Russia asked for access to Delta Chat user data ... so we had some explaining to do :) Cheers to decentralized app designs and the e-mail system's separation of apps and message transport, something that Whatsapp, Telegram and the likes fail to offer ... https://delta.chat/en/2020-05-01-roskamnadzor
@delta I'm not sure about the Telegram, but its history in Russia is awesome. It's developed by the Pavel Durov who was forced to move away from Russia because of his views. Then Telegram actually registered in registry, because the head of RKN, Zharov, promised that it doesn't require from Telegram to give any keys! Durov stated, that okay, we are going to register, but any request to provide data will be rejected. Later on they ofc requested the keys, and that's how Telegram got blocked here.
Kind of semiblocked indeed. I would say it's a controversial story. Most of all I grateful to people who push Tg to F-droid. BTW, how does they sustain their infrastructure? They host a lot of servers.
@delta
It's worth reminding users that mail transports used by Deltachat leak all metadata around conversations: sender, receiver, number and time of messages and size!
@federico3 could you expound on, or provide some context for, that statement?
@federico3 @delta at least one project is working on fixing this, ever heard about GNUnet?
@nedelne_rano
@delta
Yes and there's also #Briar and others
@delta the friendica link on your website, maybe needs to be updated!?
@delta the letter here is very interesting and strong. I hope everybody read this and learn something really valuable. Thanks for sharing!
@delta I will be eagerly watching our authorities scramble in a bid to try and block your "service". They will never accept or understand that you don't have a service.
@delta about "Russia asked for access to Delta Chat user data...":
Very similar to #Posteo (Berlin, email) vs. German Authorities. No data - no interception. So far so good.
The question remains:
What did the other services / providers do?
Intercept and deliver?
Record and provide?
Snoop and fetch data?
Posteo at that time accidentially found one answer: Yes, even illegal requests by authorities were fulfilled, all, always.
Be more selective in choosing your providers!
https://posteo.de/site/transparenzbericht
Artikel zum #Posteo Transparenzbericht ....
Viele Ersuchen nach § 113 TKG weisen Verstöße gegen datenschutzrechtliche Bestimmungen oder andere Gesetze auf....
...
Verwenden nicht-dienstlicher E-Mail-Postfächer zum Übermitteln von Ersuchen, Angabe solcher Postfächer als Antwortmöglichkeit
Ersuchen ... deren Herausgabe ... nicht zulässig ist, z.B. um ... IP-Adressen
fehlende Angabe der Rechtsgrundlage der Anfrage (vorgeschrieben!)
@0xD @delta Ok, danke, interessanter Artikel. Ich verstehe aber immer noch nicht ganz, was du mit "...even illegal requests by authorities were fulfilled, all, always." meinst. Der #Transparenzbericht liest sich für mich so, das #posteo eben gerade keine Daten bei rechtswidrigen Anfragen herausgegeben hat. Oder war das auf die anderen Anbieter bezogen?
@delta "Не было бы счастья, да несчастье помогло."
Пропиарили на отличненько!
РКН - блокируй ещё))
@delta Thank you for sharing this, providing an encrypted service and standing strong.
The power of saying “no” is available to everyone.
Use that power.
@Delta Chat Get ready for getting your app banned in Russia.
What do you mean? Pull out of stores? You can't ban it from #Flatpak and #F-droid.
E-mail traffic is encrypted and nobody will mess with it. Yandex, Mail-RU, and other can reject Delta traffic, but it will just turn their users to abroad providers, what would be bad for their government sniffing ability.
Is it possible to ban Delta client connection to Yandex etc? Again that would just lead people to open abroad accounts for Deltachatting.
Telegram and the likes fail to offer
Lol, Telegram was banned in Russia precisely for not complying with turning the keys over.
Look above, it's not like it's strictly banned. They just open repository, install, and use it with RUS number. Orbot solves cases when problems occurs.
@searoso for the question about providers, it really depends on whether @delta leaves any signatures/traces or not (e.g. custom headers).
If it does, than their messages can simply be broken by these signatures by slightly adjusting spam filters (if really needed, of course). Otherwise there is no difference between them and another e-mail client.
@searoso but then, if they will start blocking @delta using filters, how long before they start detect and reject PGP encrypted messages? (which marks a real point when Russia starts fighting against encryption).
I don't think they will do anything about it. Remember they stated that restrictions don't mean you're disallowed of using blocked service when talking about Telegram usage in Russia? ;)
@delta Nice one folks!
