I recently wrote critically about Telegram. They censored the Western Chauvinist channel at the behest of some unnamed party. Since then I’ve had a more practical view of Telegram, and this new information does little to change that.
Contrary to what has been publicly stated so far, the operators of the messenger app Telegram have released user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office ( BKA ) in several cases. According to SPIEGEL information, this was data from suspects in the areas of child abuse and terrorism. In the case of violations of other criminal offenses, it is still difficult for German investigators to obtain information from Telegram, according to security circles.
My guess is that they throw in child abuse for the optics. Terrorism simply means groups which the zionist (((ADL))) deems political opposition.
The fact that Telegram provides information about users to authorities at all marks at least a cautious about-face in the course of the company, which was founded in 2013. For a long time, German investigators did not get any answers when they wanted to know who was behind the Telegram accounts that were spreading criminal content online. The operators also explain on their site: “To date, we have shared 0 bytes of user data with third parties, including all governments.”
In 2018, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced a privacy policy overhaul that would allow his service to release IP addresses and phone numbers if ordered by a court. “That has not happened to date,” says the relevant section of the policy. A half-yearly updated transparency report channel from Telegram has also not recorded any data transfer to authorities. Durow and his PR department left a SPIEGEL inquiry about the obvious change of heart unanswered.
In recent years, Telegram has become increasingly popular, especially among lateral thinkers and right-wing extremists – not least because of the statements by the operators that they generally do not cooperate with governments and their authorities. Experts have already described a scene of particularly extremist online activists who communicate via Messenger as “Terrorgram”. In various channels, instructions on how to build weapons or mix deadly poisons could be found. The operators are also criticized because their app calls for violence against politicians, activists or scientists. ( Read more about how Telegram became a kind of pocket dark web here. )
The bias of the article is palpable. The way I see it, this could go one of two ways. First, this could be true, and Durow, Telegram’s founder, could be giving the feds information on specified channels. Second, this could be fake, and a classic case of rallying the schizo paranoid spergs. I don’t have enough information to know how this particular cookie crumbles, so let’s read on.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior has been in direct talks with Telegram since early February to get the service to cooperate with German authorities and block criminal content. During the first exchange, Telegram boss Durow appeared personally in a hoodie in the video call, along with three other high-ranking representatives of the company, including, to the surprise of the ministerial, a senior German-speaking employee. Participants described the exchange afterwards as thoroughly friendly and constructive. Durow emphasized the importance of the German market and signaled that he would take the concerns and demands seriously. It was agreed to set up a reliable direct channel at the working level.
According to SPIEGEL information, there have been two more talks since then between Telegram employees and the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and representatives of the Federal Ministry of Justice were also involved.
Telegram has now also set up an email address specifically for the BKA. This is where investigators go when they come across criminal content during investigations that Telegram should block. The BKA has now reported more than a hundred German channels and groups to Telegram, and almost all of them can no longer be reached from Germany , according to circles entrusted with the processes.
None of this sounds like “Telegram is giving user info to the feds.” Instead it sounds like “Telegram has, at the behest of the German government, banned certain channels from Germany.” That is a totally different claim to the one in the headline.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser explained that since her first day in office she had built up considerable pressure to get Telegram to cooperate: “This pressure is working,” said the SPD politician. However, the minister also sees ongoing problems with the service. The app should no longer be an accelerator for right-wing extremists, conspiracy ideologues and other agitators, says Faeser. “We will continue to push for the platform to comply with legal obligations.”
Nancy Faeser
Meanwhile, Telegram is threatened with fines of up to 55 million euros due to two fine proceedings by the Federal Office of Justice. The authority accuses the Messenger of violations of the German Network Enforcement Act .
At no point in this entire article does it say that Telegram is giving the feds private user information. That is not claimed one single time, except for the headline. I linked the article, you can check for yourself.
I’m not convinced, but I’m definitely leaning more towards this being fake news. Telegram isn’t perfect. They ban channels at the behest of governments, but they are also not complying with other clear censorship orders. And at no point is any proof given of them giving the feds user information.
When more information than the unsupported headline of some random article in Spiegel, that clearly has a ZOG bias, come out with proof of Telegram giving user info to the feds, then wake me up. And even if that were true, they wouldn’t be able to use that information against you in court without a legal fight anyway. Paranoid Q-anon adjacent spergs are no doubt going buck wild right now, but this isn’t going to affect me in the slightest.
why do they force you to give your phone number to make an account if they weren’t going to do anything with it?
Lots of things, like twitter, require a phone number. I’m not sure that’s conclusive in either direction, and I don’t think we can just say that they’re giving your number to the feds when they ask for it.
Would be interesting to have a list of actually banned sites. I am from Germany and so far as bans directly by Telegram are concerned (In contrast to app bans by Apple/Google that I am ignorant of since I use only clients directly from Telegram) I noticed only the banning of Western Chauvinist. Eric Striker was banned some time ago, but only for a day or so.