Telegram is for the most part not end-to-end encrypted, one to one chats can be but aren't by default, and groups/channels are never E2EE. That means Telegram is privy to a large amount of the criminal activity happening on their platform but allegedly chooses to turn a blind eye to it, unlike Signal or WhatsApp, who can't see what their users are doing by design.
Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to what's happening on your platform will always be a bulletproof way to avoid liability, but it's a much more defensible position than being able to see the illegal activity on your platform and not doing anything about it. Especially in the case of seriously serious crimes like CSAM, terrorism, etc.
End-to-end encrypted means that the server doesn’t have access to the keys. When server does have access, they could read messages to filter them or give law enforcement access.
If law enforcement asked them nicely for access I bet they wouldn't refuse. Why take responsibility for something if you can just offload it to law enforcement?
The issue is law enforcement doesn't want that kind of access. Because they have no manpower to go after criminals. This would increase their caseload hundredfold within a month. So they prefer to punish the entity that created this honeypot. So it goes away and along with it the crime will go back underground where police can pretend it doesn't happen.
Telegram is basically punished for existing and not doing law enforcement job for them.
Maybe they didn't ask nicely. Or they asked for something else. There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement. You'd be criminally dumb if you didn't do it. Literally criminally.
I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
> There's literally zero drawback for service provider to provide secret access to the raw data that they hold to law enforcement.
That's not true. For one things, it is expensive. For another, there's a chance people will find out and you'll lose all your criminal customers... they might even seek retribution.
> I bet that if they really asked, they pretty much asked Telegram to build them one click creator that would print them court ready documents about criminals on their platform so that law enforcement can just click a button and yell "we got one!" to the judge.
You seem to believe, without having looked at the publicly available facts of the matter, that the problem is law enforcement didn't say "pretty please". The fact of the matter is that they've refused proper law enforcement requests repeatedly; if anyone has been rude about it, it's been Durov.
Not to say that deliberately making yourself blind to what's happening on your platform will always be a bulletproof way to avoid liability, but it's a much more defensible position than being able to see the illegal activity on your platform and not doing anything about it. Especially in the case of seriously serious crimes like CSAM, terrorism, etc.