...
... Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, called on Russian authorities on June 4 to lift the ban. He cited ongoing Telegram efforts to significantly improve the removal of extremist propaganda from the platform in ways that don’t violate privacy, such as setting a precedent of handing encryption keys to the FSB.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/whats-...
In the US case, there was a phone where data was encrypted at rest. Though Apple was capable of creating and signing a firmware update that would have made it easier for the FBI to brute force the password, Apple refused to do so.
In the Russian case, the FSB must have already had access to the suspect's phone because if it did not then Telegram would not be in any position to help at all.
So, the FSB must have already had access. And therefore, by having access to the phone they also had complete access to the suspect's chats in plaintext, regardless of whether or not the suspect used Telegram's private chat. There would have been no keys to ask Telegram for copies of.
Alternatively, the FSB might have had access to some other user's chats with the suspect, and wanted Telegram to turn over the suspect's full data. Telegram is 100% able to do that if they want to.
As the specific part of the article you have quoted is definitely bullshit, I suspect the rest of it is bullshit too and that despite what Roskomnadzor states in public, the real fight with Durov was over censorship.
So from a broad perspective, they probably behave better than comparable services.
I think Telegram should not be trusted, but I also do not trust the alternatives, that readily share information with states. A special focus for me is that my own jurisdiction does not have access to my social media content. Other countries are secondary at first.
By who?
Simplex especially or even Signal are far better.
Or Briar
Or maybe even Session?
This is exceptionally naive. Even if he was arrested for not sharing with the French, what about for other countries? Was he arrested for not ever sharing or not sharing enough? Even if he, personally, has never shared, that doesn’t say anything about his employees who have the same access to these systems.
Your data is not private with Telegram. You are trusting Telegram. It is a trust-based app, not a cryptographically secure app.
If you trust telegram, that’s your choice, but just because a person says the right words in interviews doesn’t mean your data is safe.