Not clear right now if France thinks he was actively complicit with the four horsemen listed, or if just the act of running Telegram makes him complicit in their eyes, or something in the middle, e.g. they asked for help and Telegram turned them down.
This will be an interesting case to watch -- I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort -- but generally my understanding is that harassment on border entry has been the order of the day, rather than arrests.
> I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort
But that's what exactly they want no? EU is literally implementing a regulation that will allow to "circumvent end-to-end encryption to address child sexual abuse material". I believe it failed to pass recently, but they will try again - and nothing stops countries to implement it independently. I think France is the one who was pushing for that in the first place.
I think you read my clumsy sentence backwards. They absolutely want to get in the middle of messaging, all of them. This is behind many of the calls for E2E interop as well -- all the proposals I'm aware of call for termination somewhere in the middle; you can imagine who'd like to be at that termination middle point. This is why Apple will not "move over" to RCS, ever, as a first class transport -- it's fundamentally no more secure than OTA plaintext to existing persistent threat actors.
To be clear, the legislation in France and in the EU that is most likely behind this arrest is that companies have to at least try to do some moderation. There is an understanding that not everything can be moderated (obviously, the entire Internet would be banned otherwise) but there has to be a genuine attempt.
Which every company does more or less. The fact that Telegram doesn't reach this extremely low, very low bar is quite something.
A handful of EU MEPs keep pushing backdoored encryption and it keeps getting veto’d.
There are two legistive bodies in the EU, one is only allowed to propose law, the other is only allowed to vote on it.
Lots of braindead laws get put to a vote, theres no requirement that they get through.
I understand that raising the alarm is helpful, but it would be helpful if people took a second to understand how the EU works, the politicians involved and how their motions are perceived by the rest of parliament.
In the UK, I have a stormtrooper standing behind me in my bedroom as I type this. He just asked me to explain the context of the message I'm writing to you now.
Using this as a means to manufacture consent to implement-enforce such systems, and then what regulation will be used to counter the tyrannical takeover of these systems - who may be the most vile child predators seeking control-power to be able to do what they want - to pillage, rape, and murder as they please?
But here's the thing. If your app is known to be uses heavily by criminals ranging from Pedo's to drug dealers. You are liable. You run a carrier service. Much like the owner of omegle found out, yes you do have a duty of care. You can't just provide a service that knowingly provides a platform to criminal activity and do jack shit. You live in fairytale land if you think you can.
I upvoted your comment so that it has a bit of visibility because I know some people think this, but I disagree with it, very strongly.
First, your analogy is broken -- roads, telephones, pen and paper, motor vehicles all fit your description just as aptly.
Second, you propose your preferred moral economy as one that only curtails harms. In fact, you create another harm implementing what you think is right.
Reasonable people disagree about which is worse -- the creation and public support of a technocratic oligarchy in control of how humans communicate or the proliferation of some harms that take advantage of unfettered communication. But please don't be simple minded, pretending to yourself or others that there aren't real costs, social and physical, on both sides of this.
For myself, I think private communications are a human right and a massive good for society, and I don't condone criminal acts undertaken using messaging.
Why stop there? By your logic, the owners of every ISP that provides a pathway for those criminal bits also should be in jail. Every single organization in that pathway would be liable from the registrars to the developers of web libraries or other app services. The governments themselves would be liable in many cases where the government has nationalized internet services.
There is a principle in the free world that one is not criminally liable for the speech of others. This is the principle that allows ISP's, newspapers, web forums, Google, etc. etc. to exist. You demand that the principle be violated and the Internet be destroyed. I disagree.
There are other ways to capture and ensnare criminals. Sacrificing our privacy for the "greater good" is a bridge too far.
As one counter point, think about all of the completely fine human behaviors that instantly become kompromat when the powers have access to your every communication. That is way more dangerous to democracy, freedom, and liberty than a slightly smaller chance of "not protecting the children".
Besides, if we actually cared so much about children, we wouldn't let them not get school lunches, we wouldn't sell them on gambling and gacha games, and we'd do a much better job of educating them.
> If your app is known to be uses heavily by criminals ranging from Pedo's to drug dealers.
What about toilet paper? It's used by quite some criminals (not all that said: many criminals have very poor hygiene and just put their undies back on without wiping after number two).
Should we arrest people manufacturing toilet paper?
Anyway we all know it's not about criminals: it's about controlling speech so that protests as in Barcelona, the UK (where people who are denouncing rapes and killings are put in jail, while the actual rapists get very light sentences like only six months in jail), etc. cannot organize themselves.
It's about controlling the narrative.
And they're using useful idiots resorting to broken logic to push their totalitarian agenda.
> According to the French authorities, Durov, who is estimated to be worth €13.9 billion by Forbes, is being charged as an accomplice to crimes including drug trafficking, fraud, terrorism and crimes against children over Telegram’s alleged “lack of moderation and cooperation with law enforcement”, as well for Telegram’s use of disposable numbers, and for allowing cryptocurrency transfers that cannot be monitored by the authorities. - https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/08/25/russian-billiona...
I find it highly amusing that people on here actually think secure messaging platforms are "locally backdoored".
Despite what the article says, Telegram is not even a nominally end-to-end encrypted platform. You need to jump through hoops to get end-to-end encryption on the platform.
EU has been complaining about Telegram's end-to-end encryption for a long time and they want to implement some regulations to basically add backdoors into all messaging apps. I don't really see how this case will go on since at least private chats are encrypted so Telegram (theoretically at least) can't see the contents.
Except Telegram has much less E2EE than Signal or Whatsapp.
It's not on by default, works only between 2 devices, they both have to be online at the same time and you can't access anything from the web. And group chats don't support it at all. Private chats are not end to end encrypted by default and it's actually quite clumsy to encrypt them so almost nobody uses it.
It's really weird that Telegram is singled out like this.
>The European Commission has told its staff to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications.
Also Telegram is not E2E by default. You need to activate it per chat. By default and in groups it is only server encrypted.
Private chats are a hassle to initiate and not multi-device.
Most use normal chats.
With anonymous accounts, using anonymous +888 numbers, whose price has increased from $16 to $1000+ in a matter of a year, it is indeed a very convenient playground for all sorts of activities.
The main problem with Telegram is it’s not subject to Western surveillance and censorship. Best I can tell, it’s also not subject to Eastern surveillance and censorship which is why it was (unsuccessfully) banned in Russia in 2018. As of right now, this is one of the few places where you can find true information about WW3 which is currently ongoing in Ukraine. This is true of all sides of the conflict: the only truly uncensored source right now is Telegram, whether you’re in Ukraine, in Russia or in the west. People investing hundreds of billions of dollars into the war do not like this lack of control over the narrative. That is why Durov is in jail.
Speculative. We don't know why he is in jail. Maybe his lawyers know why, maybe not. Maybe the prosecutor knows, maybe not. We don't know if there's a case. There's hardly anything we do know.
My take is he doesn't reply to LE requests related to CSAM. That is one of the few things we (as in: our governments) don't like anywhere in the world, and Telegram is known to respond slowly to [such] requests. But I won't pretend I know for sure. Cause either way, it is a neat honeypot compared to technically better protocols.
"The deputy speaker of the state Duma, Vladislav Davankov, said he had called on Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to secure Durov’s release. “The arrest of [Durov] could have political motives and be a means of obtaining the personal data of Telegram users. We must not allow this,” he said on his Telegram channel."
A bunch of people in comments here seem to misunderstand what telegram is. It is not just a messaging app, it is essentially a platform like twitter, with channels, hundreds of thousands of subscribers to those.
While I fully support E2EE communication with no back-doors, I think it is perfectly fair for governments to have some control to take down large channels that are clearly against the law. I do not know the true cause for the arrest, but I hope it is because of the latter not the former.
The moment you put even the option of backdoors, some governments will abuse it heavily.
What might be essential right to human communication might suddenly become "illegal" according to the government.
So there should never ever be, under no circumstances, even the code and infra to be there to provide backdoor/censorships, otherwise it _will_ be abused by limiting people's communication in the moment they literally need the most.
> I think it is perfectly fair for governments to have some control to take down large channels that are clearly against the law
How is a channel "against the law?"
Do you mean access to the channel is creating opportunities for lawlessness that simply wouldn't exist otherwise? I'm not sure the French justice system has demonstrated that it has exhausted all options other than to handcuff a CEO of one particular platform.
It will probably help if people take the time to read Article 8 in the European Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private
and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority
with the exercise of this right except such as is in
accordance with the law and is necessary in a
democratic society in the interests of national
security, public safety or the economic well-being
of the country, for the prevention of disorder or
crime, for the protection of health or morals, or
for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Thus a channel where terror actions are planned /can be made/ "against the law", but it will not automatically be so, unless there is a specific french law that makes it so.
A channel that incites violence is against the law (in some countries). A channel selling drugs is against the law. These are few examples. I do not how the specific details of the French case to comment on the specifics. I could believe the arrest is poorly justified, but I have reasonably belief in their justice system.
So you endorse governments from the middle-east being in their right to delete anything they see as "illegal" because they are blasphemous for example?
I think that interpretation of GP's stance is pretty uncharitable.
If the thing they want to delete is run by an entity that has a physical presence in that country, then they -- unfortunately -- have the right to get that material deleted.
For better or worse, we are all bound by the laws of the place where we physically reside. If we want to do or allow things online that are legal where we are, but are illegal in other countries, then we shouldn't visit those countries.
It doesn't matter if anyone "endorses" repressive governments in doing their repressive things; they are legally able to do those things to people physically present within their borders. That's just the reality of the situation.
France claims Durov allowed stuff that's illegal in France. He went to France, so France has the ability to punish Durov for his alleged misdeeds. It doesn't matter if we think that's right or wrong; that's just how the world works.
National laws are largely based on the local morals; for instance in Europe breath is more or less indecent to show in public. A woman being topless on the beach, even in France, could be arrested, in theory (in practice it would just be "please put on some cloth, madam").
The laws are (usually) defined by the people of a country, based on their idea of morality, and are totally in their right to reject blasphemous stuff or whatever. It's their home, after all.
The only thing non-negotiable, to me, is that the Declaration of the Human Rights is universal and no law, anywhere, should go against them.
there is no solution to this. If you want to do business in EU (for example, to be available in EU's Apple Appstore), you have to comply, otherwise Apple will be forced to kick you out, and if they don't, they will be harassed by the authorities until they do. If you want to do business in Saudi Arabia or Turkey or any other country you agree or disagree with, it's the same thing. If Turkey says something is "blasphemous" you either comply or withdraw from Turkey entirely. By now every government that cares has figured out how this works, and it really doesn't matter whether you "endorse" this or not, this is how it works.
Ah very interesting. Thanks for making that distinction! To me, I’m wondering at what critical mass of people should you need to provide a back door to the government? Is it 2? 3? 100? 1000? Are the number of people the right indicator here? Genuinely curious of people’s thoughts. I haven’t though too deeply about this.
There is no need for backdoor anything, when there are public channels.
I do not know the specifics of French case though, so I don't know if their case is about those or some private chats.
You seem to assume there is a “need” to backdoor the people’s communication. Liberty of the people assumes there is not a need nor a right of the State to do so
I am long done with commenting on this platform, as most of Russian people, who cannot write here (and most of other western internet forums) what they think. I will make an exception in this case, however.
1. "I think it is perfectly fair for governments to take down large channels that are clearly against the law"
Telegram obviously acts upon such requests Here in Italy I cannot access the channels of RIA and Sputnik, obviously a request was made to Telegram on behalf of EU /Italy, and Telegram complied.
2. I think that you, in your US bubble, which you THINK guarantees free speech, misunderstand yourself what Telegram is. Right now, it is the ONLY wide audience platform in the world, where Russian people can freely (as opposed to, say, HN) write what they really think. And it is true as much for the people who are "pro", as for the people who are "against Putin", (I use these nonsense labels to adapt what I write to the general american level of "understanding" Russia).
> [...] your US bubble, which you THINK guarantees free speech [...]
That's a very common misunderstanding (even among Americans) of what the First Amendment actually guarantees: It protects you from government censorship of speech, but does absolutely nothing to compel private individuals or corporations to carry your speech. (In fact, compelled speech has been ruled to be a violation itself.)
That absence of such legal protections can definitely be seen as having a chilling effect on free speech in practice, but as I interpret it, currently the assumption seems to be that legal intervention is not necessary due to market forces achieving the same or a similar outcome implicitly. There's also strong resistance from a value perspective against the idea, since these provisions themselves might be incompatible with the FA for reasons mentioned above.
You can definitely have some discussions around whether additional "duty to contract" rules should apply, e.g. in the same way as there's a law in Europe that makes it illegal for banks to not give somebody a bank account in certain circumstances, but nothing like this exists at the moment.
> Right now, it is the ONLY wide audience platform in the world, where Russian people can freely (as opposed to, say, HN) write what they really think
Hackernews has always been very strictly moderated to maintain a specific type and culture of discussion. By necessity, that excludes certain types of comments. In that sense, it's always been very far away from a "free speech platform".
This is no different than a Tor server being shut down for sharing illegal content, like CSAM, which is what Telegram was doing. Pavel Durov not taking action to shut down CSAM is an illegal offense and should be punished.
One detail that's missing from the English article is why he got arrested.
The French article mentions:
Why was he under threat of a search warrant?
The Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes him an accomplice to drug trafficking, child-crime offenses and swindling.
Just because he is the CEO doesn’t mean he is directly liable. The company is a separate entity. I don’t see anyone arresting Elon or other CEOs because of “not enough moderation.” Most actions are to block platform access. There must be something else for sure.
> TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
So they're going for the ISPs too, then? Considering the drug traffickers, child crime offenders and swindlers were actually paying the ISPs, NOT telegram.
But on a serious note if he's a billionaire then he can drop the whole monetization schtick. Telegram has become unusuable in the last few years. There's crypto scam ads everywhere.
Whenever I open Youtube via an EU proxy, I see "a crypto scam" video at the front page, the first one. The title is "+35 ETH generated last month by effectively using the contract bot for trading" and the account name is "Web3 developer", and the label says "Sponsored". The thumbnail displays a happy bearded man's face resembling that famous Youtuber who gives away money, a fire emoji and words "+35 ETH in July personal bot".
> not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for…
Except he (or his corporation) has keys for almost all initiated chats on the Telegram network. Only the private chats are E2EE and they're not default and rather inconvenient because they don't sync between devices (unlike Signal's E2EE chats).
> To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data.
> Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people's privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world.
AFAIK Telegram isn’t e2e for the interesting bits, that’s the group chats etc.
If I have to guess, I would say that the authorities would be interested in identities of some users and access to private group chats with shady stuff and Telegram would be able to provide these.
These are probably already available to the Russian intelligence considering the low radiation levels in Pavel Durov’s blood stream and no novichok experience.
> According to this source he’s accused in non-cooperating.
With the context that you omitted it makes more sense:
Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with
law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers,
cryptocurrencies...) makes it an accomplice to drug trafficking,
pedo-criminal offenses and swindling.
That's probably exaggeration or straight lie. There are open-source messengers who don't even require a phone number, and phone number is not legally required for registration in most countries (but, for example, in Russia you cannot signup users in a messenger without getting their phone number. So those open source messengers are technically outright illegal).
As for moderation, any post in public or private groups can be reported to moderators. As for one-to-one chats, this might not work, but you should not be chatting with random people anyway.
> I don’t understand how they’re going to convince French judges that he’s guilty for not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for…
That false statement is refutable trivially: Just perform the mud puddle test [1] in front of the judge (and a cryptographer explaining the implications to the judge).
There are lot of direct laws about record-keeping (company accounts for instance) but there are also a lot of laws which indirectly impose requirements of record-keeping, because having records will be the only way to comply with the requirement (tracking of origin for food recalls for instance).
France almost certainly has a law that says that if you run a telecommunication service, you must respond to court orders with the following information: X, Y, Z & W.
If non-compliance with such a law is the basis for the arrest, it will be his damn problem to convince the judges, that despite being subject of many such court orders, he had a stronger legal basis for not keeping the necessary records to comply.
However, my money is on Al Capone: I would be very surprised if the charges do not (also) contain tax-evasion, securities fraud, money laundering.
My immediate guess is that there’s more. The french secret service strikes me as much more “intelligent” than the US secret service (which I heard is mostly ran by mormons), so I would think this type of move is heavily calculated
If he's taking a privacy stance then it's bloody stupid since he's protecting an insecure app. In contrast Signal would've cooperated and provided essentially nothing useful.
> I wonder what caught up with him first: the undisturbed sale of hard drugs vIa telegram, or the undisturbed recruitment of freelancers for GRU's terrorist attacks across Europe.
Seems there could be some truth to the accusations.
My working theory is that by making it difficult for the average user to activate end-to-end encrypted chats, especially compared to industry standards, and by positioning the service as an 'anything goes' platform, Mr. Durov might have created the world's largest Kompromat machine.
You won't believe for what are responsible paper money printed by central banks.
As for those South Korea-related stories, the blame is partially on the government. For example, an operator of a website selling illegal videos got only 18 months in that country [1].
>Telegram and cryptocurrency has single handedly responsible for the recent drug epidemic,
I thought Reagan beat that with his war on drugs? Obviously flippant comment, but wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "Te....chnology has single handedly responsible for the recent drug epidemic,", to which I would answer 'No, it's always been about dollar bills, and what 'recent' drug epidemic?" The US opioid crisis wasn't fuelled by telegram.
Still a bs argument. 1890s, terrorists takes a mule to the assassination. 1920s, terrorist drives a car to the assassination, and now we deem henry ford liable because of it.
So not sure what's the non-cooperating about banning "terrorist" content is about, since various info channels definitely were getting blocked on telegram in EU over the last year.
I can't for the life of me as an EU "citizen" even figure out who asks for these bans on behalf of the EU. Kinda doubt it's someone in my country, because it's reported as EU wide ban in this case. Maybe it's done by some overbearing country on this particular topic, like Germany, and Telegram just blocked it EU wide, for some reason.
The detainment order was outstanding for some time, and Durov certainly knew that. Still he plainly landed in France and was detained. Why?
My pet tinfoil-hat theory is that he decided that staying in a French prison is safer for him than being out in the open and get some polonium, or whatnot.
> My pet tinfoil-hat theory is that he decided that staying in a French prison is safer for him than being out in the open
People do that.
Recently, the Bulgarian drug lord nicknamed Brendo not only surrendered, but somehow bribed border control to let him in the country so he can show up directly in front of Sofia Central Prison, with a duffel bag, ready to be taken in. He wanted to skip the bureaucracy and go behind bars ASAP.
Not necessarily. He may have thought he was in danger.
FWIW, France do not extradite its citizen and Pavel Durov is french. He may have been arrested but that doesn't mean he will stay in detention depending on the nature of the charge and his eventual cooperation. Who knows, maybe he called before landing in France so that he was arrested and seen as cooperative.
Why would he get some polonium? There are endless official Russian state telegram channels. Putin clearly has no issue with it or he would have banned it.
From Telegram sources:
>Pavel Durov faces up to 20 years in prison in France. The trial will take place very soon – sources close to the investigation.
In addition to drug trafficking, he is accused of collaborating with an organized crime group, covering up for pedophiles, fraud and money laundering.
I don't know how reliable this is, but I've seen in 3-4 sources that he's arrested for terrorism, child abuse, drug trafficking (not providing data to prosecutors).
If he intentionally cooperated with criminals then it is one thing. But if someone posted something illegal, and nobody reported this, then it obviously is not Durov's fault. If you are too lazy to report illegal content then you should arrest yourselves first.
Basically as he did not provide access to the encrypted messages and communication in Telegram, they accused him for supporting the criminals. That's all to it.
It is basically the part of the current politics in EU where they are trying to force access to all encrypted traffic across devices.
I, for one, have reported heinous illegal content multiple times over a long time span, as well as e-mailing both their support and abuse addresses. I checked back months later, no responses to e-mails and the content was still up. Telegram has how many employees/staff and moderators for about a billion users, many of whom know exactly how exploitable the platform is? Every source I check says Telegram has just around 100 employees. What is criminal is how late this action is.
Maybe just wait a moment for things to come out through the natural course of justice rather than getting yourself all worked up here.
The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.
I would be very surprised if the _trial_ was to take place "very soon". (Trials hardly ever take place "very soon" in France.)
However, I could imagine him staying in custody while being investigated for a couple days, then quickly facing some level of judge to decide whether he has to stay in jail or can be released.
Once this is done, don't expect a formal trial until multiple months (and most realistically, at least a year.)
About the custody thing, he's an extremely high flight risk. If the French authorities are serious about his arrest and it's not just a dumb PR move, there is absolutely no chance he's going to be released. Not without 24/7 police surveillance and giving up on all this passports.
> I could imagine him staying in custody while being investigated for a couple days, then quickly facing some level of judge to decide whether he has to stay in jail or can be released.
I think the original link mentioned exactly that, and it would be done over the weekend
He's a super high flight risk, so I'm thinking the prosecution is going to make a pretty solid case for him staying in pre-trial until trial in a year or two.
He's gonna have a very miserable time. Flying private jet --> watching another man shitting next to you.
That seems very unlikely. I don't think France has a statutory number of days in their speedy trial right, so even if you demand trial as you walk in the door, for a serious trial of this size, with this many charges, my experience is saying one to two years for trial.
Now, France does have more rights on pre-trial detention, so he might be able to get some sort of bail, but he's an enormously high flight risk, so.. maybe not.
The extent of the accusations is evidence that all that is made up in order to get access into Telegram. Telegram is too important to the other side in the Ukraine war. If Telegram goes, then the other side is silenced.
Readit News
This will be an interesting case to watch -- I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort -- but generally my understanding is that harassment on border entry has been the order of the day, rather than arrests.
But that's what exactly they want no? EU is literally implementing a regulation that will allow to "circumvent end-to-end encryption to address child sexual abuse material". I believe it failed to pass recently, but they will try again - and nothing stops countries to implement it independently. I think France is the one who was pushing for that in the first place.
https://www.wired.com/story/europes-moral-crusader-lays-down...
https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/july/police-should-have...
Which every company does more or less. The fact that Telegram doesn't reach this extremely low, very low bar is quite something.
> it failed to pass recently
These two sentences cannot be both true
There are two legistive bodies in the EU, one is only allowed to propose law, the other is only allowed to vote on it.
Lots of braindead laws get put to a vote, theres no requirement that they get through.
I understand that raising the alarm is helpful, but it would be helpful if people took a second to understand how the EU works, the politicians involved and how their motions are perceived by the rest of parliament.
> I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort
means
> I believe every western nation wants all messaging to be locally-backdoored
Does it?
First, your analogy is broken -- roads, telephones, pen and paper, motor vehicles all fit your description just as aptly.
Second, you propose your preferred moral economy as one that only curtails harms. In fact, you create another harm implementing what you think is right.
Reasonable people disagree about which is worse -- the creation and public support of a technocratic oligarchy in control of how humans communicate or the proliferation of some harms that take advantage of unfettered communication. But please don't be simple minded, pretending to yourself or others that there aren't real costs, social and physical, on both sides of this.
For myself, I think private communications are a human right and a massive good for society, and I don't condone criminal acts undertaken using messaging.
There is a principle in the free world that one is not criminally liable for the speech of others. This is the principle that allows ISP's, newspapers, web forums, Google, etc. etc. to exist. You demand that the principle be violated and the Internet be destroyed. I disagree.
There are other ways to capture and ensnare criminals. Sacrificing our privacy for the "greater good" is a bridge too far.
As one counter point, think about all of the completely fine human behaviors that instantly become kompromat when the powers have access to your every communication. That is way more dangerous to democracy, freedom, and liberty than a slightly smaller chance of "not protecting the children".
Besides, if we actually cared so much about children, we wouldn't let them not get school lunches, we wouldn't sell them on gambling and gacha games, and we'd do a much better job of educating them.
What about toilet paper? It's used by quite some criminals (not all that said: many criminals have very poor hygiene and just put their undies back on without wiping after number two).
Should we arrest people manufacturing toilet paper?
Anyway we all know it's not about criminals: it's about controlling speech so that protests as in Barcelona, the UK (where people who are denouncing rapes and killings are put in jail, while the actual rapists get very light sentences like only six months in jail), etc. cannot organize themselves.
It's about controlling the narrative.
And they're using useful idiots resorting to broken logic to push their totalitarian agenda.
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Despite what the article says, Telegram is not even a nominally end-to-end encrypted platform. You need to jump through hoops to get end-to-end encryption on the platform.
What do you mean by this?
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It's not on by default, works only between 2 devices, they both have to be online at the same time and you can't access anything from the web. And group chats don't support it at all. Private chats are not end to end encrypted by default and it's actually quite clumsy to encrypt them so almost nobody uses it.
It's really weird that Telegram is singled out like this.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-to-staff-switc...
>The European Commission has told its staff to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications.
Also Telegram is not E2E by default. You need to activate it per chat. By default and in groups it is only server encrypted.
Most use normal chats.
With anonymous accounts, using anonymous +888 numbers, whose price has increased from $16 to $1000+ in a matter of a year, it is indeed a very convenient playground for all sorts of activities.
They actually don't want that backdoored, guaranteed.
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Speculative. We don't know why he is in jail. Maybe his lawyers know why, maybe not. Maybe the prosecutor knows, maybe not. We don't know if there's a case. There's hardly anything we do know.
My take is he doesn't reply to LE requests related to CSAM. That is one of the few things we (as in: our governments) don't like anywhere in the world, and Telegram is known to respond slowly to [such] requests. But I won't pretend I know for sure. Cause either way, it is a neat honeypot compared to technically better protocols.
https://www.ft.com/content/c5d40e3c-9f9c-43dc-a467-1c713b40c...
That makes me wonder if Telegram was always a Russian spook op and its [ineffective] banning just a ruse.
I don't think any of the major platforms are independent of some spook oversight.
What might be essential right to human communication might suddenly become "illegal" according to the government.
So there should never ever be, under no circumstances, even the code and infra to be there to provide backdoor/censorships, otherwise it _will_ be abused by limiting people's communication in the moment they literally need the most.
How is a channel "against the law?"
Do you mean access to the channel is creating opportunities for lawlessness that simply wouldn't exist otherwise? I'm not sure the French justice system has demonstrated that it has exhausted all options other than to handcuff a CEO of one particular platform.
If the thing they want to delete is run by an entity that has a physical presence in that country, then they -- unfortunately -- have the right to get that material deleted.
For better or worse, we are all bound by the laws of the place where we physically reside. If we want to do or allow things online that are legal where we are, but are illegal in other countries, then we shouldn't visit those countries.
It doesn't matter if anyone "endorses" repressive governments in doing their repressive things; they are legally able to do those things to people physically present within their borders. That's just the reality of the situation.
France claims Durov allowed stuff that's illegal in France. He went to France, so France has the ability to punish Durov for his alleged misdeeds. It doesn't matter if we think that's right or wrong; that's just how the world works.
The laws are (usually) defined by the people of a country, based on their idea of morality, and are totally in their right to reject blasphemous stuff or whatever. It's their home, after all.
The only thing non-negotiable, to me, is that the Declaration of the Human Rights is universal and no law, anywhere, should go against them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123
1. "I think it is perfectly fair for governments to take down large channels that are clearly against the law"
Telegram obviously acts upon such requests Here in Italy I cannot access the channels of RIA and Sputnik, obviously a request was made to Telegram on behalf of EU /Italy, and Telegram complied.
2. I think that you, in your US bubble, which you THINK guarantees free speech, misunderstand yourself what Telegram is. Right now, it is the ONLY wide audience platform in the world, where Russian people can freely (as opposed to, say, HN) write what they really think. And it is true as much for the people who are "pro", as for the people who are "against Putin", (I use these nonsense labels to adapt what I write to the general american level of "understanding" Russia).
That's a very common misunderstanding (even among Americans) of what the First Amendment actually guarantees: It protects you from government censorship of speech, but does absolutely nothing to compel private individuals or corporations to carry your speech. (In fact, compelled speech has been ruled to be a violation itself.)
That absence of such legal protections can definitely be seen as having a chilling effect on free speech in practice, but as I interpret it, currently the assumption seems to be that legal intervention is not necessary due to market forces achieving the same or a similar outcome implicitly. There's also strong resistance from a value perspective against the idea, since these provisions themselves might be incompatible with the FA for reasons mentioned above.
You can definitely have some discussions around whether additional "duty to contract" rules should apply, e.g. in the same way as there's a law in Europe that makes it illegal for banks to not give somebody a bank account in certain circumstances, but nothing like this exists at the moment.
> Right now, it is the ONLY wide audience platform in the world, where Russian people can freely (as opposed to, say, HN) write what they really think
Hackernews has always been very strictly moderated to maintain a specific type and culture of discussion. By necessity, that excludes certain types of comments. In that sense, it's always been very far away from a "free speech platform".
Dead Comment
There is now also https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/telegram-messaging-app-...
The French article mentions:
Why was he under threat of a search warrant?
The Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes him an accomplice to drug trafficking, child-crime offenses and swindling.
Or does it refer to public channels only?
(From the reuters link)
Maybe it's best to keep the original one. I think everyone here knows how to use Google Translate or ChatGPT.
This isn't Slayers X.
But on a serious note if he's a billionaire then he can drop the whole monetization schtick. Telegram has become unusuable in the last few years. There's crypto scam ads everywhere.
So you cannot really blame Telegram.
Dead Comment
Very interesting to see where it will all go.
I don’t understand how they’re going to convince French judges that he’s guilty for not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for…
Except he (or his corporation) has keys for almost all initiated chats on the Telegram network. Only the private chats are E2EE and they're not default and rather inconvenient because they don't sync between devices (unlike Signal's E2EE chats).
> To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data.
> Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people's privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world.
https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests
If I have to guess, I would say that the authorities would be interested in identities of some users and access to private group chats with shady stuff and Telegram would be able to provide these.
These are probably already available to the Russian intelligence considering the low radiation levels in Pavel Durov’s blood stream and no novichok experience.
With the context that you omitted it makes more sense:
As for moderation, any post in public or private groups can be reported to moderators. As for one-to-one chats, this might not work, but you should not be chatting with random people anyway.
It's just they're the current power structure, so they can get away with the state monopoly on violence et al?
That false statement is refutable trivially: Just perform the mud puddle test [1] in front of the judge (and a cryptographer explaining the implications to the judge).
[1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-w...
There are lot of direct laws about record-keeping (company accounts for instance) but there are also a lot of laws which indirectly impose requirements of record-keeping, because having records will be the only way to comply with the requirement (tracking of origin for food recalls for instance).
France almost certainly has a law that says that if you run a telecommunication service, you must respond to court orders with the following information: X, Y, Z & W.
If non-compliance with such a law is the basis for the arrest, it will be his damn problem to convince the judges, that despite being subject of many such court orders, he had a stronger legal basis for not keeping the necessary records to comply.
However, my money is on Al Capone: I would be very surprised if the charges do not (also) contain tax-evasion, securities fraud, money laundering.
> I wonder what caught up with him first: the undisturbed sale of hard drugs vIa telegram, or the undisturbed recruitment of freelancers for GRU's terrorist attacks across Europe.
Seems there could be some truth to the accusations.
Telegram's policy is apparently to not moderate anything, and ignore law enforcement requests.
I'm not saying Telegram is right or wrong here, just that their behavior may not be legal in places like France.
Well, if this guy starts damage controlling, this is definitely a CIA operation
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
Cant say I have good things to say about Telegram founders and operators. Its not some innocent "free speech" messenger app, its sinister
As for those South Korea-related stories, the blame is partially on the government. For example, an operator of a website selling illegal videos got only 18 months in that country [1].
[1] https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/135865
I thought Reagan beat that with his war on drugs? Obviously flippant comment, but wouldn't it be more appropriate to say "Te....chnology has single handedly responsible for the recent drug epidemic,", to which I would answer 'No, it's always been about dollar bills, and what 'recent' drug epidemic?" The US opioid crisis wasn't fuelled by telegram.
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https://x.com/SamidounPP/status/1827062901364208099
So not sure what's the non-cooperating about banning "terrorist" content is about, since various info channels definitely were getting blocked on telegram in EU over the last year.
I can't for the life of me as an EU "citizen" even figure out who asks for these bans on behalf of the EU. Kinda doubt it's someone in my country, because it's reported as EU wide ban in this case. Maybe it's done by some overbearing country on this particular topic, like Germany, and Telegram just blocked it EU wide, for some reason.
My pet tinfoil-hat theory is that he decided that staying in a French prison is safer for him than being out in the open and get some polonium, or whatnot.
People do that.
Recently, the Bulgarian drug lord nicknamed Brendo not only surrendered, but somehow bribed border control to let him in the country so he can show up directly in front of Sofia Central Prison, with a duffel bag, ready to be taken in. He wanted to skip the bureaucracy and go behind bars ASAP.
This is probably the most ridiculous theory I’ve read all year.
FWIW, France do not extradite its citizen and Pavel Durov is french. He may have been arrested but that doesn't mean he will stay in detention depending on the nature of the charge and his eventual cooperation. Who knows, maybe he called before landing in France so that he was arrested and seen as cooperative.
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Why would he get some polonium? There are endless official Russian state telegram channels. Putin clearly has no issue with it or he would have banned it.
Politics is complicated.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-telegram-ban-idUSK...
In addition to drug trafficking, he is accused of collaborating with an organized crime group, covering up for pedophiles, fraud and money laundering.
I don't know how reliable this is, but I've seen in 3-4 sources that he's arrested for terrorism, child abuse, drug trafficking (not providing data to prosecutors).
It is basically the part of the current politics in EU where they are trying to force access to all encrypted traffic across devices.
The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.
However, I could imagine him staying in custody while being investigated for a couple days, then quickly facing some level of judge to decide whether he has to stay in jail or can be released.
Once this is done, don't expect a formal trial until multiple months (and most realistically, at least a year.)
I think the original link mentioned exactly that, and it would be done over the weekend
He's gonna have a very miserable time. Flying private jet --> watching another man shitting next to you.
That seems very unlikely. I don't think France has a statutory number of days in their speedy trial right, so even if you demand trial as you walk in the door, for a serious trial of this size, with this many charges, my experience is saying one to two years for trial.
Now, France does have more rights on pre-trial detention, so he might be able to get some sort of bail, but he's an enormously high flight risk, so.. maybe not.