Comment by pjerem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjerem | Hacker News Reader

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> What it means is that European states are going to try to extraterritorially dictate to foreign companies what content those companies can and cannot host on foreign-based webservers

It looks like the author failed to grab that Durov asked for the French nationality and therefore is a French citizen who must comply to French law.

> Telegram is not the only company in the world which has a social media platform used for unlawful purposes

Except Telegram is the only one of those companies which intentionally doesn’t answers to legal requests. All other social networks are cooperating with law enforcers in the countries they operate.

Even Signal is cooperating when asked too. The difference is that unlike Signal, Telegram owns its users data in plaintext.

Also the author fails to understand that the complicity here doesn’t mean that companies in Europe are responsible for their users content. Like in the US, they are responsible if they fail to comply to laws in a reasonable time. Telegram doesn’t comply in a reasonable time since they voluntarily don’t comply at all. That’s a huge difference.

The author wants to cry against the EU lows because EU bad period. "Don't travel to Europe, don't hire in Europe" and so on. The rest is looking for arguments to support his "hunches".

The author is “an adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School in New York City, where [he] teach[es] cryptocurrency law and practice” [1].

The law professor bit is shocking, given the article basically revolves around it making “zero sense for Durov to do any of these things,” as if criminality is always rational. But crypto has broadly come out in support of Durov [2].

[1] https://prestonbyrne.com/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/technology/telegram-crypt...

And it all makes sense if Durov is in fact working for the French secret services and his "arrestation" is just a way to protect him from novichok or a balcony fall, and a cover story for how France got hold of the keys to Telegram.

I mean, he got French citizenship despite not fitting any legal requirements, and nobody in the French government has given any explanation on why he got it.

This!!!! ^^^^^^^

That article mostly talks about cryptocurrencies.

In this case "crypto" in the title is confusing, since it could be also/instead about the cryptography industry...

Telegram in the primary communication platform for the Russian forces in Ukraine. That may or may not be of interest to the French authorities, but the fact that it is also used by the Russian mercenaries taking control over former French colonies definitely is. A French citizen aiding Russian military and mercenaries in the French sphere of interest is asking for trouble.

This is pure conjecture, btw.

FWIW I've been told it's sometimes also used by the Ukrainian diaspora to communicate with their families back in the war zone. Tough whatsapp appears to be more popular for that.

Its use is banned by Ukrainian military. I guess civilian use is still permitted.

It's banned because it leaks information (location, for instance) which is exactly the kind of thing you don't want leaking from your armed forces.

Indeed, Russia's ridiculous OPSEC has nothing to do with France enforcing its' laws. Even if this was the case, they're a few years late.

From telegram privacy policy:

>If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you're a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities. So far, this has never happened. When it does, we will include it in a semiannual transparency report published at: https://t.me/transparency.

What about "child trafficking suspect", "arms dealer suspect" or "drug dealer suspect" ?

The problem here is that authoritarian and Western governments might request the data about opposition activists under excuse of being "drug dealer suspect". For example, what if US requests data on Snowden or Assange?

Some government officials also qualify environment activists as "ecoterrorist" which make them enter in the "terror" category.

> Also the author fails to understand that the complicity here doesn’t mean that companies in Europe are responsible for their users content

In the EU, every company is responsible for what their users post on their service. There's a reason you won't find any (or very few) comment sections on the website of EU media and news companies. No one wanted to pay for the moderators needed, so when the law came around most comment sections were shuttered.

Do you have a source for this very outlandish claim? Since most newspapers do have comment sections.

Their claim is false. The eCommerce Directive (2000/31/CE), article 14, exempts service providers of liability when they merely act as hosts (eg. comment sections, chat services, you name it), as long as they are not aware of hosting illegal content.

>Legal request

A legal request comes from a legal authority: a judge.

>Cooperating with law enforcement

Law Enforcement (that's the police, right?) are not judges and are not authorised to rule on legal matters.

Hate has not logic.

So you are trying to cover the whole spectrum of things to ensure your belief that Durov is being legally detained.

Sorry for editing instead of answering. Reddit says I "post too fast".

A legal authority (judge) issues a legal request, which must be complied with to the best of your ability. If you don't comply, you're acting unlawfully and thus you're detained by law enforcement (police).

It's a pretty straightforward logic.

What logic ? Where is the hate ?

What a brutal slope here. What is the EU's endgame? That they can tell any tech company to implement specific features and backdoors to any product? How much do they pay for those man hours? Is there any examples of companies giving over gigabytes of encrypted garbage, then being told "hey you need to come up with a way for us to decrypt this"

What if it wasn't even encrypted, and was just so many gigabytes of data that the government doesn't have the skill or manhours themselves to wade through it? Can they demand big data tools tailor made per company?

Why can't companies submit software and data to these requests so covered in "cookie consent style popups" that nobody could ever get through it in multiple lifetimes?

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