Here’s what he said in a post on his telegram channel:

🤫 A story shared by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, uncovered that the current leaders of Signal, an allegedly “secure” messaging app, are activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad 🥷

🥸 The US government spent $3M to build Signal’s encryption, and today the exact same encryption is implemented in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Messages and even Skype. It looks almost as if big tech in the US is not allowed to build its own encryption protocols that would be independent of government interference 🐕‍🦺

🕵️‍♂️ An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their “private” Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media. But whenever somebody raises doubt about their encryption, Signal’s typical response is “we are open source so anyone can verify that everything is all right”. That, however, is a trick 🤡

🕵️‍♂️ Unlike Telegram, Signal doesn’t allow researchers to make sure that their GitHub code is the same code that is used in the Signal app run on users’ iPhones. Signal refused to add reproducible builds for iOS, closing a GitHub request from the community. And WhatsApp doesn’t even publish the code of its apps, so all their talk about “privacy” is an even more obvious circus trick 💤

🛡 Telegram is the only massively popular messaging service that allows everyone to make sure that all of its apps indeed use the same open source code that is published on Github. For the past ten years, Telegram Secret Chats have remained the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private 💪

Original post: https://t.me/durov/274

  • shrugal@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    It’s hard to overstate what a nothing-burger this article really is! Let me break it down:

    • Signal got $3 million from the Open Technology Fund at some point in its development
    • Some anonymous source alleges that the OTF’s ultimate goal is to promote US foreign interests
    • The current chairman of the board Katherine Maher worked at the National Democratic Institute and Wikipedia before
    • The same anonymous source says she was recruited because of connections to the OTF
    • She has at some point voiced the opinion that a completely free internet without regulation just reproduces existing power structures, and that balancing regulation and 1st amendment rights is a tough problem
    • Signal doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS (it absolutely does on Android btw)
    • Some people feel like Signal chats come up more often than they should in court cases and media reports

    That’s it, that’s the whole story. That’s the reason why the Telegram guy of all people thinks you should be careful, and better use his chat service instead, and the Twitter guy agrees.

    I mean, reproducible builds on iOS would be nice, but that platform has much bigger problems from a privacy/security/sovereignty/freedom standpoint anyway. And the rest is just nothing turned up to 11.

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      tl;dr “Signal might be untrustworthy because the tech came from a State-sponsored project and the current chairman acknowledges that Wikipedia has a white and Western bias.”

      just wait until they find out pretty much all tech we have can be traced back to government-funded research.

      • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Did you know the early early internet researchers were part of a clandestine government organization known as ARPANET??? The entire TCP/IP stack is just a state-sponsored backdoor into your life!!!

        WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!

  • rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    arent telegram chats unencrypted by default?

    An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their “private” Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media

    source?? (i bet this ends up being a “they had full access to my unlocked phone” situation again)

    also the whole thing abt US funded encryption is the same bullshit argument ppl use against Tor all the time. it doesnt mean shit.

    this just reads like someone desperately trying to get more market share by spreading FUD

  • sneakyninjapants@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Telegram’s server side software is closed source, owned and ran by them exclusively so they really have no room to talk. WhatsApp doesn’t even have OSS clients so they’re even worse in that regard

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      exactly, they (Telegram) don’t need to put sketchy code in the clients when most messages are not E2E encrypted and they control the servers lol

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    I find it weird how any discussion about Signal will inevitably have a bunch of people piling on dismissing any criticisms of it. Believing that Signal is perfect has become like a religion at this point. Whatever people might think of Telegram is completely irrelevant when it comes to the question of whether Signal is actually a secure tool or not.

    The fact that people working on Signal have direct ties to US intelligence agencies cannot be ignored. No can the fact that Signal is a centralized system based in US. These two things alone should make everybody very concerned.

    • rollerbang@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Isn’t it that Telegram doesn’t claim to be super secure, apart from possibly their encryption on mobile?

      This doesn’t prevent them from uncovering other possible plots in supposedly secure platforms.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Looks like a push to discredit Signal right now. While I know Signal isn’t perfect, I do like it and I haven’t seen anything that is better (on the whole). The 3rd “emoji-point” is quite an accusation, and I would love to see any evidence of this kind of thing, that didn’t result from the cops unlocking a defendants phone, or having infiltrated a chat.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      Tin hat time:

      I wonder if Russia’s trying to get everyone on Telegram because they have control over it.