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Amsterdam municipality #bans #Telegram on work phones over criminal use, espionage threat | NL Times

https://nltimes.nl/2024/08/19/amsterdam-municipality-bans-telegram-work-phones-criminal-use-espionage-threat

What consequences will it have for #freedomofspeech ?

in reply to Paolo Redaelli

I guess they can decide whataver they want on work phones of their own employees, but it does seem silly.

> Telegram is a “safe haven for
> hackers, cybercriminals, and
> drug dealers,”

If the municipality has employees who are cybercriminals and drug dealers, then maybe they should stop hiring criminals.

I think banning something because "it can be used by criminals" is stupid, generally. Criminals breathe air, so air should be bammed? Criminals eat food, so food is bad too?

in reply to Elias

@eliasr
It seems that the municipality is making the very dangerous assumption that Telegram is used by criminals. The next step is banning Telegram altogether, a move already made by many dictatorships (see Government censorship of Telegram - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_censorship_of_Telegram?wprov=sfla1)
in reply to Elias

@eliasr yes if national security is at risk.
Everything has a limit, also our west rights in particular conditions, for example during the terrorist attack in France in 2015. Privacy cannot be used to illegal scopes
in reply to Nick44 :wwf: :ubuntumate: 🌍

@Nick44
Yet "national security" has often been used by governments to become dictatorships and suffocate people's freedom.
These days governments have far too power and we all know that too power corrupts since the temptation to use that power for the evil or just personal deeds is very strong.
@eliasr
in reply to Nick44 :wwf: :ubuntumate: 🌍

@Nick44 @eliasr well, actually the Municipality has all the rights to decide what programs do run on their devices.
What I fear is the this could be the first step of an #overton_window to ban all #secure and #privacy aware #instant_messaging applications.

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