Emmanuel Macron on the Arrest of Pavel Durov | Hacker News Reader

Emmanuel Macron on the Arrest of Pavel Durov

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38 pointsbpierre29 comments

From the previous thread:

> French lawyer here, it's difficult to know anything as of now given that's all the information is covered by secrecy as long as he's in preliminary custody.

> Neither him nor his lawyers have access to the procedure yet.

> This will last for 48 hours from his arrest - it can be 96 hours if they decide his suspected crimes are about drugs or prostitution, and even 144 hours if it's about terrorism.

> So we'll probably need to wait for a few days before understanding what this is really about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41349046

Just wait and see, no need to rush for speculation

Macron may insist that the arrest of the Is Pavel Durov isn’t political, but it certainly looks that way. The silence from the judicial system, particularly the lack of a statement from the public prosecutor, only fuels this perception. Without clear communication, the void is filled with suspicion, making it hard to argue that politics isn’t at play.

Huh, sure do we even know how long cases like this take in the French system, or are you just happy to jump to conclusions ?

This is France, stop expecting the legal system to work like in the US. Dude was arrested on a /sunday/, and we have a thing called violation of the secrecy of the investigation (yeah, often, it's not respected, but still).

He is presumed innocent, and if there is a trial, it will be public.

Secrecy of the investigation is sadly less and less respected as regular papers turns into Anglo tabloids and social media professionals whiners think everyone owe them information.

How often do judicial prosecutions air a given case out in the public space? Especially pre-trial. Isn't that ripe for potential to ruin the case generally speaking?

Honestly at this point I am assuming there are bot farms (Russian origin?) spreading misinformation about this arrest.

The amount of delusional dissent is too high. And Snowden, IMO at this point an FSB asset, has immediately come out to condemn the arrest.

> the lack of a statement from the public prosecutor

Are you operating on the misguided assumption that every country in the world works like the USA?

There is no equivalent to a public prosecutor in the US here. Durov has been arrested so a magistrate had to fill a mandat d’arrêt but it could be a prosecutor who is directly under hierarchical control of the executive branch or a juge d’instruction if it’s linked to an existing investigation. Neither would speak to the media at this point.

As Blaise Pascal said, ‘Le silence est le plus grand persécuteur de la vérité’ (Silence is the greatest persecutor of truth). The lack of communication from judicial authorities, whether a magistrate, prosecutor, or juge d’instruction, only invites speculation. Transparency is key to preventing rumors from shaping the narrative

It's been less than 24 hours, over a weekend.

And yet they had no problem springing into action to have him arrested on a weekend. Funny how that works.

Police working 24/7 while the judicial system works on more typical hours is not news to anyone.

You seem delusional if you're surprised police work 7 days a week to arrest a high value target, while courts don't.

> Transparency is key to preventing rumors from shaping the narrative

Which narrative and why should they care? Durov is a French citizen who has been arrested in France following a clearly legal action.

You will probably hear nothing from the judicial authorities during his garde à vue because one, it would serve no purpose, two, it's very rare to hear the judicial authorities make public statement in France especially for investigation which doesn't particularly interest the public and at this point the French public don't seem to care about the whole thing at all.

I expect Durov's lawyer to make a statement at some point during of after his garde à vue however once they know what he has been charged with.

> Transparency is key to preventing rumors from shaping the narrative

True, but also maybe we can hold our horses a bit. There is an ongoing investigation. The story so far is that the French authorities arrested a French citizen.

If you are under the impression that there needs to be a public statement on that, I gotta disappoint you. Citizens are placed under arrest every day, and somehow there aren't press releases on that. Sure, Durov is an important public figure but I am not sure the French authorities have a habit to discuss an ongoing investigation with the press just so they can 'prevent rumors or shape the narrative'.

How I understand it, Telegram hosted publicly visible (read as 'non-encrypted') illegal content: drug ads/child pornography material, and failed or even declined to remove it. What is this attack on free speech here?

If they had end to end encrypted group chats, this content would have not been visible, hence nobody 'd have issued the takedown notice and Telegram would have had the plausible deniability. But right now things are clear as day: what we got here are repeated failures to comply to a takedown notice. Which is what the CEO has been arrested on.

We are talking about willingly and knowingly hosting illegal content and being a citizen of the country that issued the takedown notice. I don't see how this is an attack of free speech.

Here it is. The charges for everyone to see:

https://x.com/fs0c131y/status/1828103712964817389

Finally the charges against Pavel Durov has been published:

- Complicity - Administration of an online platform to allow an illegal transaction in an organised band,

- Refusal to communicate, at the request of the authorised authorities, the information or documents necessary for the realisation and exploitation of interceptions authorised by law,

- Complicity - Detention of the image of a minor of a child-pornographic nature,

- Complicity - Dissemination, offer or making available in an organised tape of images of a minor of a pornographic nature,

- Complicity - Acquisition, transport, holding, offer or disposal of narcotic products,

- Complicity - Offer, assignment or making available without legitimate reason of equipment, an instrument, a program or data designed or adapted for the attack and access to the operation of an automated data processing system,

- Complicity - Organised gang scam,

- Association of criminals with a view to committing a crime or offence punishable by 5 years of imprisonment at least,

- Money laundering of crimes or offences in organised gangs,

- Provision of cryptology services to ensure confidentiality functions without a declaration of conformity,

- Provision of a cryptological means not exclusively ensuring authentication or integrity control functions without prior declaration,

- Import of a cryptology means that does not exclusively perform authentication or integrity control functions without prior declaration.

For people without an account: https://xcancel.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/182807724560634267...

I am sure that such a bland and bureaucratic statement on a closed platform that is itself targeted by the EU will restore the confidence of the people who have strayed from the approved narratives.

Every single thread that's tangentially related to Russia has several new accounts, created minutes ago, posting for the first time using narratives that incidentally always line up with Russian interests, for some reason.

I almost never see fresh new accounts in other threads by comparison. It's very consistent.

How to say nothing in so many sentences.

What is the "false information" he is seeing? I genuinely have no idea what he is referring to.

Theres plenty on X saying France is doing this for a million reasons, all speculation ofc.

It seems to me that when a politician trots out the the phrases "misinformation" and "false information", it's similar to when a debater accuses his opponent of being a "nazi". When someone does that, they're usually admitting that they don't have a good argument, so they're resorting to an ad-hominem. It's not a good look, here.

Have you seen the new word "malinformation" yet? That basically means true information that damages the current regime's reputation. Government agencies have been set up in the US with the express goal of shutting down mis- dis- and malinformation lol.

Russians are absolutely losing their shit about this, because Telegram is the unofficial-but-predominant communication system of the entire Russian military.

So yes, a lot of noise is being spewed to try to turn everyone against this before any details are actually public.

How anyone can be blind to the presence and downright prevalence of misinformation online is beyond me.

I really don’t like Macron like, at all.

But in France there is separation of powers. No politician, including the president, have the power to make arrest people.

Also, in France, when you are arrested, you can be kept in "garde à vue" for as much as 48 hours (sometimes more but it’s rare exceptions) and during this period, there is no communication whatsoever.

It’s then up to the prosecutors to either decide to give up or to go to trial. If there is a trial, it will be a public trial. Like, any French citizen can just get in and out the tribunal during the trial whenever he wants.

So even if it was a political arrest (which it isn’t because it would be useless), Pavel Durov couldn’t be retained more than some days.

No, he is saying between the lines at the end of his tweet that a 'juge d'instruction' is leading the arrest, so that it isn't lead by the French executive power.

How many CEOs did France judicial arrest for OVH fires?

On the other hand: lots of criticisms thrown around highlighting France and French judicial system. Are we forgetting Assange (Sweden, UK, Aus, US), Snowden (US + everybody who didn't shelter him on his way to Ru), Huawei CFO (Canada, US)...

Obviously unless french justice can prove Pavel is the Al Capone of the nefarious gang syndicates operating on telegram, this is obviously political/idiological. Fair game, any sovereign state can arbitrarily display their powers however they want. Just don't pretend high ground next time

> How many CEOs did France judicial arrest for OVH fires?

OVH were sued and found liable for damages due to their backups being by default on the same site. But they weren't criminally liable, unless you know something the French magistrates don't?

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