Russia Demands Apple Remove Telegram From Russian App Store (macrumors.com) 113
The Russian government is asking Apple to help it block Telegram by removing it from the country's App Store. Mac Rumors reports: A Russian court in April ordered carriers and internet providers in the country to block Telegram back in April, after Telegram refused to provide Russia with backdoor access to user messages. Despite issuing the block order back in April, Russia has only been able to disrupt Telegram's operations in the country by 15 to 30 percent. Given the government's inability to block the app, Roskomnadzor, the division of the government that controls media and telecommunications, has demanded that Apple remove the Telegram app from the Russian App Store. The group first asked Apple to remove the app in April, but is appealing to Apple again.
"In order to avoid possible action by Roskomnadzor for violations of the functioning of the above-mentioned Apple Inc. service, we ask you to inform us as soon as possible about your company's further actions to resolve the problematic issue," the regulator wrote. Roskomnadzor has given Apple one month to remove the Telegram app from the App Store. Roskomnadzor's director Alexander Zharov said he did not want to "forecast further actions" should Apple not comply with the request following the 30 day period.
"In order to avoid possible action by Roskomnadzor for violations of the functioning of the above-mentioned Apple Inc. service, we ask you to inform us as soon as possible about your company's further actions to resolve the problematic issue," the regulator wrote. Roskomnadzor has given Apple one month to remove the Telegram app from the App Store. Roskomnadzor's director Alexander Zharov said he did not want to "forecast further actions" should Apple not comply with the request following the 30 day period.
Can't forecast because they can't do shit (Score:5, Insightful)
"Didn't want to forecast further actions" - because what are they going to do, block the Apple app store in Russia? That would punish Russia as much as it punishes Apple (modulo what the haters think).
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Re: Can't forecast because they can't do shit (Score:2)
That's quite brilliant.
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What makes you think that the Russian authorities are incapable of imposing increasing fines on Apple for every day the apps they want to ban are still in the Russian App store?
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The Russian people see what Putin want...
Oh, I get what this whole thread is about.
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This is a country unbound by the constraints of following the law.
Yes, it is.
And so is Russia.
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This is the best example of how Government regulations are tyranny. Not because they do use it tyrannical fashion, but that they always have that as a unspoken threat, "Do as we say or else!"
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The bottom line is that the fundamental rule of nature is might makes right. We can either band together and form a government to be the mightiest, or we can leave a vacuum to be filled by warlords and oligarchs. The libertarian ideal of just settling every dispute in a neutral court still depends on the implicit threat that the loser must abide by the decision or else. There simply is no way to eliminate that type of "tyr
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My boss doesn't have the compelling ability to deprive me of liberty, or come at me with guns, and basically ruin my life. Other than that, you're right!
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My boss doesn't have the compelling ability to deprive me of liberty, or come at me with guns, and basically ruin my life. Other than that, you're right!
And who exactly do you think prevents your boss from having that ability if not the government?
Which is pretty much the point: power abhors a vacuum. Remove the government, and it WILL be replaced by warlords; make it weak, and it WILL be replaced by oligarchs - the historical record consistently bears this out. And neither warlords nor oligarchs give a crap about your liberty, or your life, or your happiness. At least we have a say in government. Good luck taking an oligarch to court, or filing a gr
Stoopid (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing stops Rooskis from getting App Store accts in any country they choose. Telegram is my messaging app of choice.
-ex-Rooski
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Nothing is stopping them, other than it's a PITA to switch between app-store accounts & that you cannot change your signed-in appstore account more frequently than every 30 (90?) days.
I used to use a U.S appleID account without a credit card attached because some free apps I wanted were only on the U.S appstore. Between not being able to switch accounts frequently any more & all the apps I wanted now being in the local appstore I haven't used it in years.
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I just switched between four different countries in under 10 minutes to upgrade local apps. Where did you get this 30/90 number from?
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https://apple.stackexchange.co... [stackexchange.com]
The text "You may switch an Associated Device to a different Account only once every 90 days" appears twice in the current iTunes, Mac App, App Store and iBookstore T&C
It may well not be implemented in such a way that it's a problem but I remember that addition to the T & C around the time I stopped bothering with using two separate AppleIDs.
Updates with two AppleIDs were a pain anyway because you needed to sign out from one to sign in to the other, & if there we
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Wow, someone actually read the click-wrap T & C!
I agree it's a PITA to change stores, but I occasionally do a [change store/update apps/change store/.....] procedure. Never have been locked out. 99.99% of the time I'm logged in my home-country's store. A handful of apps I use frequently are not available in my home-country store.
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You give me much too much credit, lol. I didn't read the T & Cs but when they added that 90 days language to it it _was_ noted and commented on in Apple blogs. I just have a head filled with useless facts...
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Nothing is stopping them, other than it's a PITA to switch between app-store accounts
Welcome to my world.
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Nothing stops Rooskis from getting App Store accts in any country they choose.
In Putinist Russia, Polonium and Novichok Nerve Agent stops accts in any country they choose.
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Their top employee here in FreedomLand only drinks Diet Coke.
Re: Try (Score:1)
What they can do to the guy that orders it, without Putin suffering a scratch.
Really, the whole world's stability, for better or worse, depends on the acts of terrorists against world leaders being thwarted.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, garden walls you!
Wierd, it's chicken, but why? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't seem their usual approach to be so lenient. It's like they are trying to get Apple to blink first. I would have thought that any warnings would be made very clear behind closed doors.
So why make the warnings public at all? It must be a popularity problem, as in the wealthy are being told to prepare for no more iPhones.
Which probably makes the Russian iPhone market quite valuable to Apple also. So I guess it follows that Apple might actually cave on this one. Hence the mind games.
Can Apple count on enough support to change the government's mind? I doubt it, this is obviously driven straight from the top.
And P.S: (Score:2)
I note this action has probably been held off until after the recent elections.
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And elections matter in Russa, why? The results are known months before the vote.
Popularity (Score:3)
It's not a win or lose calculation, it's about maintaining strong popularity. Avoiding a campaign that could have included taking away more sparkly things would be worth the wait.
Keep privacy concerns firmly in the helpless camp, will be the attitude.
Re:And P.S: (Score:4, Insightful)
Elections matter in Russia because they are contested by the technocracy that has taken over. No denying Putin is their man but they are now tens of thousands up there all holding power and influence and it is spreading from Federal government level down to state and country, a definitive shift to a technocracy and elections do count, a least amongst the technocrats, the plebes just vote they way they are taught, by technocrats but it is very much democratic amongst the technocrats and you must perform or you are removed. It seems it will spread, the growth of a multi-polar technocracy, it will be interesting.
As for banning aps, the Russian government kind of stuck themselves in it from the silly point, trying to control the ap, a mistake, you only ever target the revenue, the ap is meaningless, it could be replaced by a FOSS ap and you have nothing to ban but code, good luck with that. So you simply target the revenue upon an increasing scale, targeting all employees income sources as well as investor returns and of course advertisers served, they'll pay twice for that ad. Target revenue and oh look you have generated a revenue source for government. Ban enough things, quite a revenue stream to tap into.
To ban an app, you have to charge people with the device who are running that ap, an on the spot fine. Use the ap to identify them, track them to a location with the cell network and at transport choke points, inspect their phone, make them pay a fine and delete the ap or confiscate the phone but to do this would be nuts.
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On the other hand, maybe Apple doesn't care either. I don't know what their market share looks like in Russia, but I'd imagine it to be lower than most other countries. Apple might care when i
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I thought that Apple's messaging service had encryption to prevent snooping.
LOL. It is true that imessage is encrypted, but it uses a weak 1024-bit certificate, which is pretty small, and Apple can also MITM the messages if they wanted to.
https://blog.quarkslab.com/ime... [quarkslab.com]
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Apple will MITM any app and when the US is on their doorstep with a national security letter.
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When the CIA, MI6, GCHQ and NSA want to do things in Russia they need a communications system that is ubiquitous and pro Western.
The game plan for Russia is another Colour revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That allows all the Western and NATO backed "charity" and "NGO" civil society groups to plan nation wide protests within Russia.
So why make the warnings public at all?
Russia understands PRISM and how other US networks and brands can be used to tra
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Well, Apple has sales in Russia of around $2Bn. per year, at a very good profit margin. OK, this hardly peanuts, but not a lot of money to Apple really.
(Fun fact: Apple's market cap is the same as the entire Russian market...)
Before they set up their own subsidiary, Apple products were purchased overseas and "greyed" into Russia by enterprising individuals, so if Apple's subsidiary gets shut down, presumably that would re-start, so Apple wins anyway...
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Why ask why? :P
Arkadiy Babchenko.Used Telegram (Score:1, Informative)
Arkadiy Babchenko is a Russian journalist who was living in Kiev, Ukraine.
He was shot a few hours ago at his home, in Kiev Ukraine. Most likely by Russian govt. agents.
Babchenko used Telegram.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/russian-journalist-arkady-babchenko-shot-dead-in-kiev
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Most likely by Russian govt. agents.
Whoa. Did they drop their Lubyanka parking receipts in the trashcan or used "russian-only" military grade bullets?
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He's not dead - see his press conference on the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com]
I foresee an increase... (Score:2)
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No need to jailbreak anymore to install "unsanctioned" apps. This has been true since iOS 8.
XCode can compile and deploy to a device, and if you're on Windows, there are plenty of tools to do so as well.
Apple however doesn't see it as sideloading - they only approve of this method if you compiled the code yourself. It's why when f.lux tried it Apple had them stop since it wasn't open-source.
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Android (Score:2)
How does this do anything for the ~90% using Android (non-Apple) devices? Were they able to get Google to comply too? (And side-loading on Android is built-in).
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Google isnt left wing Nazi like Apple.
That is beside the point. The question is, why is Apple the only distributor being singled out? If the problem is that a program being distributed has deemed illegal to distribute, all distributors should be notified that the product is to be withdrawn. Only requesting this from Apple is a bit like declaring Budweiser beer illegal due to not releasing their ingredients, but then only punishing TGI Friday's for serving it to customers.
Re: Android (Score:1)
You go after a big blatant target. A hen that will squaw and squaw as it is slaughtered. The other adversarys will watch and afterwards quietly comply. Apple's hype network is a perfect propaganda organ for the Russian authorities to make use of. And a whole community of people within Russia of over average wealth is a most excellent group for the authorities to loudly bring to heel.
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"The censorship arm also says that it’s in talks with Google to ban the app from Google Play."
https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]
As for sideloading: they can simply go after larger repositories (block telegram or we block you). They are unlikely to be able to block small sites (eg blogs), but removing "official" sources is likely to kill more then 99% of app market share in Russia and if they really care they can go after users then.
Be a Realist (Score:1)
Russia has been running a quite shrewd strategy of cooperation with ALL international players, including Apple for the last 15 years or so.
It has been highly successful, making Russians much better off than they were under the drunkard Jelzin.
Russia is by now the largest exporter of grain, a major player in advanced weapons and materials such as Titanium.
Of course they do not have the breadth and depth of industry as the soviet union had, but they have successfully jump-started quite a few sectors of their
Not just Apple (Score:1)
I would expand this to -all- companies, and -all- countries. Would someone trust their tanks on a battlefield to run on an engine that nobody hows how it works, be it the cylinders in it, the type of setup, compression ratio, etc.? Nope. But that is what is done with software.
China does this. Microsoft, Apple, and other companies hand them over their source code because it is either that, or being banned from the Chinese market. This might be the wise thing for -any- country's national security, if onl
Blows Kaspersky's argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Blows Kaspersky's argument (Score:1)
It certainly makes the Russian cyber-security firms look just as beholden to their national governments as the US firms are to theirs.
Which presents a good reason for individuals to choose the cyber-security tools not based in their own country. Kapersky is the right choice for Americans, just as Symantec might be for a Russian.
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It does nothing of the sort. Making a public request to a company to remove a 3rd party product is not the same as forcing a company to include malware. By your definition there is no independent software not locally made or anywhere else made since you think that any government asking anything of any one without actually seeing the outcome automatically makes it non-independent.
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Statistics (Score:2)
When you say "Russia has only been able to disrupt Telegram's operations in the country by 15 to 30 percent." the numbers in there are off by 100%. That makes it difficult, at the very least, to identify how accurate the numbers were.
For example, when the polls say "Trump is loved by 50% of the people. Poll has a margin of error of 4.6%." we know that somewhere between roughly 45% and 55% of the people love him and vice versa. It is vital to quantify the value of the numbers.
Being told "by 15 to 30 perce
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well, no, it could be 22.5% +/- 7.5%
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I don't know if you really understand statistics, but you definitely don't really understand English. 15 to 30 percent means a minimum of 15% and a maximum of 30%. While I am sure both ends are guesstimates, the principle is the same.
Think of it as an advertisement for a sale. When the ad reads "15-30% off!", it simply means that each individual item is discounted by some percentage between 15 and 30. It's not trying to imply a margin of error.
The inevitable result of a walled garden (Score:2, Insightful)
The inevitable result of a walled garden is that you, the maintainer, are held responsible for the actions of the apps, people, and data within that garden. Any country can pass a law that makes this very bad for you. This is a very real problem with walled gardens and non-open hardware, though I imagine it will take quite awhile before this plays out enough for most people to even notice it as an issue.
Re: The inevitable result of a walled garden (Score:1)
'Most people' are the sheep within the fence and don't need to notice.
telegram dodging the blocks (Score:4, Informative)
The countermeasures against the blocking have been interesting.
Telegram got lots of servers so the Russians blocks milions of ip addresses. Iran also began trying to block telegram.
People in the west started helping by running socks5 proxies. Some of the proxies that people put up allowed all traffic, not just telegram, so they got used for forum spamming, torrents etc and got shut down after a day or two when the companies that the servers were rented from got lots of complaints.
There is a socks5 proxy written in python that is set up to only connect to telegram ip addresses. [github.com]
Now it is reported that deep packet inspection is being used in some countries to detect socks5 protocol.
Telegram has created a new proxy protocol called MTPROTO to try to get around that. The android and iphone versions of telegram messenger can use MTPROTO but the desktop software can't, it's only in the beta versions that are not available to everyone. Voice calls currently don't work with an MPROTO proxy.
There are now several different bits of MPROTO server software on github in python, golang and javascript.
There are various telegram bots and twitter accounts listing proxy ip addresses.
http://www.techort.com/telegram-mtproto-proxy-everything-we-know-about-him-habr/
Re:telegram dodging the blocks (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at how to get around a nations powerful internet controls for "free".
With a free super wide encrypted internet connection connection 24/7. Free and safe. Good strong crypto.
Look up a free list and its 100% free and working.
Security officials try each service and get detected by NSA, GCHQ?
CIA and MI6 want lists of dissidents to track internal political changes?
Who is going to get real time stats on that user wanting to get around their nations security services?
Free countermeasures are often well funded honey pots.
Look at how China has totally worked around any such outside crypto efforts. Use a powerful "working" VPN in China and that connection has to be approved.
Xcode too? (Score:4, Informative)
Since Telegram is open source [github.com] and you can get both it and Xcode for free then removing it from the App store doesn't really prevent it from being used on legit, un-jail broken, iOS devices.
Yes, yes, I know you won't get APNS, and if you can't sign it with a developer account, it needs reloading every week.
But it's a by-pass none the less.
Anyone with anything to hide will no doubt find a way around Apple's compliance with the country's legal requirements and in this case it's relatively easy.
My question is how far with Russia go to stamp out encrypted messaging? Can they? Can anyone?
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Please, read properly (Score:2)
Russia wants to BAN ONLY Telegram because they DIDN'T COMPLY with a BACKDOOR.
So... does that mean that Facebook Messenger, WhatsAppp, etc. HAVE PROVIDED ONE to Russia?
Only affects new and re-installations (Score:3)
Problem is, banning the app doesn't remove the app from user's phones. Apple hasn't even demonstrated they can do that - they can potentially disable apps that use location APIs, but that's it.
So banning it just means new users can't install the app, or reinstall the app if they delete it. Existing app works just fine.
And new users can always use the well-documented way to side load the app onto their phones... something easy to do since Telegram is open-source.
They should spoof 'em (Score:1)
Telegram and other companies that gets asked to create back-doors for police should say "Sure!" and then give the police access to a special version of their admin software that makes it appear as though the user is going into people's accounts and viewing their messages, but in actuality the "messages" they see are just randomly generated, innocuous notes about mundane things (kitten GIFs, unicorn memes, fart jokes, etc).
On the last day, Apple will remove it. (Score:1)
On the last day, Apple will fold, just like they did in China.
Russia is a big market.
It is Apple's only real play. They owe it to the stockholders.
Telegram? What is that? (Score:2)
No Apple Stores in Russia (Score:2)
As far as I can tell from a quick web search, there are *no* Apple Stores located in Russia, never have been. I don't know if Apple has any employees in Russia at all. Iphones are available, but they're sold through local retail outlets.
If Apple has any guts they will say: look, this is the product we made, it is designed to run apps like Telegram-- if you don't like our product, you can just make it illegal to sell them in your country. The result would be this: a billion or two in lost sales (if that
Cool Down Lockheed (Score:1)
We know you paid top dollar for Hillary and we know your sale was not successful. Get over it.