Endless Thread13 Sep 2024

A Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

When the founder of the messaging and social media app Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France, it exposed something: many of Telegram's millions of users believe the app is much more secure than it actually is.

Some of those people use the app for crime; others to communicate about sensitive political topics in war zones. Media outlets (including, we must admit, Endless Thread) have often described Telegram as an encrypted app, but that's not quite right. Telegram, and who knows who else, can access most of what's said and shared on the platform. There are crucial differences between apps like Telegram, and other services known for encryption, including WhatsApp and Signal, and many people using the apps don't understand the differences. Do we need to? Wired's Andy Greenberg, Natalia Krapiva at Access Now, and Matthew Green, a professor at Johns Hopkins, say absolutely.

This week, we look at the anarchist, googler, and billionaire moguls behind the tech that millions of people around the world use for basic communication. And we imagine what it looks like when an app actually protects your conversations from prying eyes? We also ask: why should you care, even if you think you have nothing to hide?

Show notes:

"What is Telegram and why was its CEO arrested in Paris?" (The Associated Press)
"Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?" (A Few Thoughts on Cryptography Engineering)
"Signal is more than encrypted messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, it's out to prove surveillance capitalism wrong." (Wired)
"Eugene from Ukraine." (Endless Thread)

Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was written and hosted by Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by our managing producer, Samata Joshi.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(472)

Remembering Brooke Eby

"Should I be joking at a time like this?" That's the question then 33-year-old Brooke Eby asked herself when she uploaded her first piece of TikTok comedy in 2022, about being diagnosed with a termin...

9 Okt 32min

Mixed signals: Nextdoor villains and the holiday you've never heard of

The internet is the great connector. Talk with nearly anyone at any time about anything. But that kind of freedom can lead to misunderstandings. Maybe your neighbors discover your cruder, less friendl...

2 Okt 25min

The Haruhi problem

Get out your graphing calculators, because today's episode of Endless Thread is about a math problem. Specifically: wt(π1, . . . , πm) = m−1 ∑ i=1 wt(πi , πi+1) Now, pencils down. Stumped? So were m...

25 Sep 16min

Keeping the Lights on at a Video Game Cafe in Southern Yemen

Mo lives in Aden, an ancient city in southern Yemen. Built on a volcanic crater, it has castles and beaches set against mountains. It's beautiful. Like the rest of the country, it is also in the midst...

18 Sep 33min

Ear rumblers assemble!

Ben can make a roaring, rumbling sound with his ears that no one else can hear. He never thought much about it — whether only he could do this, or whether everyone could do this — until he discovered ...

11 Sep 28min

Encore: Owl pursuits

This episode was originally published on March 10, 2023. In 2022, freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a new neighbor: an owl. What wasn't clear was whether the owl was try...

4 Sep 24min

Emily Kwong takes us to science camp

Grab your telescopes because this week on Endless Thread Ben and NPR Short Wave host Emily Kwong take us down two science-related internet wormholes. First, Emily introduces us to the intergalactic wo...

28 Aug 25min

'Turn Bluetooth off, or we're turning around.'

The 190 passengers of a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Palma de Mallorca, Spain had settled into their seats for their overnight flight when the captain gave an announcement: everyo...

21 Aug 28min