's when it's fishing,you know that kind of thing?
Yeah,
David Greene (15:04):
so we know there was an authorized interception.
So we know that, which underFrench law, I've been told, is
not, it's not something thatrequires, like a court, a court
approval. So it's
Lisa Rein (15:15):
really me an authorized interception. So they
listened. They got some data,Telegram data from somewhere
David Greene (15:23):
they had, they got, they have a government
order saying to get it, and thattelegraph did part of an
investigation, yeah, didn't helpthem get it right? And so we So,
we know, we know that, and so,but we don't know what that
means, right? We don't know whatthat is. And so it but it seems,
(15:45):
I think what we I think it'spretty safe to assume that the
French government is seekinginformation about either the
actual contents ofcommunications from telegram
users, or information aboutthose users or their identities,
or something. So it seems likethat's what this authorized
interception would be about theword interception, as you know,
(16:10):
from, again, we're translatingfrom the French, but it's, it's
the same way it's, you know,interception in English and
interception and in French, thatdoes seem to be like close to a
wiretap. Again. There's lots ofways that governments can
intercept, and we don't know ifit's a real time interception
we're trying to get in transitcommunications as the people are
(16:33):
communicating, or if it'ssomething looking for historical
Lisa Rein (16:36):
record. Okay, so the moral of the story is, if
telegram allowed you to do trulyend to end, encrypted group
chats, then we don't have toworry when the government's
asking for this and that,because telegram wouldn't have
the ability to hand the dataover.
David Greene (16:57):
Yes, if so, I mean, you know the worst case
scenario, right? So, yes, if, iftelegram did not possess the
data, possess the data becauseit only uses its stores on its
own servers, then we'd belooking at a situation where
what the they government wouldbe like, so much like the Apple
(17:18):
versus FBI situation, the USright, where what the government
tried to do was say, Okay, weknow you don't have the data,
but why don't you just break allthe security on your phone?
Yeah? So give us a key. They
Lisa Rein (17:30):
do it about every four years. Yeah, yeah. Give us
a back door. Help. Yeah, that's,that's
David Greene (17:36):
a possibility here, but it does seem, I think,
as Moxie said, that, like, itdoesn't seem like that would be
necessary here, because it'smore likely that, you know, if
they're that it's all publicanyway. Get, yeah, get the, get
the stuff they possess, insteadof having to sort of break the
bike, you know. And again,there's if they are trying to do
(17:56):
something where it said, we needyour help in decrypting
information, whether that's thekey or back door, or a man in
the middle, or something likethat, like that, would be
highly, highly concerning.
That's a possibility, but youdon't want, yeah, I mean, and
that's a possibility, butthere's also a lot of other
things, so it's hard to know howpanicked we should be about
this. All right,
Lisa Rein (18:20):
so, but if you, but if you're trying to have
encrypted group chats, you'renot going to be doing it on
telegram. You not do it ontelegram. And in fact, your
private channels, it's very easyfor anybody to join them. So, so
that's, that's good to know,because I didn't know that
coming into this I was, youknow, was very confused about
that. So thank you so much,David. I know you're very busy.
(18:42):
I appreciate you coming on andclearing everything up for us,
and we'll probably see you soon,maybe in a couple weeks, and do
a little update as thingsdevelop on this. Yeah, hopefully
we'll know more. All right,thanks a lot, David, thanks.
Lisa. Bye.
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