It’s tragicomic how some people trust Telegram specifically because they perceive CEO Pavel Durov to be an enemy of the Russian government, while others trust Telegram because they think it is actually a Russian company and thus won’t share data with western governments. (Durov talking about the facts that Signal has received millions from the US government’s Radio Free Asia and sends all messages through Amazon servers helps with this second perception).

I assume Durov’s relationship status with various governments is it’s complicated but also cordial. IMO it would be prudent to assume that intelligence and law enforcement agencies from lots of countries, including ones that are adversaries of each other, are all getting lots of data from Telegram both with and without the company’s cooperation.

There is literally no e2ee for most messages, and new devices can be added and authenticated by SMS, so, even the weakest of adversaries can play with it. Telegram really democratizes surveillance capabilities.