Timeline for How can Telegram defend themselves from law enforcement action?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 21 at 15:03 | comment | added | Barmar | @Greendrake A system like this might be set up specifically so that management approval is necessary to respond to such law enforcement requests. Engineers shouldn't have the authority to do it on their own. | |
| Jun 21 at 1:33 | comment | added | Greendrake | @Barmar Law enforcement wants user identification data. This is routinely juggled by the internal systems for business analytics and operational decision making, so it is accessible to much wider slice of employees than 2-3 high-level execs. | |
| Jun 21 at 0:18 | history | edited | bdb484 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 21 at 0:06 | comment | added | Barmar | And my bona fides: I've been a programmer and system administrator for 40+ years. I've never actually seen a system locked down this well myself, but I believe it's possible. | |
| Jun 21 at 0:04 | comment | added | Barmar | @Greendrake The solution is to minimize the number of people who know the relevant passwords to access the data remotely. This could be known only by 2-3 high-level executives, who would only reveal them to engineers if necessary to solve a technical problem. They could even have a version of the "two keys" system used to launch nuclear missiles. | |
| Jun 20 at 11:35 | comment | added | Greendrake | @Trish That's bollocks, I say it as an IT engineer with 19 years of experience. | |
| Jun 20 at 11:27 | comment | added | Trish | There is your fallacity @Greendrake. "Ask an engineer with the right access to login" can mean needing to fly that one in from out of jurisdiction. A well balkanized data system requires multiple engineers from all over the world to work at the same time to unlock the data vault. | |
| Jun 20 at 10:39 | comment | added | Greendrake | @Trish My meaning of "hard" is equal to "does not cost a lot". If data is stored at all, it does not cost a lot to retrieve it from modern systems. All that it takes is to ask an engineer with the right access to login somewhere and run some queries. In the worst case scenario, some backups may need to be awaken from slumber and spun up. | |
| Jun 20 at 10:11 | comment | added | Trish | The point is not hard but costs a lot. And the courtcan strike subpoenas as disproportionately pricy. | |
| Jun 20 at 8:58 | comment | added | Greendrake | @Trish Easily proved by bringing experts in IT systems architecture. There's no way for Telegram to convince the court that retrieving data is hard, but they can convince that for certain kind of data it is impossible (e.g. where end-to-end encryption is used). | |
| Jun 20 at 8:47 | comment | added | Trish | @Greendrake You'd need to prove it can be done trivially - For all I know, there might be considerable costs involved you are not aware of. | |
| Jun 20 at 8:45 | comment | added | Greendrake | @Trish How is that relevant to this question? Telegram either can fetch the data without much trouble, or can't at all. There's is nothing in between here. | |
| Jun 20 at 4:36 | history | edited | bdb484 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 20 at 1:55 | comment | added | bdb484 | @Greendrake That's definitely false, but OK. | |
| Jun 20 at 1:54 | comment | added | Greendrake | "unduly burdensome" has no relevance in this context. Either the data can be reasonably easy retrieved and provided, or it is impossible technically. It is not the case that they could retrieve the data but it would cost them $$$. | |
| Jun 20 at 1:09 | history | answered | bdb484 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |