SEOUL: As South Korean police collaborate with Telegram to investigate deepfake pornography chatrooms, concerns are growing over users migrating to other encrypted messaging services, raising doubts about the long term effectiveness of the probe.
Back in August 2024, concerns surrounding the dissemination of deepfake pornographic content on Telegram grew in South Korea, after a chatroom with around 1,200 participants sharing sexually explicit images generated through deepfake technology was found to have been active since 2020.
After more Telegram chatrooms connected to university campuses, middle and high schools as well as military units ― where perpetrators posted digitally altered photos of women they knew personally ― surfaced, the Korean National Police Agency had announced that it would be launching an initial investigation into the encrypted messaging service on suspicion of “complicity, aiding and abetting crimes involving deepfake pornography”.
Since September, the police have set up a direct hotline with Telegram, where investigative authorities and Telegram officials are able to directly communicate with each other three times a day on average.
When the police send a request to Telegram asking for personal information of suspected perpetrators, Telegram sends a response to investigative authorities within 24 hours.
However, as Telegram began to show active cooperation with police officials regarding deepfake pornographic content, several users are beginning to move to different encrypted messaging applications such as Signal.
Signal, a US-based encrypted messaging application, is known to encrypt all calls and messages exchanged through the application, making it difficult to uncover conversations held through the application even through forensics.
Because of this, perpetrators were found recommending Signal to one another on online communities such as DC Inside.
One user wrote: “Telegram is practically forced to cooperate with the police and submit user data, but there are other alternatives. Signal is a good alternative to consider other than Telegram.”
Other than Signal, other encrypted text messaging services such as SimpleX Chat and Viber have also been mentioned as alternatives.
SimpleX Chat does not store user and chat data on a centralised server, making it impossible for authorities to track user identity.
Viber, on the other hand, allows users to protect certain chatrooms through separate passwords from third party entities like the police, making it impossible for authorities to investigate such chatrooms without the compliance of the user.
Regarding Telegram users moving to different encrypted messaging platforms to continue disseminating deepfake pornographic content, Huh Min-sook, a legislative investigator at the National Assembly Research Service on crimes targeting women, told The Korea Herald that “hard-line measures”, such as blocking access to apps and social media platforms, should be considered.
“While Telegram was a well-known encrypted messaging service in the past, it’s not the only encrypted messaging service that exists out there. There’s other platforms that perpetrators who didn’t catch the eye of investigators just yet will target that investigators should not ignore,” said Huh.
“Tougher measures, such as blocking access to encrypted messaging platforms that are similar in nature to Telegram can be one measure that can be considered. When it comes to digital sex crimes, closing the distribution channel completely is the most important step that must be taken,” according to Huh. - The Korea Herald/ANN
