Navigating (in)visibility: Redefining freedom in the age of encryption

(1)

Master’s Thesis

Navigating (in)visibility

Redefining freedom in the age of encryption

Elise Olthof 10821317

Graduate School of Humanities New Media and Digital Culture

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: Melis Bas Second Reader: Daniël de Zeeuw

(2)

Abstract

As public encryption is increasingly available, new online spaces arise in which users can engage in public acts while remaining anonymous. This has created new forms of activist and illicit organisation, groups that would typically reside on different infrastructures. Telegram plays a central role in blurring the distinction between activist and illicit actors as both seem to have found their way onto the app. By researching the ways both user groups navigate Telegram, this thesis shows how both convey similar politics of visibility, invisibility and organisation. This, in turn, influences our notion of freedom. Following the historical developments intricately related to the infrastructures of the internet, like the development of the darknet and the 90s crypto wars, this research shows how notions of positive and negative freedom intertwine when our online spaces are increasingly encrypted and anonymised.

(3)

1. Introduction

In 2018, the streets of Moscow were crowded with demonstrators and paper planes flying overhead. Russia had just put a ban on instant messaging app Telegram after the company refused to hand over access to its encryption keys. Although not all Russians use the app, (approximately 14 million Russians at that time) it had been a go-to app for activists to organize and communicate and/or to avoid state censorship of citizens. In the country’s attempt to shut down the service, over 18 million IP-addresses were blocked. When that didn’t work, the Russian government took down complete subnets of IP-addresses, causing numerous websites and businesses to break down (MacFarquhar). Musea suspended ticket sales and even Google’s and Amazon’s services were temporarily unavailable (Savov). To protest against the increasing censorship of the Roskomnadzor (the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology), and show their support to Telegram, Russian citizens responded en masse to the call of Telegram’s co-founder Pavel Durov to throw paper planes from the windows (Lunden). Fundamental rights like privacy and freedom of expression were at stake.

In the meantime, journalists and cybersecurity experts from different parts of the world signal an alarming rate of Telegram groups in which drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods are traded. The app, they argue, is becoming a safe house for illicit activities that would normally reside in the clandestine corners of the dark web (Field, IntSights 3, Cuthbertson, van Hoof). At the same time, after a history of refusal, Telegram announced collaboration with law enforcement to combat the IS groups that use the app as home base (Verlaan). Health care workers experience a rapid growth of so-called “expose groups”, Telegram groups in which girls are publicly shamed by distributing compromising footage (Khaddari). These stories paint quite a different and darker picture than that of the protests in Russia. The app seems to have turned into a free haven to say and do whatever one wants, without consequences.

As the above examples show, Telegram’s encrypted messaging service provides a platform for a wide range of publics to communicate and organize. On the one hand it supplies a secure way to communicate while on the other, it offers a safe haven for illicit and hate speech groups that make use of its advanced anonymity and encryption tools. Governments are constantly seeking for ways to access and govern communication infrastructures while digital rights activists and privacy advocates fight for securing these infrastructures. The side-by-side manifestation of both illicit and activist groups on the app illuminate a blurring distinction of unlawfulness and activism. Government surveillance has created the uneasy reality of a

(6)

criminalized society while increased hate speech and spread of fake news show the downside of unanimous privacy rights and the freedom of expression. As civil encryption slowly enters large parts of the internet’s infrastructure, privacy is constantly being redefined in lines of code and policies of corporations and governments alike. Telegram shows a new turn in this debate and challenges the meaning of privacy and its intricate relationship to freedom.

Telegram was launched in 2013 by Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov and is one of the first messaging apps that provided end-to-end encryption. This is a form of secured communication in which only the sender and the receiver can access the information, eliminating a so-called ‘man-in-the-middle’ attack where information is intercepted by a third party. Its launch didn’t come completely out of the blue. It was during the same period American whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed massive state surveillance programs of the NSA (the National Security Agency of the U.S.). Corporations also have been moving towards extreme data aggregation business models and we have become reliant on their infrastructures that slowly reside into ever deeper corners of the internet. More and more people started to search for tools that offered some form of encryption. Compared to other anonymization tools like Tor (short for The Onion Router) a dark web browser, and VPN software that temporarily provides users with an IP-address, Telegram proved an easy to use and accessible alternative for the not so tech-savvy average user. Encryption, however, comes from a long history of struggles between government and privacy advocates in the early days of the commercial internet.

Since the commercial internet’s rise in the nineties there has been an ongoing debate on governance and individual freedom on the internet (DeNardis and Musiani 3). Digital rights activist and early internet pioneer John Perry Barlow wrote his infamous declaration of the independence of cyberspace as a reaction to increasing commercial and government interest in the internet. In his declaration Barlow calls for a cyberspace without government rule, a free space where people could say and be whatever they want (Barlow). After his declaration activist groups started to get involved in the discussion on how privacy and freedom should be defined online. The internet embodied the ‘home of the mind’, a cyberspace free of government rule (Barlow, Jordan 2). This idea of the internet as an embodiment of individual freedom later got defined as 'Cyberlibertarianism', a political philosophy that combines American liberalism with Silicon Valley hacker culture. In those early days, policy and protocol design evolved either because they “just worked”, a process known as de facto standardisation, or emerged from engineering communities that worked with open mailing lists systems, like the 1986 founded Internet Engineering Task Force (IEFT) (DeNardis 69). However, as time progressed,

(7)

governments and corporations started to interfere in online policy (DeNardis and Musiani 3). Although encryption seems to become a standard in much of today's communication technologies, it was only in 1996 that the Clinton Administration took commercial encryption of the US munitions list (61 FR 58767).

Today, the developments and implementation of civil encryption are accelerating, resulting in a redefinition of the meaning of privacy and freedom, and Telegram is the centre stage of these shifting definitions. It provides not only new tools for, and forms of, activism, described by Milan and Barbosa as the ‘chat app turn’ in activism (Milan and Barbosa), but it also provides a new platform for illicit activity and hate speech. Both groups use the freedom of expression and right to privacy in their own way. In an influential 1969 essay by Isaiah Berlin, two forms of freedom are described that are exemplary for traditional illicit acts and activism: positive and negative liberty. Berlin defines negative freedom as a freedom to act without constraint, for example the freedom of not being locked into your house (Berlin 121). Positive freedom, to Berlin, is a freedom in which you can act because you are empowered in one way or another, for example when there is a presence of something that generates this freedom, like personal control or the ability to act (Berlin 125). While activists ultimately seek a positive freedom to act and to be heard by society, illicit activity normally resides in the confines of anonymized and secret spaces, trying to act without constraint of law and rule: the pursuit of negative freedom. Both freedoms are in turn inherently related to different politics of visibility since criminals traditionally seek invisibility for their operations. Protesters, vice versa, seek public recognition and visibility of their operations.

With the development of the internet these politics new possibilities of negative and positive freedom arose. New illicit economies sprouted that benefited from decentralized peer-to-peer technologies. The new communication possibilities enabled them to reach other illicit actors in spaces that are increasingly accessible to the public. Activism also experienced a development towards decentralization, away from movement organizations and their associated media (Milan How Algorithms Shape Collective 4). One example, which is often associated with dark web activities, is hacker collective Anonymous, whose position as activists is questionable. Are they just causing disruption, seeking a negative freedom, which in the hacker world often is labelled as “black hat” hackers, or do these hackers really fight for the greater good, seeking a positive freedom that is labelled as “white hat” hackers (Norton). In other words, black hat hackers are hackers who do evil, like spreading a virus, while white hat hackers use their skills for a greater good, like ethical hackers.

(8)

The turn to encryption by chat apps and other social media platforms adds a whole new dimension to the possibilities of activism and illicit markets. It enables a new politics of (in)visibility and forms new “intimate” public spaces in which activism and illicit acts can take place. Not only new forms of activist organisations but also hate speech and illicit markets, arise. Telegram redefines the boundaries of what it means to act illicitly or be an activist in the private ‘public’ spheres of the Telegram chat groups and channels. It complicates the distinction between negative and positive freedoms online, a development already ignited with dark web software. Since Edward Snowden revealed the mass surveillance programs of states, privacy has become a much debated issue. Software providers are adding more and more privacy features to their products. The downside of these increased security features on public technologies is that it generates a safe space for illicit activities, that at the same time increasingly seeps into the public sphere.

Much research has been done on social movements and activism in combination with their use of technologies and, more specifically, social media (see Lievrouw 2011, Bennett and Segerberg 2012, Gerbaudo 2015, Treré and Mattoni 2015, Kubitschko 2017). New media and social movements are intrinsically related and have a history of their own (see Lievrouw 2011). Many large scale social movements have been researched in the light of their use of new media. Bennett and Segerberg show, for example, the novel role new media played in the personalization of public engagement in large scale protest movements (739). Milan, in turn, showed how algorithms shape collective action and how the specific materialities of the medium influence activist sense-making activities (Milan When Algorithms Shape Collective 2). More recently, the importance of instant messaging apps in political and activist organisations was illuminated by numerous researchers. Like the rise of a new political subject with WhatsApp (Milan and Barbosa), the use of WhatsApp in politics and activism (Treré) and the use of WhatsApp and Telegram in Malaysia’s GE14 election (Johns).

As the above examples show, much research is done in activist use of new media, and chat apps have been gaining attention in the academic field. However, little attention is given to Telegram’s role in the creation of new publics and strategies of activists. Telegram’s unique features and privacy enhancing capabilities, like the possibility to stay anonymous and create large public and private groups, create a diversion from other established and encrypted instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. Telegram shows more similarities to dark web software than other instant messaging apps, which should be examined in depth. As the above examples of Milan and Bennett and Segerberg show, the materiality is important in facilitating new forms of social organization. Telegram played a large role in uprisings in both Hong Kong

(9)

and Iran, both for activist organisation as well as to avoid state surveillance (Agur and Frisch 6, Akbari and Gabdulhakov 226). But the specifics of Telegram’s features, that make it possible to generate large public and searchable groups while remaining anonymous, remained largely out of focus. This thesis therefore takes Telegram’s public groups and channels as a starting point rather than encrypted messaging apps in general.

Another development that is not yet covered in current academic research are the many illicit markets that reside in the Telegram groups, markets that would normally be limited to the confined anonymous spaces of dark webs. New media and communication scholar Robbert W. Gehl has done excellent research on dark web cultures and histories. Gehl shows how dark webs Freenet, Tor and I2P have a history and sociology of their own (Gehl Weaving the Dark Web) and shows how the alternative social network site the Dark Web Social Network (DWSN), which is only accessible with TOR software, is an experiment in power/freedom online (Gehl Power/freedom on the 1220). Gehl's account on the power/freedom relations on the DWSN provides a valuable resource for this thesis’ research on similar questions of freedom. Nevertheless, this thesis takes into account both activist and illicit groups and specifically looks at their navigation of (in)visibility tactics that, contrary to Gehl’s DWSN, are situated in the much more public and accessible space of the mobile phone app. Other research shows how anonymizing new media technologies influence the practices of dark web crypto market users (Martin 352, Tzanetakis 177), and shows how dark webs and encryption are deployed as a way to circumvent state surveillance (Manamon and Mtenzo, Moore and Rid 7, Jardin 436). But, these academic sources often only illuminate either the illicit crypto market users or activist users, instead of comparing both user groups. Also, research on illicit markets on the internet have mainly focussed on markets based on dark web software like TOR. By researching the illicit markets in relation to Telegram’s technical properties, its mobile nature and its accessibility this thesis uncovers new market forms and cultures, adding a dimension to previous research on these markets’ politics.

By comparing both illicit and activist groups in their navigation of the Telegram app this thesis overcomes the hitherto separate scope of research of either the activist or illicit actor. It will do so by describing their connection in their tactics of generating visibility and invisibility and showing how this generates a collision of two previously distinct realms of negative and positive freedom. It will also show how the dark web activities find their way into the surface web activity of the mobile phone apps, generating new possibilities for both illicit activity and activism to access newly formed public spaces of Telegram’s chat groups and channels. It builds on research from social movement studies, science and technology studies

(10)

and media studies in order to form a coherent thesis that covers illicit activities and dark web technologies, and connects these to social movements, activism and social media.

This thesis therefore discusses the blurring lines of activist and illicit acts on Telegram and their intricate relation to liberty by an in-depth examination of both activist and illicit manifestations on Telegram groups and Channels. It reveals how anonymizing and encrypted services like Telegram generate new spaces of individual freedom and grounds these concepts in the historical context leading up to these developments. By describing the similar politics of (in)visibility that is navigated by both illicit and activist spheres on the app, this thesis illuminates the collision of negative and positive freedom. Therefore this thesis answers the question:

In what ways does the shift towards a similar politics of (in)visibility of both illicit actors and activists manifestations on Telegram influence previously held concepts of freedom?

In answering this question, the following part offers an literary overview of the concepts briefly touched upon in the introduction. It explains what encryption is and why it is so intricately related to both digital activism and dark web criminality. It connects the concepts of encryption, digital activism and illicit online behaviour to existing theory on visibility and invisibility, privacy, publicity, trust and freedom. It shows how early developments of the internet infrastructure led up to the events described in the introduction by answering the question: How did the historical developments in encryption technologies and its relation to both digital activism and illicit markets led to Telegram’s central position in the larger debate on publicity, privacy and freedom? In answering this question, the chapter describes specifically how activists and criminals act privately and perform through a different definition of freedom.

In the third chapter, the methodological framework, the steps needed to analyse both activist and illicit activities that manifest itself in Telegram groups are explained in-depth. It provides an overview of the groups and channels used for analysis. For activist activity on the app, the object of study is the U.S. Black Lives Matter movement’s groups and channels, for illicit markets the object of study is the Dutch illicit market sphere. This section explains the reason for content analysis as an analysis type of choice combined with a digital ethnography approach and explains what other types of analysis were considered but ultimately were not chosen. This section answers the question: How can activism and illicit acts be analysed in Telegram groups and channels?

(11)

In the analysis chapter of this thesis, an in-depth exploration of both groups is offered using the methods described in chapter three combined with journalistic and academic sources on the two spheres. The analysis describes the app’s features that are specifically important to illuminate in relation to the debate on the politics of (in)visibility and its intricate relation to freedom. The analysis provides two separate inquiries into the illicit and activist sphere’s politics of visibility, invisibility, group and channel moderation and use of the online space provided on Telegram, and ends with a discussion comparing the two spheres. It asks: In what ways do different manifestations of activist BLM-movement users and illicit market users navigate the online space of Telegram?

Lastly, this thesis concludes with a summary of the findings and suggestions for further research. The following chapter provides a literary review on the concepts and theories that are important to understand Telegram’s role in the blurring lines of activist and illicit acts and its historical roots.

2. Literary Review

The protective measures that are increasingly taken up by social media companies like Telegram are the result of years of increased online government surveillance and corporate data aggregation. For example, mass surveillance projects and collaborations of and between states have been sprouting since the First World War. Projects like the Cipher Bureau in 1911, the 1945 project SHAMROCK and the 1995 initiated Five Eyes (a surveillance collaboration between five English speaking nations). As a result, anti-surveillance measures were increasingly taken by privacy advocates and technologists in the form of cryptographic technologies and alternative dark webs. The freedom that is so central to Telegram is rooted in these histories that are explained in this chapter. In the first section on the darknet, this thesis provides a short introduction explaining the darknet and why it arose alongside the developments of the World Wide Web. The second section is dedicated to the rise of public encryption in the 90s during the so-called “crypto wars”, a rise that was not self-evident from the start. In the section that follows, this thesis elaborates on the concepts of crypto markets and cybercrime that arose on the darknet due to its encrypted nature. Next it provides an explanation of the meaning of digital activism and their connection to the internet by elaborating on the ways digital activists have navigated the affordances of the internet in the past. The last two sections are dedicated to grounding the aforementioned concepts and technological developments in larger debates and theories on visibility and invisibility, trust,

(12)

publicity and privacy in relation to Telegram. However, before going into the politics and uses of Telegram and its relation to the concepts mentioned above, it is important to understand the history of the rise of the internet. In the light of the ongoing controversies of mass surveillance programs, Telegram is a new development in a line of historical events in which freedom and privacy are again and again contested. The following section describes the darknet and its close connection to liberalist ideas of freedom, privacy and autonomy, ideas that, as this thesis shows, are central to the culture of Telegram.

2.1 The New Frontier of Cyberspace

As the internet got increasingly privatised and commercialised during the 90s, early adopters of the internet weren't happy about these developments. It was during a time of techno-utopianism where the online world was envisioned as an electronic frontier. Cyberspace would flatten existing hierarchies and replace them with harmonious tribes (Turner 238). Its technologies could bring awareness and power to the individual by providing access to information (Turner 261). In cyberspace, a new society could flourish, one of freedom and consensus (Lessig 2).

The growing influence of corporations and government bodies on the web was by many early internet pioneers and privacy advocates seen as an infringement to the freedom of speech and online freedom more generally. It connects deeply to the liberal ideologies that were held during the beginnings of cyberspace, exclaimed in the now famous 1996 "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlow among new media and technology scholars. In this declaration Barlow called for an internet free from government law, a space that would be a ‘home of the mind’ (Barlow). In Barlow’s eyes, cyberspace would reign itself, without privilege and prejudices. A place where anyone is free to be whatever one wants. Of course, this was written in the heydays of modern online communication, but it foresaw the commercialisation of large parts of the web. This web is now more and more concentrated in the hands of a few media giants like Facebook and Amazon. Their control doesn't end at platforms but penetrates the internet through enormous infrastructures that create an uneasy distribution of power of unprecedented scale. How we deal with this power remains an ongoing struggle where new technologies create new risks and possibilities at the same time.

Barlow was one of those early internet pioneers who strongly believed in the idea of the possibilities of a utopian new world that he saw on the internet. In the cyberculture of the 90s, the online world was a place of informational libertarianism. Here one could 'meet beyond the interference of government and bureaucracy' (Jordan 2). This thought is in line with "The

(13)

Californian Ideology" that describes the faith that originated in the American West Coast from a combination of its hippie culture and the Silicon Valley tech industry (Barbrook and Cameron 12). This Californian Ideology combines 'the disciplines of market economics and the freedoms of hippie artisanship' together with a strong belief in technology to justify our social reality (Barbrook and Cameron 15). It provides us with a way to understand a new 'virtual class' that arises online that combines social liberalism of the left with right-wing economic liberalism (Barbrook and Cameron 23).

Another way to describe the dominant philosophy of early cyberspace and that is engrained in the fibres of most Silicon Valley internet companies, and that is so integral to Barlow's declaration, is the idea of cyberspace sovereignty. In their description of the different interpretations of technological sovereignty, Couture and Toupin describe cyberspace sovereignty as a form of sovereignty that challenges the power of the state over the online world (Couture and Toupin 2311). This interpretation intricately relates to the battle over internet freedom that, according to communications scholar Isadora Hellegren, is mostly played out in the discursive arena of encryption technologies (286). In the cryptographic discourse, this battle revolves around freedom from state interference (Hellegren 287). Freedom in this sense is a form of negative freedom, and that entails individual freedom without the obstacles of third-party surveillance. In this 'crypto-discourse,' the state is seen as the adversary of online privacy (Hellegren 289). To understand the ways freedom is constantly contested and redefined by the online world, it is important to first introduce the rise of cryptographic technologies and the online developments that inform the changing notion of freedom. With the increase of online surveillance and commercialization of the web, Barlow’s ‘home of the mind’, people started to look for alternatives outside the world wide web. This resulted in alternative webs that collectively form the so-called darknet that still exists today.

2.2 The Darknet

So, what exactly is the dark web, or is it darknet, and how is it related to encrypted messaging apps? The darknet can be conceptualized as 'layers of alternative networks superimposed on the global network' (Gayard xvi). These networks have cryptographic protocols that anonymize browsing and dark web applications and sites (Gayard 10). In 2002, a study coined the term 'darknet' as 'a collection of networks and technologies used to share digital content' (Biddle et al. 155). The authors back then described the darknet not as separate but as an 'application and protocol layer riding on existing networks' (Biddle et al. 155).

(14)

In contrast to the World Wide Web, where one's IP-address makes one visible and traceable, darknet applications use cryptographic tools and hide IP-addresses by default, making anonymous browsing and hosting possible. One of the most popular applications for navigating the dark web is Tor (short for The Onion Router), but others like I2P or Freenet are also used. A 2016 study estimated that compared to the 30 trillion web pages of the World Wide Web, the Tor dark web only has around 30.000 web addresses (Moore and Rid 21).

Media often present the internet as a floating iceberg at sea of which the largest part remains underwater. The visible top represents the "Clearnet" which is the accessible internet known as the World Wide Web (www). Below the visible web is the Deep web, and at the bottom, we find the darknet. The Deep Web consists of all web pages, databases, and communication that is not accessible for search engines. These can be banking accounts or email conversations but also Facebook posts. The darknet is the part of the internet where dark webs like Tor, I2P and Freenet reside. The main difference between the clearnet is just that the dark webs are anonymizing and there is much debate on whether or not the "depth" analogy is a useful way of thinking about the internet (Gehl Weaving the Dark Web, Gayard). Other media representations of the darknet show often some combination of obscure, faceless figures with hoodies in combination with laptops and lines of code. Next to the visual representation and its textual connotations, the darkness of the darknet has been reinforced by academics and journalists alike (Gehl, Weaving the Dark Web 27). With the rise of encryption in easy to access mass communication apps, this debate gets a new dimension.

In his research on dark web social media website DWSN, Gehl shows how the news and other media outlets describe the dark web through the ideological lenses of power and freedom (Gehl Power/Freedom on the 1222). As described above, this can be the more dominant lens of power, which sees the dark web as a place of illicit and taboo activities that need some form of containment and regulation (Gehl Power/Freedom on the 1222). The other less dominant lens through which these webs are articulated is that of freedom. These are reports about the preservation of the liberal ideal of free speech and the need for safe places for activists and journalists to speak out without government interference (Gehl Power/Freedom on the 1223). These ideological lenses fit neatly to depictions of Telegram as the new place for illicit vendors to hide without the confines of law enforcement, or as a place to liberate those who cannot speak freely on regular communication infrastructures.

Supporters and builders of dark web software tools are often mainly concerned with building tools that protect internet users from state censorship and surveillance. The Tor project, for example, states on its website: 'we advance human rights and defend your privacy

(15)

online through free software and open networks' (Tor). According to the Freenet project (subtitle: 'navigate with freedom') ‘Freenet software lets users' anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship' (Freenet). These statements sketch an entirely different image of their dark web software than what one might see in the mainstream media coverage. Likewise, Telegram presents itself as an empowering tool against state surveillance and censorship.

Both Telegram and dark web software builders like Tor and Freenet provide their users with multiple forms of digital sovereignty in the form of cryptographic and anonymization software. Sociology scholar David J. Hess describes these movements that enact the technological ideal of the spread of consumer encryption Technology and Product Oriented Movements (TPMs). These are social movements whose mode of action lies in the adoption and building of 'alternative forms of material culture' (Hess 2) and arise in the form of Tor and Freenet and other encrypted communication platforms. However, if it is that safe, why didn't the world wide web get encrypted from the start? To understand how encryption technologies found their way into commercial communication technologies of everyday use, the following section will give a short historical overview of the rise of encryption and its intricate relation with the development of the internet.

2.3 Crypto Wars

The encryption itself has a long history and carries many different forms. Governments have been using it for a long time to prevent valuable information from getting into the hands of unwanted parties, for example, during times of war. Famous are the German encryption strategies during the first and second World Wars. During WW1, the Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted and deciphered by the English, thereby changing the course of the war (Corera). During WW2 Alan Turing eventually broke the German cryptographic code that was produced by their Enigma Machine (Cowell). Journalists use encryption to safely communicate with sources that need the protection of anonymity, be it because of repressive governments, corporations, or any other person that might do them harm. The same goes for activists that use online tools for communication and organization. The 2019/2020 Hong Kong protesters, who have been protesting against influence of mainland China, used Telegram to remain under the radar of state surveillance and coordinate large groups of protesters (Vincent).

Online encryption started with the discovery of public-key encryption in the 70s, a cryptographic method that goes out from encryption at both the sender and the receiver side (Diffie and Hellman 644). This discovery took place only after it was already secretly invented

(16)

by the U.S. government a decade earlier and initiated the rise of public cryptography (Gayard 58). The years following, public-key encryption refined, and it was ultimately able to recreate five properties of human communication in electronic form: privacy, authentication, anonymity, digital currencies, and hidden exchanges (Moore and Rid 26). Contrary to previous cryptographic systems, it was the asymmetric nature of public-key encryption that created a much more efficient tool that is now widely used on the internet (Gayard 57).

To understand the workings of asymmetric public-key encryption, this thesis will use the famous Alice and Bob metaphor as an example: Alice and Bob are both users who both have their public keys shared. Both also have their private keys. If Bob wants to send Alice a message, he uses Alice's public key to encrypt the message. Alice is the only one with the private key that belongs to the public key. With her private key, she can decrypt the message Bob sent her. Moreover, if she wants to send an encrypted message to Bob, she will use his Public key to encrypt a message only Bob can decrypt with his private key. This way of securing communication prevents someone from stealing the key once the message is sent because it is unusable without a private key that is kept by the receiver.

After the revelation of public-key encryption to the broader public by Scientific American journalist Martin Gardner, the U.S. government did everything it could to prevent the spread of it (Moore and Rid 12, Hellegren 287). On the other side stood the tech journalists, hackers, and digital rights activists for whom cryptography was an outing of internet freedom, a fundamental right that should be available to all users (Hellegren 287). The intensification of online governmental surveillance, since the second world war, has led to a clash with civil society, a clash known as the "crypto wars" (Gayard 61). These intensified when the advertisement industry began to use digital tools to monitor and influence consumption patterns of the web's users and the development of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption protocol for an email at the beginning of the 90s (Gayard 62 - 64, DeNardis The Internet Design Tension 73).

It was during this time that different activist groups and movements that were concerned with digital rights came into being. For example, digital rights organization The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched in 1990 (EFF). Two years later, Wired Magazine published an article on "Crypto Rebels" in which the magazine interviewed the igniters of the Cypherpunk movement, a movement that advocates the use of encryption software to enable privacy online (Hellegren 285). Another important moment was in '96 when John Perry Barlow wrote his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a declaration that called for a sovereignty of the web, free from the rule of states. Soon after, Barlow’s declaration was shown

(17)

on the homepages of many websites as a token of support (Greenberg). Ultimately, the wars ended when the U.S. government lifted all constraints on cryptographic technologies at the end of the 90s.

Today we see a revival of the 90s crypto wars in frictions between governments and corporations that offer public encryption. The need for encryption software has surpassed the realm of digital entrepreneurs and social movements and steeped into the public debate. This was for a large part caused by the Snowden revelations of mass surveillance projects and new privacy policies like the European General Data Protection Regulation law (GDPR). In the realm of mobile chat apps a diversification takes place between encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. Durov, but also other technologists and privacy advocates, have openly criticized WhatsApp for marketing end-to-end encryption 'as some magic incantation' that automatically secures all communication (Durov Why Using WhatsApp Is). Telegram offers its own MTProto end-to-end encryption protocol but does not encrypt all messages by default. Telegram in turn, is criticized by activists and technologists who claim conversations are not that private compared to other messaging apps.

By offering end-to-end encryption protocols, privacy becomes much more secure, but other things need to be in place as well, like policy and availability, subjects that seem to get lost in the debate. Moreover, a close look shows the incorporation of privacy and freedom by platforms to enable a more cyberlibertarian form of sovereignty, one that frees Silicon Valley companies from government interference. The public discussion seems to move away from the original ideas on technological sovereignty. These ideas are crystallised in dark webs' anonymization and encryption software and social movements that strive to empower civil society with the tools to produce greater autonomy and control over privacy.

With encryption more available to consumers that enables them better to protect themselves from the risks of cybercrime and surveillance, it also brought new possibilities for online illicit activities. Encryption does not only provide safety online, but it also creates a space of complete anonymity for illicit activities, as is shown in the previous section on the darknet. The following section shows their migrations to instant messaging apps like Telegram. It is essential to elaborate on how these digital illicit forms and their associated informal economies found a home in different dark webs. The next part elaborates on the concept of cybercrime and describes a form of illicit economic organization that this thesis will analyse in their current formations on Telegram: the crypto market.

(18)

2.4 Cybercrime and Crypto Markets

The darknet is probably most famous for its illegal marketplaces and (cyber)criminal activities. According to research, over 50 per cent of the Tor dark web exists of illicit content, ranging from illicit finance and drugs to violence, child and animal pornography (Moore and Rid 20). Many criminals rely on underground forums for the exchange of illicit goods, the facilitation of trade relationships and the exchange of ideas (Portnoff 36). The internet has created more and new opportunities for a traditional crime like money laundry or the distribution of child pornography, as well as opportunities for new forms of illicit activities like spam, viruses, and denial of service (DoS) attacks (Donalds and Osei-Bryson 405). The dark side of privacy is, of course, that it takes away responsibility.

Cybercrime has been described in numerous ways by different parties from different fields. One could define cybercrime in two ways: computer-assisted cybercrimes, which are traditional crimes that are reinvented as computer-assisted illicit acts, and computer-focused cybercrime that necessarily use online technology and computers (Jewkes and Yar 3). The Dutch Police defines cybercrime as a crime that is both conducted with, and targeted at IT (Politie.nl). At the same time, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) argues that as long it is not used as a legal term, a precise definition does not have to be relevant (ITU 28). Because of this sprawl of definitions, Donalds and Osei-Bryson drew on the vast amount of existing literature to develop a 'formal cybercrime classification (CCO)' which provides a useful overview of classification schemes (Donalds and Osei-Bryson 407). It is not in the scope of this thesis to go over these classification schemes. However, for the sake of clarity and this thesis' core focus, it will use the term cybercrime for all crimes that involve IT-software. These can either be traditional crimes aided by IT-software or digital native crimes like DDoS attacks and malware programs.

The rise of cybercrime has been an increasingly pressing issue for governments, corporations, and civil society (Durbin, Donalds, and Osei-Bryson 403). Much of these cybercriminals organise in online markets known as "cryptomarkets", due to its encrypted nature and use of cryptocurrencies. James Martin, a criminology researcher who first elaborated on the term in an academic context, describes the crypto market as ‘an online forum where goods and services are exchanged between parties who use digital encryption to conceal their identities’ (Martin 356). One of the most famous crypto markets has been the Silk Road, an online market where mainly drugs were traded, and that got taken down by the FBI in 2013. At the beginning of the 2010's, it gained a lot of media attention because of its new form of illicit online trading that alarmed law enforcement agencies (Martin 352).

(19)

According to Martin the typical cryptomarket relies on the TOR network, is decentralised, uses cryptocurrencies, is hosted and administered by third parties, uses traditional postal systems for delivery, and uses cryptonyms to conceal user identity (Martin 356). Crypto markets deploy interfaces and features to e-commerce platforms on the World Wide Web (Tzanetakis 177, Lorenzo-Dus and Di Cristofaro 611), and use the same marketing techniques (Lorenzo-Dus and Di Cristofaro 611). The crypto market communities depend on a multi-dimensional trust system that uses online reputation systems and escrow, intermediary-based services that ensure the legitimacy of the exchange (Lorenzo-Dus and Di Cristofaro 611). Their World Wide Web e-commerce-like interfaces have rating systems, customer feedback possibilities and product reviews (Tzanetakis 177).

The crypto markets and cybercriminal activities of the dark web have, because of the highly anonymising and secure communication technologies of dark webs, more or less free rein. This absence of constraints to a person's actions is described by philosopher Isaiah Berlin as 'negative freedom' (Berlin 120). Negative freedom often arises when privacy is introduced, when someone is able to be or do whatever it is he or she wants, without the interference of others (Berlin 120). It makes privacy highly connected to a sense of negative freedom. Privacy and freedom in this respect, are about being able to remain secretive and sovereign to any of those that could pose an obstacle to one's behaviour. Crypto markets need the veil of encrypted software to remain in the shadows, and as the internet is more and more encrypted, their arena starts to grow and steep into communication infrastructures of the private public sphere of instant messaging apps.

In a similar vein, digital activists increasingly use encrypted messaging apps to organise and communicate securely (Milan and Barbosa). Nevertheless, unlike cryptomarkets, digital activists migrate from the more public and visible social media platforms. On social media, collective action is 'interactive and shared' as activists’ practice numerous forms of visibility through the platform's material culture, such as images and emojis (Milan 6). Encrypted messaging enables them to organise and to take control over their destiny. They seek outage, maybe provoke government institutions and provide a story from a desire to change matters as they are. Privacy, for activists, produces 'positive freedom', a freedom for self-determination and control (Berlin 121).

As described in the previous chapters, most dark web software, like the aforementioned Tor and Freenet, have been created as alternatives to the world wide web's digital imperative of corporate and state surveillance. Likewise, Telegram was founded to create an alternative encrypted communication channel for the established, less secure chat apps of Facebook

(20)

Messenger and WhatsApp. 'Reform movements' (Hess 519) like Tor and Telegram, seek to enable a digital world of privacy and freedom of expression. Privacy provides power and freedom, to whom however, is central to this thesis’ argument. The next chapter shows the intricate relationship of activists with technologies by introducing the concept of digital activism. It elaborates on the concepts of liberty and privacy mentioned above, in relation to digital activism and their use of encrypted chat apps.

2.5 Digital Activism

As long as the internet exists, activism used the tools that evolved alongside the internet's developments. Moreover, activists have always played an active role in its evolution. This is shown in the aforementioned fight for public encryption, but also in other fields like the free and open-source software (FOSS) movements, and the fight for technological sovereignty for society (e.g. Bravo 99). The other way around, activists have been conforming to the new infrastructures offered by social media sites that generate their own rules and algorithms (Milan From Social Movements to 888, Bennett and Segerberg 752). The use of online tools to organise and bring about social or political change is described as digital activism.

Digital activism is deeply embedded in established media infrastructures and popular cultures. Not only in what activists do with media, but also in relation to the technologies and infrastructures of the media itself (Kubitschko 633, Lievrouw 102, Hess 516). As described earlier, in the early days of the commercial internet crypto-anarchists and cyber-libertarians fought for a free and open internet infrastructure (Barlow, Levy). Like pirate radio's that have been used to circumvent established media channels, new media technologies have been picked up by activists for the same reasons. The publishing platform Indymedia, for example, showed in 1999 how new media software could be used by protesters to report directly from the scene without the circumvention of state or corporate media outlets (Milan Liberated Technology 107). Activist scholar Stefania Milan describes these alternatives as emancipatory communication technology, challenging the dominant forms of media and communication infrastructures (Milan Liberated Technology 108).

However, as the web has been increasingly platformized (Helmond 5), some criticise digital activism for remaining too much within the confines of social media (Lovink 10). Having likes and followers is not the same as protesting on-site with a strong historical consciousness gained from a deep engagement with the subject. Social media as a platform for activism has been criticized for generating participation while decreasing the level of motivation of the participants in the movements (Gladwell). Social media affordances generate

(21)

connectivity based on a business incentive of data production generated by networks, steering user activity, communication and creativity in programmed ways (van Dijck and Poell 5). People incorporate protest memes on their profiles rather than generate new banners, and filter bubbles and fake news diffuse our relationship to real-world events. Conspiracy theories and extremism thrive because of this. With hashtags, filters, sharing options and a network culture, social media platforms generate the stage from which to perform visibility. This performative activism, in which the performative act seems to be more important than the political cause itself, is accused of generating empty gestures rather than real political engagement and it is performativity that thrives many social media activists' gestures.

However, even though these avatars generate performative action as they create a way for people to act out on their social media, they also generate new forms of collective identity made possible by the interactive affordances and customisable features of social media platforms (Gerbaudo 919). In an influential article on activism in the digital media age, Bennett and Segerberg show how social media have brought about new forms of collective action in that they provide the material base that enables the personalisation of public action (743). Milan adds that not only do social media contribute to these personalised identities in activist movements; they also allow for the collective experience of activism to enter into the private sphere of the individual (Milan From Social Movements to 893). She describes this type of collective action on social media as 'cloud protesting' (Milan From Social Movements to 893). Social media provides activists with a voice and visibility, connecting their personal stories to the broader, universal narrative of the movement (Milan From Social Movements to 894). Cloud protesting, argues Milan, ‘starts and ends with the individual and its mediated self (and self-presentation) (Milan Mobilizing in Times of 59). Contrary to dark web crime and illicitly that adhere to a practice of invisibility and negative freedom, activists practice visibility and seek positive freedom on the social media platforms in ways Milan describes as the 'politics of visibility' (895).

The politics of visibility, already touched upon in the above-mentioned performative activism, are the ways social media generate and influence practices of visibility of online manifestations of activism and social movements. It describes the ways their collective identity and associated meanings are continually shared, liked and negotiated through and from the public stage of social media (Milan From Social Movements to 895 - 896). Social media operate in what Milan calls a 'regime of publicity, where content narratives and interactions are, for the most part, public' (Milan From Social Movements to 891). Visibility, to Milan, becomes the 'proxy for the 'collective we" that exists purely from an individual self-presentation and exists

(22)

only as long as these individuals use their social media to express this collectivity (Milan From Social Movements to 898). Milan identifies four mechanisms fuelled by social media’s algorithms that together form a politics of visibility: the centrality of performance, interpellation to fellows and opponents, expansion of the temporality of the protest and a reproducibility of social action (Milan When Algorithms Shape Collective 7, emphasis added).

Through these politics of visibility, the protesters seek positive freedom through performing their individual experiences from the stages of their social media accounts.

As mentioned above, not only what activists do with the media is vital concerning digital activism. Also, the infrastructures of action are essential. One especially critical digital rights activist organisation is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that after 20 years since its foundation is still very active today. In the light of dark web tools and encryption protocols, digital rights activism is deeply intertwined with the ways these technologies have developed. The Tor Project, for example, is a non-profit organisation fighting for privacy and an uncensored web (Tor), it does not position itself as a crypto-market distributor. In the past, it even tried to get rid of its dark web connotation by hiring a marketing company to come up with a different label for its Tor-based website (Gehl Weaving the Dark Web).

Dark webs are exemplary for the above described emancipatory communication technologies, as they challenge the digital imperative of the world wide web and its platforms. It is here where the lines between activist and illicit activity already start to blur as dark webs challenge the politics of visibility of "clear web" social media platforms. Both user groups need the invisible cloak of the dark web to practice visibility, mixing positive and negative freedoms sought for in the process. The "visible invisible" user challenges the politics of visibility so exemplary for social media activism. Nevertheless, even though dark webs protect users from corporate and state surveillance, the infrastructure of Tor-sites and Freenets themselves makes them not very suitable for collective action or the public spread of crypto markets. Contrary to social media platform's aforementioned 'regime of visibility' (Milan From Social Movements to 891), dark webs instead maintain a 'regime of invisibility' as these webs are challenging to navigate and access without prior technical knowledge and maintain highly anonymised nature. The rise of encryption enables these private dark web activities to move into the realm of the public sphere at the same time as moving them into the private spheres of end-to-end encrypted networked communication.

Recently, activism, like crypto markets, has seen a migration towards encrypted messaging platforms (Milan and Barbosa), especially since state surveillance and censorship have increased due to the new possibilities of control enabled by information technologies, in

(23)

both authoritarian and democratic nations (Myers West). These encrypted messaging apps show a new direction in digital activism and political participation, generating a new political figure Milan and Barbosa describe as the "WhatsApper" (Milan and Barbosa). Encrypted messaging is exemplary for the collapsing 'private and intimate sphere (of interpersonal exchanges) and the public realm (of group interactions)' (Milan and Barbosa). The shift of digital activists to encrypted messaging is especially visible in regimes where surveillance and censorship form high risks to activist’s safety and wellbeing. By the incorporation of encryption by an increasing number of established messaging apps, the tension between privacy and the need to reach large audiences, described by media scholar Myers West, is abolished. Likewise, to Milan and Barbosa the potential of WhatsApp lies in the ways it turns 'politics into an everyday affair' (Milan and Barbosa). They identify four core dynamics specific to this chat app turn: (1) a new discursive opportunity structure, (2) a messaging app communication-based repertoire, (2) a sense of connectedness and (4) diffuse leadership-based organisation and pluralism (Milan and Barbosa).

However, just like activism, the chat app turn is visible in the realm of the illicit dark web crypto market spheres as well. The diffusion of privacy and public on these chat apps and the core dynamics identified by Milan and Barbosa in relation to activism seem to be equally applicable to the crypto market sphere of Telegram. This is exactly why Telegram provides a comprehensive case study for this thesis' research on the encryption app's influence on the private-public dichotomy and its intricate relation to freedom. Negative and positive freedom collapse in the realm of encrypted communication as both activists and illicit actors navigate the risks of state and corporate surveillance and censorship.

2.6 Technological Freedom

As the above sections show, freedom is constantly redefined and contested on the internet. On the one hand it has been advocated as a “civilization of the mind” free from authoritative powers from the outside (see Barlow). On the other, the encryption technologies and dark webs described above are informed by different ideas of freedom, namely the freedom to act without consequences. Anonymous and private spaces that are enabled by media technologies have enabled large infrastructures of illicit activities from cybercriminal activities, crypto markets and the distribution of child pornography, to name a few. Telegram is the space where positive and negative freedom seem to collapse as both illicit actors and activists navigate similar tactics of (in)visibility. However, before elaborating on these politics it is first important to understand the positive freedom and negative freedom that informs these users.

(24)

Negative freedom originates in classic English political-philosophical thought, with thinkers like Smith, Locke and Mill, among others. Although these thinkers were very liberal in their beliefs, they argued it was necessary to have some form of law still. People's liberties do not necessarily match: what freedom means for one could mean restriction for others, and without regulation, this would result in 'social chaos' (Berlin 121). At the same time, political thinkers like Locke and Mill assume there must be at least a minimum form of freedom that under no circumstance should be violated (Berlin 121). For classical English thinkers, this universal law is the central line between private and public life, where this line is drawn always remains subjective to discussion as no human is the same (Berlin 121). Especially this last strain of thought resonates to private messaging and encrypted infrastructures, of which its creators and maintainers demand a universal minimum of personal private space. The increase in cryptographic technologies provide us more privacy and thus more freedom to be or do and not be interfered, or as Berlin describes it: 'the wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom' (Berlin 121).

The area of this space of negative freedom remains subject of much debate. Radical feminist Catherine MacKinnon uses the example of the family home to describe how separating the private from the public sphere purposes a freedom from intrusion into the private sphere (MacKinnon 187). According to her, this distinction is productive of freedom in the sense that it creates the unregulated “free world” of the private realm for ‘those who use and abuse women and children (MacKinnon 187). This notion of freedom is also exactly what one finds in darknets and crypto markets described before. Encryption removes the obstacles illicit actors experience on many “clear web” applications that often allow for user data to be traced back to the offline world. Before, dark webs removed these obstacles but its users were cut off from the much larger group of clear web users who did not have the right tools and motivation to visit the crypto markets of the dark web.

However, especially in the sense of alternative media technologies created for civil purposes, these media can empower the ones that for whatever reason need or want the resources media technologies can offer. Contrary to negative freedom's absence of obstacles, empowerment often needs a presence of something, like self-determination or the right of freedom of expression (Berlin 124). As shown in the introduction, this is freedom embodied in activism and social movements. Berlin describes this as a freedom to, instead of freedom from (Berlin 123). This is positive freedom introduced earlier and concerns the wish of the individual 'to be his own master' (Berlin 124). This is in line with Milan's 'liberated technologies': technologies that challenge the dominant power structures and that are intricately connected to

(25)

the democratic agency (Milan Liberated Technology: Inside Emancipatory 109). Civil encryption in this sense is a liberated technology, liberated symbolically during the crypto wars of the 90s, and its employment by dark web initiatives and social movements like the EFF can be interpreted as emancipatory communication activism.

Another way to describe this empowering capability of encryption and the related positive freedom associated with it is technological sovereignty. Different from the above-described cyberspace sovereignty, technological sovereignty is a form of digital empowerment, both individually as well as for groups (Couture and Toupin 2315 - 2316, Haché 168). Technological sovereignty works on different levels. It can mean the ability to use free and secured technologies that empower society to fight existing power relations, for example, shown by social movements and activism. It can also refer to a person's agency in having control over their technologies, a form of positive freedom that involves the mastery of one's self (Couture and Toupin 2315 - 2316, Berlin 124). Encryption technologies are exemplary to this form of personal technological sovereignty, especially when this control is increasingly endangered by the growth of corporate power online, as is shown with the platformization of the web, and the increased surveillance practices by corporations and states alike.

The agency of both groups in their navigation of a different notion of freedom can be found in their politics of visibility and invisibility. Social media inform a politics of visibility of digital activists because they ‘significantly contribute to structure modes of interactions and relationships’, as Milan rightly points out (Milan Mobilizing in Times of 56). These politics are employed to obtain a positive notion of freedom for activists, to be heard means the necessity to be seen. Visibility in this sense grants them power in the sense of a positive notion of freedom. Illicit users, on the contrary, need not to be seen, for them visibility takes their power and freedom away. Their businesses have, until recently, largely remained within the confines of dark web anonymization software, rather informed by a politics of invisibility. Although in both activist and illicit circles, the blurring lines between the politics of invisibility and visibility had already been set in motion.

On social media, activists need to navigate the risks imposed on them by the visibility of social media, leaving them subject to the possibility of corporate and state surveillance (Uldam 44). Activists find themselves in an ambivalent position of the need for publicity and privacy at the same time (Myers West), which can lead to self-censorship as a result (Uldam 53). With illicit actors, a similar ambivalence is present on dark web crypto markets where both vendors and buyers need to continuously perform ‘trust-risk calculations’ due to the secure nature of the encrypted environments (Lorenzo-Dus and Di Cristofaro 609). Aside from trust

(26)

among buyers, vendors benefit from publicity when it comes to selling their goods on crypto markets. However, their need for invisibility left them restricted to the confines of the dark web, until recently.

With the introduction of encrypted messaging apps, a new space opens up that seems to combine social media visibility with dark web invisibility. Telegram played a central role as being one of the first encrypted messaging app that was publicly and freely available. Since its introduction, both activist and illicit groups have been migrating to the app as it provides a platform for both activists, informed by a positive freedom, need visibility to be heard, and illicit actors, informed by negative freedom, need invisibility to act without consequences. Telegram therefore challenges notions of positive and negative freedom as it blurs the lines between activists and illicit actors with the result of a similar politics of (in)visibility in both spheres. It provides a solution for both groups' navigation of the ambivalent power relations that come with visibility in public space, on the one hand empowers actors to act together while it enables surveillance by disciplinary institutions, disempowering those who are visible on the other (Marquez 23). But where did Telegram come from and how has it provided an infrastructure to both illicit and activist groups? The next section will provide an introduction to Telegram and its role in activist and illicit activities and its redefinition of public and private space.

2.7 Telegram

Since the Snowden revelations on mass surveillance and the increasing realisation of data aggregation practices of big platforms, civil encryption finds its way into a widening public debate on privacy rights and personal freedom. Not only have encryption tools been more widely available and easier to use, but an increased number of applications are implementing encrypted standards into their infrastructures. In the realm of instant messaging, new encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram were introduced to provide alternatives for the less safe and private apps on the market like the widely used WhatsApp that has over 2 billion users worldwide (WhatsApp). Compared with the other chat apps, Telegram causes many controversies as it symbolises positive freedoms and negative freedoms at the same time. For example, it played a central role in the Hong Kong protests, in the circumvention of state censorship in Iran and showed at the same time alarming rates of illicit and criminal activities to name a few. As these examples show, the app blurs the distinction of criminality and activism as both manifestations practice similar politics of (in)visibility to navigate the risks of surveillance, invisibility becomes the precondition to visibility.

(27)

Telegram is a cloud-based, non-profit encrypted messaging app. It sharply distinguishes itself from big platforms like Facebook and Google that, according to Telegram, have 'effectively hijacked the privacy discourse in recent years' with superficial tools to comfort their public (Telegram). Telegram argues it prioritises your privacy and data:

1. Protecting your private conversations from snooping third parties, such as officials, employers, etc.

2. Protecting your data from third parties, such as marketers, advertisers, etc. (Telegram)

The app's founder Pavel Durov created the app as a reaction to both Russian government censorship of his previously created social network site VKontakte and a global increase in surveillance techniques that came to light in 2013 (Miller). It uses a distributed infrastructure of servers around the globe to protect its cloud chat data and states numerous times on its website that it will never disclose any data to third parties (Telegram).

Since Telegram's introduction in 2013, it has gained much attention. On the one hand, it has been hailed as an alternative for messaging apps because of its forerunner position concerning end-to-end encrypted messaging. On the other, it has been widely criticised for its supposedly free haven for illicit activities and jihadist groups (Tan). For example, IS claimed in 2017 that it had over 600 groups and channels on Telegram (El Bay). Telegram has been deleting jihadist accounts that have been using the platform for propaganda and terrorist organisation (Al-Lami, Europol). It has been blocked several times by the Iranian government, where it has a vast user base of roughly 40 million (Hay Newman), and banned entirely in Russia since 2018, however, with little success (Karasz). It is not only illegal marketplaces that find their hail on Telegram, but white supremacist groups have also been using the platform as a way to organise and communicate without legal interference. Until recently, the platform had rejected any interference with its users' communication as it would be an infringement on its liberal ideology and its belief in the right to privacy. This changed throughout 2019 when it worked together with Europol to shut down channels, channel creators, users, and backup accounts (Katz).

Activists, on the other hand, have been using the app to organise protests in an anonymised and decentralised manner. As described earlier, activism has also been migrating towards encrypted communication channels to navigate the risk of surveillance caused by online technologies (Myers West). Telegram has played a central role in the Hong Kong

Navigating (in)visibility: Redefining freedom in the age of encryption