Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

> One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement.

Just would like to clarify, Telegram does take down channels/bots in some cases including copyright infringement. The only bots I’ve dealt with were music downloaders so I don’t know much about other kinds of takedowns, but it’s wrong to say that telegram doesn’t/didn’t take down material. Perhaps not enough or frequently enough, and I certainly don’t condone immoral activities- but they do do it sometimes.

This is a fantastic case of hypocrisy here. I personally see Facebook ads for illegal drugs at least once a week, and nothing happens. I even stopped reporting it because it was obviously pointless. Why? Because Zuck is "our son of bitch".

Terrible takes notwithstanding, of which there are many, the issue I see with such arguments is that it's always possible to find legal violations that technically justify prosecution or imprisonment. However, the legal system only functions effectively if we trust that those handling the gray areas are motivated by the common good, rather than serving the interests of a select few or protecting an elite minority. Simply focusing on the arrest and comparing it to the alleged criminal activities on Telegram, along with the supposed lack of enforcement by the company, seems like turning a blind eye. It ignores the more likely reality that this is part of a broader effort to establish a censorship regime, with platforms like TikTok, X, Telegram, and Rumble already targeted. Accepting the official narrative and pretext at face value feels, frankly, a bit naive.

> [...] telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate.

Do we know this for sure? What are the sources?

If that were true — then it surely would be less surprising, and even expected, but I would argue it's still bad: first because encryption would lead to the same result (as you point out) and second because what's illegal is often a matter of perspective: Telegram had content that was illegal in Russia, and didn't collaborate.

>One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement.

One can. I think you're confusing censored with moderated. Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. aren't moderated. They're censored. They refuse to moderate or not moderate. Censorship is a form of moderation, but it itself isn't enough to be considered moderated. Censorship is enough to make it not unmoderated though.

> One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement.

Should you remove e.g blasphemy which is illegal in many countries including some of what I assume you call "developed world"?

  Nothing more, nothing less

Telegram has been operating for years and did not change recently to justify such an action yesterday. There's something more certainly. Maybe they did not comply with requests related to recent war in Ukraine or genocide in Palestine ?

A sane comment in the slew of conspiracy theories, "service provider" apologists and misdirection of encryption being the issue.

ultimately this fight against unmonitored messaging is going to be a lost one for the developed world. people who want encrypted group chats will get them

” One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world,”

It is so funny you put a “developed” there, as if this is an advantage compared to developing ones.

> Nothing more, nothing less.

That's a terribly simplistic take.

And no, there are other providers that also cooperated less (not that you have reliable data on that for such a certain claim that you can't compare)

I posted this else ITT, but whats your opinion on the following (I have NO opinion - as I cant verify any facts about anything - so I am just an Observer of the events and what people are saying:)

---

https://i.imgur.com/ixak5vq.png

>This reminds me of the entire plot to the last of the Bourne movies, Jason Bourne, where there is a scene of the head of some intel agency (Tommy Lee Jones) propositioned a social media founder to give them backdoor access or he would be killed. Great movie.

https://youtu.be/VvfSkVDF8uE

Fun Thread:

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1f0i2yi/guess_w...

> Nothing more, nothing less.

A lot more and a lot less than that. Arresting this CEO in France is largely a political decision, not a politically neutral enforcement action against the Telegram platform.

They don’t perform the same enforcement against other entities they could go after.

Dotcom got extradited (which was declared legal much later). Durov landed in a country that had an arrest warrant out for him.

I hope his situation isn't similar to Dotcom's, as Dotcom was shown to be complicit in the crimes he was being persecuted for. Convicting the megaupload people would've been a LOT harder if they hadn't been uploading and curating illegal content on their platform themselves.

As a service provider, you're not responsible for what your users post as long as you take appropriate action after being informed of illegal content. That's where they're trying to get Telegram, because Telegram is known to ignore law enforcement as much as possible (to the point of doing so illegally and getting fined for it).

Watch his interview with Tucker Carlson and you’ll see. He doesn’t acquiesce to government requests for moderation control, censorship, and sharing private user data so they target him. He refuses to implement backdoors as well. In stark contrast to western social media companies.

Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?

Because those services don't get shown reports of CSAM and then turn a blind eye to it and do nothing about it.

A person witnessing a crime by itself is not a crime. However, a person witnessing a crime and choosing not to report it is a crime.

You really ask why? This isn't about serving justice - it's statuary example for anyone trying to run an unmoderated platform.

The difference is telegram wasn't cooperating with authorities in the jurisdictions in which it was operating; be that moderation, interception, etc.

Regarding Kim Dotcom, the government allegetions aren't about what users do. You can read them here:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-charges-le...

Granted, he's moved on to being a Kremlin propagandist and is now shilling anti-Semitism. See:

https://x.com/KimDotcom/status/1825187568834753021

>This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.

At least Kim Dotcom earings and the main utility of the service was indeed based on pirated content. Telegram is huge news/chat/etc app, where the things the mention as "enabling" as totally marginal and coincidental, more like arresting a property owner that owns half of the city because some people sold drugs in a few of the apartments.

I believe both cases come down to how much effort the leaders put into identifying and purging the bad activities on their platforms.

One would hope that there is clear evidence to support a claim that they’re well aware what they’re profiting off and aren’t aggressively shutting it down.

To use Reddit as an example: in the early days it was the Wild West, and there were some absolutely legally gray subreddits. They eventually booted those, and more recently even seem to ban subreddits just because The Verge wrote an article about how people say bad things there.

> the warrant was issued because of his alleged failure to cooperate with the French authorities.

That would seem to be the key bit. Makes one wonder what level of cooperation is required to not be charged with a slew of the worst crimes imaginable. Is there a French law requiring that messaging providers give up encryption keys that he is known to be in violation of?

It's called selective enforcement.

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do?

There is a legal distinction here between what happens on your platform despite your best efforts (what you might call "incidental" use) vs what your platform is designed specifically to do or enable.

Megaupload is a perfect example. It was used to pirate movies. Everyone knew it. The founders knew it. You can't really argue it's incidental or unintended or simply that small amount that gets past moderation.

Telegram, the authorities will argue, fails to moderate CSAM and other illegal activity to the point that it enables it and profits from it, which is legally indistinguishable from specifically designing your platfrom for it.

Many tech people fall into a binary mode of thinking because that's how tech usually works. Either your code works or it doesn't. You see it when arguments about people pirating IP being traced to a customer. Tech people will argue "you can't prove it's me". While technically true, that's not the legal standard.

Legal standards relay on tests. In the ISP case, authorities will look at what was pirated, was it found on your hard drive, was the activity done when you were home or not and so on to establish a balance of probabilities. Is it more likely that all this evidence adds up to your guilt or that an increasingly unlikely set of circumstances explains it where you're innocent?

In the early days of Bitcoin I stayed away (to my detriment) because I coudl see the obvious use case of it being used for illegal stuff, whichh it is. The authorities don't currently care. Bitcoin however is the means that enables ransomware. When someone decides this is a national security issue, Bitcoin is in for a bad time.

Telegram had (for the French at least) risen to the point where they considered it a serious enough issue to warrant their attention and the full force of the government may be brought to bear on it.

It seems there has been a misunderstanding; laws for service providers never exempted them from having to cooperate and provide data available to them when ordered.

Telegram is an absolute hive of criminality but, more importantly, Telegram will simply not cooperate with law enforcement.

That is why he's been lifted. Google et al will cooperate, even if that's by way of an onerous bureaucratic procedure involving MLATs.

Because these countries are hypocrites. Because politics, because these guys are from Russia, China. You can so obviously see there's discrimination against companies from those countries. Can you imagine France do this if it's a US company?

The difference is that this is not an isolated case on telegram(you said it yourself: "some amount", which implies "limited"). At the same time, you can literally open up the app and with 0 effort find everything they are accusing them of - drugs, terrorist organizations, public decapitations, you name it. They also provide the ability to search for people and groups around you, and I am literally seeing a channel where people are buying and selling groups "800 meters away" from me and another one for prostitution, which is also illegal in my country. Meanwhile, see their TOS[1]. They have not complied with any of the reports or requests from users (and governments by the looks of it) to crack down on them. While 1:1 chats are theoretically private and encrypted(full disclosure, I do not trust Telegram or any of the people behind it), telegram's security for public channels and groups is absolutely appalling and they are well aware of it - they just chose to look the other way and hope they'd get away with it. You could have given them the benefit of the doubt if those are isolated("some") instances, sure. But just as in the case of Kim Dot-I-support-genocide-com, those are not isolated cases and saying that they had no idea is an obvious lie.

2000/31/EC[2], states that providers are generally not liable for the content they host IF they do not have actual knowledge of illegal activity or content AND upon obtaining such knowledge, they take action and remove and disable access to that content(telegram has been ignoring those). Service providers have no general obligation to monitor but they need to provide notice and take down mechanisms. Assuming that their statement are correct, and they had no idea, they should be in the clear. Telegram provides a notice and take down mechanism. But saying that there are channels with +500k subscribers filled with people celebrating a 4 year old girl with a blown off leg in Ukraine and no one has reported it in 2 and a half years after it was created is indeed naive.

[1] https://telegram.org/tos/eu

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/31/oj

kim dotcom ran basically a pirated game/book/music/movie site. Telegram (what I have seen) is mostly hacking leaks although rumored to have CSAM (to those not familiar with the acronym, it means cheese pizza).

Of course you can find both somewhere in the walled planetary garden of googlotron in facebooks sure. But they clamp down on it hard as they can. They clamp down on anything marginally offensive much less illegal. Have you tried the facebook "report post" interface? there are 3,000 various types of offensiveness you may report. That's their bar, their standard, that's 1,000 miles away from definitely illegal content. If their censorship apparatik is so bold as to be wiping out vast swaths of totally valid free speech, anything illegal has no chance.

If the question is "what's a great place to go for piracy" - megaupload, pirate bay, etc, then any common answer to that question is a target... "where to I go for data breaches" - breachforums, telegram, etc. Don't get worked up, all those places were destroyed by the feds and no longer exist.

It's like mafia. If you cooperate, you're safe. If not, mafia destroys you

  Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do
  [...]
  maybe I'm just being naive?

In this case, the comment does strike me as naive.

Back in the 1990s the tech community convinced itself (myself included) that Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy it enabled. In reality, law in a society is supposed to serve that society. The tech community talked itself into believing that the only valid arguments were for Napster. In hindsight, it's less cut-and-dry.

I have never believed E2EE to be viable, in the real world, without a back-door. It makes several horrendous kinds of crime too difficult to combat. It also has some upsides, but including a back-door, in practice, won't erase the upsides for most users.

It is naive to think people (and government) will ignore E2EE; a feature that facilitates child porn, human trafficking, organized crime, murder-for-hire, foreign spying, etc etc. The decision about whether the good attributes justify the bad ones is too impactful on society to defer to chat app CEOs.

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do?

I think this is simplified. Certainly yes, if "all" Telegram was doing was operating a neutral/unmoderated anonymized chat service, then it's hard to see criminal culpability for the reasons you list.

But as people are pointing out, that doesn't seem to be technically correct. Telegram isn't completely anonymous, does have access to important customer data, and is widely suspected of complying with third party requests for that data for law enforcement and regulatory reasons.

So... IF they are doing that, and they're doing it in a non-neutral/non-anonymized way, then they're very plausibly subject to prosectution. Say, if you get a report of terrorist activity and provide data on the terrorists, then a month later get notified that your service is being used to distribute CSAM, and you refuse to cooperate, then it's not that far a reach to label you an accessory to the crime.

> Specifically, these service providers

I’m not a fan of this arrest and I don’t believe service providers have a duty to contravene their security promises so as to monitor their users.

But it seems pretty obvious that governments find the monitoring that Google / Reddit / etc do acceptable, and do not find operation of unmonitorable services acceptable.

Because some things like terrorism and child sex abuse are harms to society as a whole, and even private individuals have an obligation to help combat them. Durov has a service where by design it's hard to filter out that kind of activity, and he's effectively (if not explicitly) helping protect that activity.

I strongly suspect there's more to it than just running a chat system used by criminals. If that were the issue then tons of services would be under indictment.

We'll have to wait and see, but I suspect some kind of more direct participation or explicit provable look-the-other-way at CSAM etc.

Let’s just say I encrypt illegal.content prior to uploading it to Platform A. And share the public key separately via Platform B. Maybe even refer Platform A users to a private forum on Platform B to obtain the keys. Are both platforms now on the wrong side of the law?

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do?

Because they let their users do it and benefited from it. Try doing the same thing as a bank :) Or a newspaper :)

Internet cannot be anarchy forever. Every anarchy ends up as oligarchy. It needs regulation and fast.

> This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.

I'm not sure where this myth originated—perhaps from Kim Dotcom's Twitter account? I clearly remember the Megaupload case. They knew they were hosting pirated content, didn't delete it after requests[1], and shared money with the people who uploaded it because that was their business model.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/21/the-fasc...

Google, Discord, and Reddit all take swift and decisive action against CSAM. I have never organically encountered CSAM on Google, and have only encountered it on Discord and Reddit because of deliberate bad actors. Outside of Reddit's early mistakes with /r/jailbait, none of these services end up being preferred by pedophile communities, because they can expect to be shut down quickly if they rally there.

Telegram has become a hotspot for CSAM to the point that it is pretty much inevitable that you're going to encounter someone peddling it just by browsing other channels.

I think the real difference is the intent. If your platform makes it extremely easy to do illegal things, and you choose not to put in the controls to stop it, and then I think it is fair that government should stop.

Kim Dotcom is still harassed because he is very vocal against the US and what is happening in Ukraine. https://x.com/KimDotcom

The US narrative on Ukraine and Israel is getting weaker. Thorns like Kim Dotcom that has a big following, Telegram that is the only social platform to access the Russian side of the events, can break the US narrative.

It is ironic that the US screams Russia did a war crime in Bucha but Israel on Gaza is fine.

It's better not the Kim Dotcom situation, that would mean Durov encouraged the illegal use of Telegram like Megaupload rewarded file uploads which generated heavy download traffic.

If that would be the case he would be at least a accomplice if not even the Initiator of criminal activities.

Otherwise it would be just an abuse of his service by criminals.

>> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do?

Are we 100% certain that this is only about Telegram? I want to see the allegations, not the vague charges, before pontificating about ISP liability. These charges might be more straightforwards.

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do ?

Because they crossed the line from common carrier to editor - an entirely different set of obligations.

Also, even such common carrier as telcos must abide to state injunctions against their users.

pour encourager les autres

Dotcom is being prosecuted for knowingly and deliberately directing and encouraging the unlawful behavior of his users, and it's a criminal prosecution rather than a civil case because he's accused of building a (lucrative) business off the effort. You don't have to agree with the case or believe the DOJ has made it adequately (it's early to say, given the extradition drama), but it's not reasonable to say that Dotcom is being prosecuted "for what his users did", any more than it would be reasonable to say that a mafia kingpin was being prosecuted for what their street crews did at their behest.

(I have no idea what's going on with Durov, or how French and/or EU law works, except to say that legal analysis on HN tends sharply towards US norms, and people should remember that a lot of basic US legal norms, like the rules of evidence and against self-incrimination, do not generally apply in Europe.)

Those platforms are more cooperative with authorities.

Given how it's all plaintext on their servers, telegram is essentially also a storage for those criminal data.

Except that this is France prosecuting a French citizen for breaking French laws.

US has section 230, other countries don't.

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers?

https://xkcd.com/538/

Someone wants the service to stop, and has the influence to make it happen, the users are not a concern.

Now that Telegram is compromised, what's the next chat app people trust?

> Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything.

WORSE, you get banned for reporting CSAM to Discord, and I guarantee if you report it to the proper authorities (FBI) they tell them to bug off and get a warrant. Can we please be consistent? If we're going to hold these companies liable for anything, let's be much more consistent. Worse yet, Discord doesnt even have End to End encryption, and the number of child abuse scandals on that platform are insane. People build up communities, where the admins (users, not Discord employees) have perceived power, users (children) want to partake in such things. Its essentially the Roblox issue all over again, devs taking advantage of easily impressionable minors.

Intent matters.

Everyone knows why and you’re not being naive

Isn't this what Section 230 was supposed to protect against?

The only decently prudent comment I've read in this thread so far

I use telegram for some group chats, but I'm not sure why tech-savvy people would like it so much – messages are not end-to-end encrypted which makes it an inferior choice compared to even whatsapp

i gotta agree, i basically live out of telegram.

even with the recent trend towards adding incremental bloat to the client, it’s managed to stay a simple, straightforward tool for communicating with minimal advertising and enough of the features that i need front and center.

The fact bad actors are also using it is not the problem. His unwillingness to moderate content and cooperate with authorities is. Great UX doesn’t suddenly put you above the law.

Video and Audio calls are hit and miss. The history and search are not reliable. The interface is not really suited for big group chats... I could go on and on.

And tactics exist outside of control of communications, to capture these bad actors, to infiltrate their ranks; why are these alternatives to fighting the production of child exploitation and abuse content not brought up in conversation ever?

The masses do not care much if ones do not do agains bad actors what are in their power just their pretty platform shall keep running, they will keep this one alive too and argue for it to the death, don't worry, the masses could argue for any malicious thing that they find pretty or nice or like for some reason. Can organize some protest or even riot too in a - unencrypted by nature - group channel, there will be scores to participate, as recent example show in other precious matters, maybe can loot some good scores too on the side of the big party about a dear matter for the heart! Paris deserve the revenge! : /

Good lawyers won’t make much difference for him as the French government is tired of not being able to look at all our conversations. They want to start scaring people into compliance and verifying all their actions with the government or at least scaring the companies providing a (semi) private experience. This is mostly like just phase 1 of getting the keys that open up telegram servers to 5 eyes by getting Durov under their thumbscrews.

I actually despise it. I'm not sure if this has changed, but after being forced to make an account under my phone number, it proceeded to send a message that I had joined to everyone who had my number in their contacts and was foolish enough to share them with Telegram. This included a rather vile woman whose number I apparently inherited from a deceased relative some years before. She didn't understand this and accused me of stealing his identity. While it was simple enough for me to brush it off, I couldn't believe they would allow and even encourage such a thing, so I almost immediately deleted my account and instead tried out one that wasn't so eager to lap up my personal details.

Signal is much better, even if the UX is not quite as good as telegram's.

It's also the least private one (compared to whatsapp and signal.)

They were great until they put fast downloads behind a paywall. It's like they're going out of their way to throttle download speeds nowadays

You like it better than Signal? The only thing I know Telegram for is several of my girlfriend’s relatives being exposed to crazy scams and right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation on it.

I don't understand why anyone uses Telegram if it there is no proof that it is secure. Their code isn't open source?

> TCP is a simple protocol with no ability to control or monitor content, whereas Telegram holds keys for most data and is capable of content moderation.

What?

And how do governments of the world block websites, services or the entire external web (as in China)?

> Telegram knowingly allowed illegal content to thrive while ignoring legal obligations to assist law enforcement

What? You think Telegram must read and have the means to know the contents of all chats on its platforms?

What an atrocious take.

Forcing people to de anonymize speech and enforce state censorship (“moderation”) is not an appropriate baseline and says more about the corruption of France than about Telegram. At this point how are they any different than the CCP? Each wants to paint their censorship and authoritarian tactics as moral and legal and justified.

FWIW this post is ChatGPT generated at least partially.

When an assumed dissident to Western official orthodoxy is charged, your so-called ‘reputable sources’ can be seen as merely parroting official talking points and propaganda. Considering them reputable is a form of naivety.

Telegram also doesn't consider Sweden and Germany to be democracies for some reason and refuse to collaborate with either.

This seems to be a blatant lie. In russia telegram is wdidely used to prosecute people and crack down on descent. KGB (today know as FSB) seem to have free access to anything not encrypted on the platform.

Telegram doesn’t have mandatory e2ee, which puts it in this kind of situation. Having data on crime committing and denying access to it from authorities is a crime itself in most countries.

For centuries snail mail was used to facilitate organized crime, yet nobody prosecutes post offices.

I’m not sure I understand. Doesn’t the fact that the prosecutors had him arrested directly imply they perceive a link?

Why would the concern not be the crime rather than the tool used in carrying out the crime?

Telegram within Russia and outside Russia are two completely different apps with completely different featureset and visible channels.

The only "anti-war" sentiment on Russian Telegram is ultra-nationalistic whining about the warfare not being efficient and brutal enough.

But outside Russia there are even pro-Ukrainian Russian-language Telegram channels.

> 1) The guy was marketing an open-text messenger as an e2ee messenger

Citations needed.

"unpopular"

If we feed all the comments say to chatgpt and ask it (or just count by hand pro/against tg posts) what result do you expect?

> They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers

FYI, this is a totally misleading and false claim.

Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud algorithm for non-secret chats[1][2].

In fact, it uses a split-key encryption system and the servers are all stored in multiple jurisdictions. So even Telegram employees can't decrypt the chats, because you'd need to compromise all the servers at the same time.

Telegram's algorithm has been independently audited multiple times. Compared to other apps like WhatsApp with claims of E2EE and no body of verification and validation.[3]

[1]: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto#general-description [2]: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFM... [3]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03141

And non E2E chats by default is an intentional design desision. Pavel previously gave comments about these tradeoffs: In some sense it is better design than Whatsapp's e2e by default BUT 99%+ users have an automated backup to an un-e2encrypted storage such as Google Drive.

Yeah. I have no idea how Telegram got this reputation for privacy.

I'd like to point out WhatsApp chats are also end-to-end encrypted, just like in Signal. People aren't wrong to distrust Meta but I'd like to point out that WhatsApp encryption often makes judges here seethe to the point they order nation wide blocks of WhatsApp out of spite. The fact everyone I know uses something this secure makes me very happy. It's not perfect but since network effects makes alternatives unusable I'll take what I can get.

This is misinformation that Telegram stores chat data in plaintext on their servers.

It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across the globe.

Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to be subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.

This Signal you trust? https://kitklarenberg.substack.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-...

Anyway, while it's possible to activate a Telegram account without a physical phone (using some temporary number services) or using an (relatively) anonymous SIM card 99% of users use it via Android or iOS and that's means there is no need to grab data from Telegram, USA gov. as well as Apple or Alphabet could simply milk them from their OSes, virtual keyboards and so on.

It's really cloying how many do focus on the service instead of weighting the ecosystem...

But we should let corporations into our lives that aren't even following the laws? Frankly, the Telegram users I've seen here and on Reddit really don't make a case for themselves, with all the sweeping accusations they throw around without knowing anything about the case.

20 years ago it was still reasonable to assume that the person you saw posting something was actually real, that the content you saw was actually written by somebody like you, curated by people like you. It's not like this anymore. It's time to stop being naive. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and one of them is granting foreign entities unrestricted access to the minds of your fellow countrymen.

if i put up a random E2E encrypted messaging side project i made on github and then people started using it for CSAM?

People use government built sidewalks to sell drugs, does that mean I can sue the govt for the drug trade?

In every country I know of, the freedom to not be responsible for what your user's do on a platform includes certain requirements. Removing illegal content is the very least a platform must do.

Every country has their own definition of "illegal" content, but things like CSAM are illegal everywhere, and that's one area where Telegram never really bothered to take action.

The arrest warrant has been out for a while, so I doubt Durov got himself arrested by accident. He probably has a plan, or at least good lawyers.

Wasn't the Silk Road founder jailed for something similar?

He provided the platform.

By knowingly facilitating criminal activities, you become complicit.

So if I own and operate a hardware store (or any other storefront) and do nothing about people who are clearly using it to deal fentanyl, I'm absolved of all wrong doing?

the government needs to enforce its laws. telegram is accused of getting in the way of enforcing laws. that seems like a reasonable accusation.

The ban against protests was stated by the courts to have to be done case by case.

The headscarf ban is part of all religious symbols in public areas like schools and hospitals.

France has never really been as liberal as people seem to think it is. The colonial history runs deep.

Rights don't give you super power to ignore laws. He failed to follow judicial orders. If he doesn't want to follow French justice orders, then leave France for good.

Head coverings are not banned. Anyone who's ever been to Paris or any french cities in the past few years can confirm.

> - All protests in support of Palestine banned

False

> - Head coverings banned

Absolutely untrue.

The French government actually uses Telegram.

The article is very poor mixing the actual charges with unrelated European Union concerns. The charges are not linked to encryption. Most of Telegram is unencrypted anyway.

The issue is with Telegram non cooperation and lack of moderation of publicly available content.

Your cell phone provider will cooperate with the authorities immediately and without question.

Cell phones are encrypted over the air, but they aren't end to end encrypted, and it's safe to assume that a provider will wiretap the plaintext passing through their backend if the authorities ask for it.

Telegram not being fully encrypted and seeing the content of most messages on its servers but not cooperating with the police?

The cell phone providers aren't likely refusing to cooperate with the authorities in whose jurisdiction they operate.

If a warrant exists they hand over all your data and even wiretap you.

Very peculiar coincidence

Signal doesn’t have public groups/channels. Moderation obligations only apply to public dissemination. If I send an email to a private mailing list, the involved email providers have no obligation to moderate its contents.

Telegram does store chats and channels on servers. Signal doesn't. I wonder Durov managed to stay between Scylla and Charybdis that long.

No need to imagine: https://signal.org/bigbrother/

Signal always sounded like they have better lawyers and are not as antagonistic. Police work is not only about encryption. But a lot of it involves metadata. And you know, just booting bad actors from the platform.

They also don't have public groups with questionable material, as far as I know

They are certainly already on Signal, but Signal has end-to-end encryption so cannot supply information other than meta information to authorities.

I think the difference is that Signal can't provide the data but Telegram could but didn't want to.

He did not. He stopped his jet to refuel in France, and they issued it in the mean time

Was it public knowledge prior to it's execution?

it was issued while he was en route

Is that information even possible to know? I believe in the US arrest warrants are generally sealed before an arrest is made.

didn't france put out the arrest warrant right before he got there to trap him?

What a sad way to try to infer this has anything to do with Telegram being so secure Durov has to be arrested, when its really about Durov letting CSAM sit on his servers for a decade.

>Should those Politicians be held responsible for the actions of people they let in?

What about native-persons, or people born in your magic country ie not 'let in'? Or, are you only talking about brown people?

Whataboutism.

keys, backdoors, lies (e.g., in the past, people were kill based on metadata alone--technically, no actual conversations' content is necessary).

Telegram is not a secure messaging platform. By default Telegram is not encrypted at all. Only "secret chats" in Telegram are encrypted. Telegram groups are not - and those can be made public and basically are just Telegram hosting content on their servers for you.

https://matrix.org/ ?

We do have Signal. People prefer not encrypted Telegram to it.

To be fair, it seems typical ceo behavior (gates, jobs, bezos) -- you don't become a billionaire by being nice.

My impression is that the arrest has to do with telegrams failure to cooperate with law enforcement. Hardware manufactorers don't generally have the ability to monitor and moderate what their product is used for. I guess one could imagine a hardware manufactorer being arrested for refusing to turn over a log of sales or similar.

Obviously god has no such restriction, but he's probably outside French jurisdiction, and i don't think they have an extradition deal in place.

This is not about encryption, it’s about lack of cooperation with the authorities, and breaking French law as a French citizen.

It's at least https encrypted and stored encrypted on multiple telegram servers.

So technically telegram could provide that data.

I guess that's the angle.

Why? He seems to be happily providing information to KGB (sorry, FSB), russian security service or ignoring backdoors they already have. In fact, telegram is one of the most powerful disinformation tool employed by russia. None of sane and savvy person who stands up to autority would use telegram.

News flash: they do. They just see their users as $$$ or don't give a damn. And their users don't care/don't know because they just want piece of mind or legal risk transferrance.

Legally speaking, if you get right down to it, privacy is de facto illegalized, and the old aphorism about "if you make a country where witchhunts are illegal, the population will be 3 civilly minded libertarians, and the rest witches" applies.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here; or just realize your dream is effectively only realizable for the exact type of people you don't trust to have it. Then find another line of work.

If you can post another contact other than LinkedIn, maybe Matrix or SimpleX, that'd be great.

Lets say I open up a grocery store. Criminals start buying their food and bookkeeping supplies there. The police discover this. Should I be held liable for fueling and enabling these criminals?

So free speech should be regulated like alcohol sales?

Or, using xkcd's $5 rubber hose, the french can now engineer a back door, just for their* use, and in return for a lenient-ish sentence.

*And the nsa, of course.

Telegram was never properly end-to-end encrypted. The way this works is Telegram client sends stuff to the server over client-server encryption. The service provider stores it on server's disk in Netherlands. Since Netherlands is not US, to NSA's hacking team Tailored Access Operations, hacking the server is considered 'fair game', i.e. there are no restrictions. When they hack the server they can read the life of 900,000,000 telegram users. It's that simple.

You shilling for Telegram's tech-billionare who got caught for hosting child porn for closer to a decade is almost as sad as Telegram's sad state and Durov's future.

Telegram doesn't have much to do with E2EE.

I don't why you were downvoted. Because that is exactly what is going on. EU is generally on a open-encryption-by-warrant path and this is a great example of applying some pressuring.

Should we enable the Iranian polotical refugee to communicate in secret with her family ?

Should we by warrant enable the possibility to open up messages when pedofiles sell or buy children for sex ?

Nasty questions.

You're still free to leave - advantage us.

And 'us' can be read as is, or capitalised.

> this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power

I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've gotten older is the way in which these cultural and legalistic norms, even 100 years+ bygone, still have considerable influence on modern cultures.

Europe, and particularly France, is very Catholic, ex-Holy Roman brained. US is very protestant brained. China cribs tons of stuff from their old imperial system.

It is unrelated to technological innovation (in the short run). I expect the same result in US. Europe is not united enough to have a separate from US opinion.