Don't Shoot the Messenger

After the recent terrorist attacks, government representatives around the world again began to demand the installation of backdoors in instant messengers with end-to-end (end-to-end) encryption. At the same time, journalists, when covering these statements, also made a heap of mistakes typical of them. Thanks to these errors, I (the head of Telegram support services, Markus Ra - approx. Lane) received many questions from surprised Telegram users. So let's clarify a few things.

How is my information protected in Telegram?

Telegram secret chats use end-to-end encryption. This means that no one, including Telegram, can decipher the data exchanged between the participants of the correspondence.

Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure to protect data outside secret chats. Cloud chat data is stored in various data centers around the world, which are controlled by various legal entities and in different jurisdictions. Encryption keys are divided into parts and are never stored in the same place as the information that is encrypted by them. As a result, for Telegram to issue any information, several orders are required from courts in various jurisdictions.

Thanks to this infrastructure, neither a single state nor a block of like-minded countries can prevent your private correspondence and freedom of expression. A telegram can be forced to provide information only if the problem is very serious and global so that such a warrant can be approved in various legal systems around the world.
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At the moment, Telegram has not issued a single byte of user information to third parties, including the government.

But what to do with terrorists?

Let's look at how terrorist organizations can use messengers and, more importantly, what we can do to prevent them.

Private messages

Most of all, people fear that terrorists will use encryption applications to secretly exchange messages to prepare and coordinate their attacks.

If you do not try to understand the problem, it may seem tempting to simply disable end-to-end encryption to prevent terrorists from exchanging secure messages. But the hard truth is that it will not work . In order to achieve the goal, the terrorists are ready to go to many difficulties and hardships. Including death. Therefore, if you disable existing secure messengers or build backdoors into them, they will immediately take advantage of one of the following options:

1. Create your own applications. Technologies for creating secure instant messengers is public knowledge. Nowadays, anyone can create an instant messenger with encryption. In these new applications, most likely, there will not be many brilliant features and they will have to be installed manually, bypassing Apple iTunes and Google Play,
   but they will work.
   Rumor has it that ISIS members have had their app since January 2016.
   
   
2. Use code language. Steganography is a fancy word for hiding information in plain sight. You can use public or listening channels of communication safely, if only you and the recipient of the message know what “Uncle David goes to the store tomorrow”.
   
   
3. Using other means of communication . As an ordinary user, you would not want to buy a new phone, make a call, write one message and then throw the device in the trash. But this is exactly how the terrorists in Paris contacted to organize and conduct ISIS attacks in Europe.

As you can see, in many cases, the terrorists did not even have to change anything. They already have very viable means as an alternative to secure messengers. On the other hand, you do not have them.

Ordinary people are not ready to face application problems with poor usability, not to mention disposable phones or secret languages ​​for the sake of privacy. As a result, the only thing that government backdoors can achieve is the return of mass surveillance and the leakage of your personal information to hackers or corrupt officials. [one]

Public messages

But all of the above does not mean that we cannot insert a stick into the wheels of terrorists. Another key goal of terrorists, for which they use mass communication services, is to spread their ideas and bring information about their attacks to the maximum number of people .

It is for this reason that various types of terrorist organizations have recently begun to come into social media like Twitter, Facebook and others for publishing their content and threats.

Telegram is unique in that it has channels - a tool for sending messages to an unlimited audience. Naturally, the terrorists tried to use this tool to broadcast content ISIS. But, like other services, Telegram took measures to expel them from this public platform.

Channels of terrorists continue to appear - as in other services. But complaints about them almost instantly arrive and they close within a few hours - long before they have time to attract someone.

And yet, no matter how hard Telegram and other services try, the terrorists have a very strong ally who helps them spread their messages.

Exaggerate paint

The existence of terrorism makes possible not the weapons that terrorists use and not the messages they exchange - they have a long history rich in improvisation in both spheres. There is one element that really stimulates this phenomenon: the media. [2] And it is not a secret that terrorist organizations invest a large amount of money in their press coverage.

When you look at the numbers , any other causes of death and destruction (with the exception of, perhaps, the fall of vending machines , etc.) will overshadow the attacks no matter how cruel and unfair they may be.

Cancer, heart disease, accidents and even soap on the bathroom floor kill more people every day than terrorists in any given year.

Therefore, the main task of terrorists is to convince you that their wild actions are more significant than the approximately 150,000 deaths that occur every day for other reasons . They want to distort our perception in order to make us feel the danger because of them , and not because of the huge number of other threats that really surround us.

Unfortunately, the media willingly focus their attention on the terrorists. In the end, disturbing news brings a lot of views and money for advertising - especially when they contain exciting photos of victims. So fear spreads on the wings of the greedy to clicks and press views, and is fueled by politicians who are eager to gain more power and bear less responsibility.

Game on fear

We should never forget that terrorist organizations primarily hunt for our fear. They will do anything so that we do not feel safe in our own cities and homes. But there are a lot of us, and there are too few of them for these attempts, though painful for the victims, to be anything more than just a drop in the sea of ​​natural dangers with which we have learned to live and cope.

We should not panic and fall prey to various forces that will use our fear of terrorism for our own purposes. Instead, we should be helped in comforting and providing support to the victims and their families — especially if we are somehow connected to them, however unlikely that may be.

And we must always remember that terrorists are fighting for our minds in our minds.
In the end, victory depends on us.

[1] It is impossible to build a backdoor that will be used only by "good people". If there is a backdoor in the service, then it is only a matter of time until the hackers find an unofficial opportunity to get your information. And if you live in South America, Russia, China, or one of many similar regions, you may find that the official use of these same backdoors can be very different from what you would expect from societies where the law is strictly enforced.

[2] Indeed, terrorism did not exist in its current form until the middle of the XIX century, until newspapers and telegraph networks for the first time did not unite world information flows.

Translator's Note:

I apologize for non-working footnotes. I could not get them to work either in HTML or in Markdown Habraparser mode.