Will you cooperate if you receive a legal warrant from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea?
Also, Telegram is accused in other things, like importing uncertified cryptographic tools. If you go to Gtihub, there are large deposits of uncertified cryptographic tools. Why ssh or openssl developers are not arrested? I am sure they do not have a proper certificate.
As I guess, this is a typical case when the law enforcement bends the vaguely written laws. A law saying something like "it is illegal to assist commiting a crime" is a typical example of such vague law: until there is a court decision you cannot even know if some event was legal or illegal. And "assist" is also a very vague term.
Probably no but I also would expect to face consequences if I go to the country whom court order I choose not to fulfill.
It's the same thing with the USA in the crypto community, you either don't sell US citizens unregulated securities or you sell and avoid USA or any country that might extradite you to USA.
I remember the days when the internet was the wild west, laws wouldn't apply and the cops lacked the tools to catch anyone or enforce anything. Those days are long gone, the rule of the thumb is that countries now have rules and tool for this stuff and if you break them better never ever visit these countries.
The result of this is that users, especially any the government might be interested in, would use the services that don't keep any information. Which in general is good -- services shouldn't be keeping data for no reason -- but sometimes there's a reason. Maybe an ordinary user would like to have a cloud backup, but not if it could create legal liability (and then their lawyers order them not to do it).
So we should be asking if this makes sense. If the government can snatch the data from third party services without a warrant then the people interesting to them will use the ones that don't store it, and then the government can't get the data with only a subpoena anyway. They may not even be able to get it with a warrant. But it also means that people can't have any features that require a trusted third party if they're concerned about legal liability from e.g. prosecutors taking things out of context, which should be everybody because they do that all the time.
What you're saying in effect is that any random country should be able to subpoena records for anyone. To be logically consistent, what if say Iran wants the records of the head of the CIA? The concern is not limited to Telegram; it generalizes to any messaging app.
There is no logical inconsistency here. Durov, a citizen of France, failed to comply with their own country's process. This isn't a "random country" applied "for anyone".
If the head of the CIA stepped foot in Iran, you bet your butt that they'd be at serious risk of arrest. The only reason this wouldn't be the case is Iran not having Nukes.
EU has been doing a lot of really bad stuff regarding the freedom of private communication recently (last few years), but they still manage to complain about others.
It's amazing how many on HN are actually closet authoritarians. It was made extra clear during the pandemic and becomes clearer with every one of these posts
On the flip side of the coin, it's amazing how many on HN are public anarchists. When we come together as a society to create laws, we make them for a reason, and nobody is above them.
Some of these warrants and subpoenas are senseless and come from deliberate political prosecution though. This seems to be the case in France, not a good look at all, especially with these accusations.
But Signal did get it right too, this is basically malicious compliance. But making a state make a fuss is another.
Among one of the many charges... "Complicity - Detention of the image of a minor of a child-pornographic nature."
Him being charged is as simple and standard as an administrator being shut down and it's owner charged for propagating illegal content. As standard as a Tor drug site being shutdown and it's owner charged. Worse, Durov was involved with CSAM material and did nothing about it. For this, he is immoral and in my opinion, a disgusting human being.
They simply can't collect much. Plus keeping secret records would be massive legal liability, especially in the EU.
The protocol is public. Signal software is free and open-source. Its mobile clients, desktop client, and server are all published under the AGPL-3.0. Any modifications for the app binaries and protocols would be quickly noticed. Hackers and cybersecurity companies are not fools.
we don't know what he has been asked. the french authorities are testing the waters and see how much they can control the guy.
given the uproar, it seems its not the time and so they claim they are only concerned about csam.
The data the French government wants is in cleartext on Telegram's servers, but is there an argument to be made that, at least ethically, communications should be protected regardless of encrypted vs plaintext, and police should just do regular detective work to catch criminals?
Edit: PDF for the arrest warrant so that it's in context for the comments:
I don't really have good context on the issue but is there a reason you consider getting Telegram logs outside of "regular detective work". Intercepting communications (assuming they have a warrant, at least based on my understanding in the US) would seem to be very standard police work to me.
> Intercepting communications (assuming they have a warrant, at least based on my understanding in the US) would seem to be very standard police work to me
There is also a big difference between doing what e.g. Signal does, which is respond with everything they have, i.e. nothing, and (a) refusing to provide data you have or (b) blowing the warrant off.
> an argument to be made that, at least ethically, communications should be protected regardless of encrypted vs plaintext, and police should just do regular detective work to catch criminals?
France has fairly extreme data retention requirements [1].
No, I don't think so. If people are openly advertising to provide criminal services (which is super-easy to find on Telegram; eg there are channels where you can pay people to damage property or commit violence), is it realistic to expect police to ignore that just because it's digital?
It is (unfortunately) regular police work.....nowadays.
Only criminals (and their defenders) complained about fingerprints being used as id, nowadays it's expected.
Time moves on.
I did set up telegram today...my contribution to the noise, as I'm a very firm believer in communications being very protected.
I do highly commend Snowdon for what he has done in the past, but his (though highly understandable) silence regarding Ukraine puts him on my shitlist. Very low down on it, but on it all the same.
If you personally could lead by example, and flee the US, seek asylum in Russia only to be not "silent regarding Ukraine", your name could be deleted from my moronic shitlist too.
It really feels like anyone coming down at the extreme of either side of this (the French government and Snowden included) is greatly simplifying a very complex issue.
Even Nassim Taleb[1] seems to think Macron is in the wrong, not to mention Snowden. You also had Macron saying that he envisioned shutting down Social media in the event of riots. That is no way is a commitment to freedom of expression. Imagine shutting down Facebook or X during BLM riots, or any other mass riot? That's so antithetical to the US first amendment right to free expression.
That said, it's no surprise that anyone who doesn't identify with a riot wants to suppress freedom of expression on an unrelated platform and those who agree with a movement or riot, will want to ensure freedom of expression on a given platform even if they previously and into the future might want to shutdown the same medium for allowing expression they disagree with.
They actually did just do that: France legally cut off social media in the overseas territory of New Caledonia (in the wake of mass protests or riots over a voting rights law).
- "The French government hasn’t formally specified why it singled out TikTok for a block."
- "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
There has been no audit of that. The servers live in a country with questionable legal standing for digital citizens.
What the French say they are arresting him for, and what they actually know might not be the same. Given telegrams position the cyber criminal world, and its place in Russia and eastern Europe I would not be surprised if there is a litany of reasons we aren't hearing about.
The whole encryption issue seems like a total sideshow to me. I've been on Telegram for years and only exchanged a few DMs in that time. There are tons of public channels which require no approval or exchange of information to join.
Yes. We're dealing with French law on French soil in respect of a dual national.
We literally have zero official documents from the arrest. (EDIT: We got one!) This could be an elaborate scheme to route out an FSB plot. Or it could be as simple as he has a bunch of drugs on his jet.
In summary, it's a fundamentally complicated situation into which we have imperfect information. Coming to a strong conclusion, at this point, is an expression of faith. Not reason.
Ok, before everyone loses their minds over this, let me point out some interesting details:
- Durov was an author of VKontakte, I suppose you can say it's Russian Facebook, then there were some events resulting in him leaving VK, and leaving the country;
- He started Telegram, and supposedly at this point he was a dissident, but strangely, in Russia everyone and their brother were using Telegram. This includes government officials, military, etc, etc.
- The latest developments occurred after he visited Azerbaijan, where it was speculated he met Putin. Right after that, he boards his plane and goes directly to Paris, where he knew he was wanted. There are some speculations that he wanted to be arrested, because the alternative was worse. How worse? It's a speculation, obviously, but we know what Putin can do to people he disagree with.
Bottom line, there is much we don't know about this. Reducing it to "free speech" issue is simplifying it. Somebody like Snowden, who said nothing about free speech in Russia (where basically everything is censored), should refrain from commenting.
Finally, I find it's unacceptable that we have to rely on software provided by PRIVATE COMPANIES to securely communicate between individuals. This is what the Internet was supposed to be about - a set of communication standards. With the current state of cryptography, we should be able to solve this as a public standard.
You should also look into who's screaming bloody murder following his arrest. Basically, all the usual Russian characters - the foreign ministry which somehow managed to put together a protest super fast on the weekend, all the Russia TV personas, "independent journalists", and the Western useful idiots - Musk first among them. That would never happen for a regular "dissident".
It’s a fact he went to Azerbaijan at the same time Putin did. It’s also a fact that he flew to the Paris right after. Putin spokesman said they did not meet. There were speculations that they did - references are on Wikipedia page.
Would Snowden have said the same thing if Durov didn't escape from Russia before he was arrested? Probably not, Snowden is part of the Russian Spy and Disinformation campaign. He is basically a Russian agent.
Snowden left the United States because the Federal Government wants to imprison him. The government wants to imprison him because he revealed them to be engaged in illegal surveillance on a scale that makes the Stasi's seem modest by comparison. To stay out of prison, he had to go to a country which wouldn't extradite him, hence his presence in Russia.
Edward Snowden is a hero who has made a tremendous sacrifice for Americans and for American ideals. The fact that he has to live in Russia to enjoy peace and freedom is a damning indictment, to be sure, but not of Edward Snowden.
I wouldn't call it a "tremendous sacrifice" then. It would have been had he decided to face trial, or at least not flee to a country that is the historical enemy of the US with access to who knows how many copies of secret documents so that he could save his ass.
I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras. Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison (he broke the law after all) and be a free US citizen. After all, Assange and Manning are both free right now.
Yes, years in prison is not fun, at all (hence the "sacrifice" part), but I guess his stay in Russia is not particularly fun either. And now, he risks an even greater sentence should he go back to the US.
His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
No. But it's reasonable to presume he's a compromised source. That doesn't mean he wants to be, nor that everything he's saying has been dictated to him. But his public communications would be, at the very least, monitored and vetted.
at this point he is at the mercy of his FSB handler, either he posts what he is told/expected to or he loses usefulness and joins Russell 'Texas' Bentley as a cautionary tale.
Really? How convenient for you to just blame the USA and list France as an affiliate. If the USA wanted him (Durov), they could have arrested him a long time ago.
Why doesn't Snowden speak about the horrors of the Russian war in Ukraine where woman and children are raped and shot?
He only speaks when it is beneficial for his masters.
> love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
I thought and still think that Snowden is a brave and righteous man for airing the US government's dirty laundry.
Not him becoming a Russian citizen, but rather his silence on the bloody war of Putin, however, makes me think that I should take Snowden's words with a pinch of salt.
> love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
This tweet is literally plain propaganda move, as it has little to do with human rights... and Snowden has been a treasure trove of Russian sponsored propaganda lately.
To the point of me thinking that his Twitter is just some FSB agent writing posts for him.
the most interesting thing I've read on this subject is that Russia is using Telegram as a military communication tool. In the early days of the Ukraine war there were some reports on how the offical communication infrastructure they had built had failed quite badly.
There's speculation (but no proof) that Russia already has access to the cryptographic keys for Telegram. They were very intent on getting access or banning the service some years ago, and then rather suddenly stopped talking about it.
Is Durov even charged with anything? As I understand this release, he is being detained for questioning on an unnamed person being charged to several offenses:
No, it states Durov was arrested in context of a judicial investigation of a an unnamed person. Durov himself, to my knowledge, has not been charged with any crimes.
Drugs are sold on every platform, including Instagram. The other parts are just as likely to end up on Facebook as they are Telegram too, there really is no point in trying to make this sound like the USA-based platforms aren't utterly rife with the things you mentioned too. The only difference here is that Telegram isn't USA-owned and doesn't need to bow down to the USA Govt.
> The only difference here is that Telegram isn't USA-owned and doesn't need to bow down to the USA Govt.
My understanding, unlike US companies, Telegram hasn't been co-operating with the EU? US companies are not perfect (see the hundreds of millions/billions of fines), but the US companies at least work with authorities.
for those comparing this platform to silk road or dark web with stuff like this: there is no proof that Durov is directly involved in these activities or is promoting it.
non-cooperation with information from law enforcement of a foreign government is the same as the discourse about us-based tech not complying to chinese requests or those from US adversaries. that alone does not fly in the court of law, at least for rich and influential people.
the only thing to wonder is if there was an existing warrant issued against him in place much before he landed in france, and if so why he decided to travel there.
unless he personally did all of those, this is a separate issue. by the same logic you dont sue gun manufacturers for all the deaths caused by these guns.
Readit News
There is the right way and the wrong way.
Wrong way: Telegram keeps records and refuses to cooperate. Telegram faces consequences.
Right way: Signal cooperates. They give two Unix timestamps. One for when the account was created and the date the account last connected to the Signal service. https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/ See also: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
Also, Telegram is accused in other things, like importing uncertified cryptographic tools. If you go to Gtihub, there are large deposits of uncertified cryptographic tools. Why ssh or openssl developers are not arrested? I am sure they do not have a proper certificate.
As I guess, this is a typical case when the law enforcement bends the vaguely written laws. A law saying something like "it is illegal to assist commiting a crime" is a typical example of such vague law: until there is a court decision you cannot even know if some event was legal or illegal. And "assist" is also a very vague term.
No. But after refusing it, I sure as hell wouldn't go there.
Probably no but I also would expect to face consequences if I go to the country whom court order I choose not to fulfill.
It's the same thing with the USA in the crypto community, you either don't sell US citizens unregulated securities or you sell and avoid USA or any country that might extradite you to USA.
I remember the days when the internet was the wild west, laws wouldn't apply and the cops lacked the tools to catch anyone or enforce anything. Those days are long gone, the rule of the thumb is that countries now have rules and tool for this stuff and if you break them better never ever visit these countries.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
So we should be asking if this makes sense. If the government can snatch the data from third party services without a warrant then the people interesting to them will use the ones that don't store it, and then the government can't get the data with only a subpoena anyway. They may not even be able to get it with a warrant. But it also means that people can't have any features that require a trusted third party if they're concerned about legal liability from e.g. prosecutors taking things out of context, which should be everybody because they do that all the time.
Durov is a French citizen. He was arrested in France. This isn't a Kim Dotcom situation.
EU has been doing a lot of really bad stuff regarding the freedom of private communication recently (last few years), but they still manage to complain about others.
Signal responding to a subpoena with, in essence, a fuck you is authoritarian?
Deleted Comment
But Signal did get it right too, this is basically malicious compliance. But making a state make a fuss is another.
Great argument. :)
Him being charged is as simple and standard as an administrator being shut down and it's owner charged for propagating illegal content. As standard as a Tor drug site being shutdown and it's owner charged. Worse, Durov was involved with CSAM material and did nothing about it. For this, he is immoral and in my opinion, a disgusting human being.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
https://www.threads.net/@cyndiborowski/post/C_JSEuByAVQ?xmt=...
Source?
The protocol is public. Signal software is free and open-source. Its mobile clients, desktop client, and server are all published under the AGPL-3.0. Any modifications for the app binaries and protocols would be quickly noticed. Hackers and cybersecurity companies are not fools.
Deleted Comment
Edit: PDF for the arrest warrant so that it's in context for the comments:
https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files...
Seeing stuff like in the past few decades has me viewing criminals and police more and more alike.
At least the criminals don't hide behind a facade of public service/good.
There is also a big difference between doing what e.g. Signal does, which is respond with everything they have, i.e. nothing, and (a) refusing to provide data you have or (b) blowing the warrant off.
France has fairly extreme data retention requirements [1].
[1] https://www.conseil-etat.fr/en/news/connection-data-the-coun...
I do highly commend Snowdon for what he has done in the past, but his (though highly understandable) silence regarding Ukraine puts him on my shitlist. Very low down on it, but on it all the same.
Deleted Comment
Do you even understand that he is forced to stay in Russia, and would prefer not to have an accidental fall from a window?
That said, it's no surprise that anyone who doesn't identify with a riot wants to suppress freedom of expression on an unrelated platform and those who agree with a movement or riot, will want to ensure freedom of expression on a given platform even if they previously and into the future might want to shutdown the same medium for allowing expression they disagree with.
[1]https://x.com/nntaleb/status/1828100412047573104
- "The French government hasn’t formally specified why it singled out TikTok for a block."
- "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo... ("French TikTok block in overseas territory sets ‘dangerous precedent,’ critics warn")
telegram purports to be "encrypted".
There has been no audit of that. The servers live in a country with questionable legal standing for digital citizens.
What the French say they are arresting him for, and what they actually know might not be the same. Given telegrams position the cyber criminal world, and its place in Russia and eastern Europe I would not be surprised if there is a litany of reasons we aren't hearing about.
The whole encryption issue seems like a total sideshow to me. I've been on Telegram for years and only exchanged a few DMs in that time. There are tons of public channels which require no approval or exchange of information to join.
Yes. We're dealing with French law on French soil in respect of a dual national.
We literally have zero official documents from the arrest. (EDIT: We got one!) This could be an elaborate scheme to route out an FSB plot. Or it could be as simple as he has a bunch of drugs on his jet.
In summary, it's a fundamentally complicated situation into which we have imperfect information. Coming to a strong conclusion, at this point, is an expression of faith. Not reason.
* https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/04/a-decade-on-edward-sn...
- Durov was an author of VKontakte, I suppose you can say it's Russian Facebook, then there were some events resulting in him leaving VK, and leaving the country;
- He started Telegram, and supposedly at this point he was a dissident, but strangely, in Russia everyone and their brother were using Telegram. This includes government officials, military, etc, etc.
- The latest developments occurred after he visited Azerbaijan, where it was speculated he met Putin. Right after that, he boards his plane and goes directly to Paris, where he knew he was wanted. There are some speculations that he wanted to be arrested, because the alternative was worse. How worse? It's a speculation, obviously, but we know what Putin can do to people he disagree with.
Bottom line, there is much we don't know about this. Reducing it to "free speech" issue is simplifying it. Somebody like Snowden, who said nothing about free speech in Russia (where basically everything is censored), should refrain from commenting.
Finally, I find it's unacceptable that we have to rely on software provided by PRIVATE COMPANIES to securely communicate between individuals. This is what the Internet was supposed to be about - a set of communication standards. With the current state of cryptography, we should be able to solve this as a public standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Durov
Deleted Comment
How credible are these claims?
Edward Snowden is a hero who has made a tremendous sacrifice for Americans and for American ideals. The fact that he has to live in Russia to enjoy peace and freedom is a damning indictment, to be sure, but not of Edward Snowden.
I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras. Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison (he broke the law after all) and be a free US citizen. After all, Assange and Manning are both free right now.
Yes, years in prison is not fun, at all (hence the "sacrifice" part), but I guess his stay in Russia is not particularly fun either. And now, he risks an even greater sentence should he go back to the US.
His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
Dead Comment
Why not? What's the thinking here?
> Probably not, Snowden is part of the Russian Spy and Disinformation campaign. He is basically a Russian agent.
Any evidence for that?
No. But it's reasonable to presume he's a compromised source. That doesn't mean he wants to be, nor that everything he's saying has been dictated to him. But his public communications would be, at the very least, monitored and vetted.
at this point he is at the mercy of his FSB handler, either he posts what he is told/expected to or he loses usefulness and joins Russell 'Texas' Bentley as a cautionary tale.
Dead Comment
love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
That's not what disinformation means. Disinformation is a polite way of saying lies [1].
[1] https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/schwerpunkte/EN/disinform...
Why doesn't Snowden speak about the horrors of the Russian war in Ukraine where woman and children are raped and shot?
He only speaks when it is beneficial for his masters.
I thought and still think that Snowden is a brave and righteous man for airing the US government's dirty laundry.
Not him becoming a Russian citizen, but rather his silence on the bloody war of Putin, however, makes me think that I should take Snowden's words with a pinch of salt.
This tweet is literally plain propaganda move, as it has little to do with human rights... and Snowden has been a treasure trove of Russian sponsored propaganda lately.
To the point of me thinking that his Twitter is just some FSB agent writing posts for him.
There's speculation (but no proof) that Russia already has access to the cryptographic keys for Telegram. They were very intent on getting access or banning the service some years ago, and then rather suddenly stopped talking about it.
https://x.com/jsrailton/status/1828125807035756706
- selling drugs
- selling hacking/ddossing services
- posting beheading videos, latest one had Ukrainian soldiers head on a spike
- sending cruise missile targeting coordinates to military units
According to outraged russians those all among the things French prosecutors mentioned in arrest warrant.
The U.S. government doesn't like encrypted communications. But it's legally bound, by our Constitution and courts, in a way Paris is not.
Nobody has been fussing about Telegram in a serious way in America.
My understanding, unlike US companies, Telegram hasn't been co-operating with the EU? US companies are not perfect (see the hundreds of millions/billions of fines), but the US companies at least work with authorities.
non-cooperation with information from law enforcement of a foreign government is the same as the discourse about us-based tech not complying to chinese requests or those from US adversaries. that alone does not fly in the court of law, at least for rich and influential people.
the only thing to wonder is if there was an existing warrant issued against him in place much before he landed in france, and if so why he decided to travel there.
We literally had to pass a law because people kept doing that [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...