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Comment by cedws | Hacker News Reader

Remember when they arrested Pavel Durov? I don't buy their official reasoning.

Dear European friends, our leaders are tightening the screws. If we don't make our voices heard this is only going to get worse.

https://x.com/durov/status/1976420399970701543

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I remember. It helped expose his lies about not traveling to russia and not collaborating with russian security services.

care to expand/provide some more info?

Durov had long claimed he was in exile from Russia and couldn’t return and that he was a UAE/French citizen. then records leaked that showed 120 border crossings from 2016-2021 and that he still held a Russian passport. One such border crossing was a flight from St Petersburg on June 18, 2020 which happens to be the same day that Telegram was unblocked in Russia… Lots and lots of smoke..

The Kyiv Independent article is a good summary.

https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-examining-telegram-found...

I was hit pretty hard when Russia was trying to block telegram; I don’t buy that it was a coverup. And there is only a single (anonymous) source for that whole article.

That said, would be good to rely on no central authority and use Matrix instead; or at least put OTR/Ratchet on top of Telegram with custom clients.

TG does not seem hostile to third party clients the same way Whatsapp/Signal are.

It would otherwise serve the USA for people to prefer Signal over TG (due to jurisdiction).

I think they legitimately blocked Telegram and then Durov made a series of choices to bring it back to Russia.

Basically everything in the KI story has been verified. Durov admitted that he kept his Russian passport, he admitted that he was essentially lying about his Russian exile and regularly and freely traveled there, he hasn’t denied spending the week before Telegram was reinstated in St Petersburg which would be a no-brainer if he wasn’t really there.

As for choice of app — it again depends on your adversary. Telegram’s non-standard and home-brewed protocol has had every crypto expert asking “why? If not to…”

Lookup the name Vladimir Vedeneev and try and figure out why he’s signing Russian contracts as Telegram’s CFO and why his company GlobalNet has bragged about being the first to do DPI on backbone infrastructure while his other company Electrotelecom has FSB contracts for surveillance software.

I dare to point out that this article provides no real evidence for these audacious accusations.

See my other comment but Durov later admitted to basically all of that (he does travel freely in Russia, he did keep his Russian passport, the border crossing list was accurate). The signal - telegram debate has always come down to some variation of “If you trust Telegram to not allow MitM access to their servers and if the non-standard encryption they choose is secure and if you enabled the secure chat feature, it’s probably fine. Signal uses standard encryption and the messages are always encrypted so there’s no need to trust anyone.”

Which is likely why Signal is banned in Russia and Telegram is freely available.

I mean, Durov has been trying to push for Russian puppets to get elected in Romanian and Moldovan elections, by pushing to everyone (at least in Romania, he might've just posted on twitter for Moldova) that the French government is trying to interfere in the Romanian elections. I mean, it turns out, Russia was, on behalf of the candidate he was talking about... so take from that what you will.

Oh, yeah, and he calls himself DuRove now. Hats off for that one, but I hope he rots in prison for advancing the Russian agenda.

I mean, sorry, but the EU essentially installed puppets in both Romania and Moldova, what are we even talking about here?

I'm sure you're very familiar with the politics of both countries, but tell me...

How is Nicusor Dan a puppet of the EU? More than Calin Georgescu? The guy who actively tried to stage a coup? More than George Simion? Granted, there's no PROOF he's a Russian puppet, but he's a far right twat that has views friendly to Russia.

How is Maia Sandu and PES a puppet of the EU? And... let's look at BEP. Voronin, Russia friendly ex President, he was very against Moldova trying to get closer to the West. And Dodon? The guy who is being indicted for treason, who's a friend of Plahotniuc (he stole 1 billion dollars from banks and fled the country)? Yeah, sure, puppets of the EU, vs corrupt fucking puppets of Russia.

I know it's easy to look at this stuff from the outside and say, oh, yeah, the EU is interfering in elections, but there's a lot of history here that you obviously don't have. I like Maia Sandu more than Nicusor Dan (his positions on gay rights were disgusting a while back, he now just stopped talking about them), but compared to the obviousness of the Russian support for their opposition, I think the fact that the EU supports them is just insignificant.

Remember when they just annulled an election when they did not like the result?

The election integrity in question:

I don't. I do remember when they were annulled after Russian interference and there were other fundamental issue with the first first round and Georgescu's campaign that broke the law.

> I know it's easy to look at this stuff from the outside and say, oh, yeah, the EU is interfering in elections, but there's a lot of history here

There being "history" is not a valid excuse for openly manipulating elections.

Especially not as the EU Commission throws around unproven allegations of the very same all the time.

When I say history, I mean more than just the decision, which might look like "oh, they didn't like the results", but also the events that lead up to it, the campaign. I'm not even going to go into the coup d'etat he attempted after the elections with a group of far right mercenaries, or the things that came out about the campaign and Georgescu that weren't known at the time (which, obviously, couldn't have been a factor, but confirm that this was the right decision).

I'm not sure what the accusations you're talking about are

You know I didn't use to understand libertarians, but after years of watching boundaries being overstepped again and again I think I see the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods.

Like, in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms, what more do you fucking want? Security is beyond a laughable excuse for things like chat control. Power tripping elitists will never be happy until they have the entire population under 24/7 camera surveillance and can read every thought in our heads as it occurs. If you make crime impossible, you make free will impossible.

The same reason there's only more regulations being piled on top of previous ones. Sadly only wars and similar catastrophes work as reset buttons for these things historically. A peace as long as the current one is somewhat of an untested ground

I agree with your overall sentiment, except:

"Like, in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms"

Russia. Putin.

I'm talking about our society internally, not potential external attacks on it. It's reasonably high trust and crime is rare outside a few outlier cities. We could not be further from warranting these sort of fascist style crackdowns. Ironically yes we could be spending funding used for domestic surveillance and bureaucracy on buying more Himars.

The chances of Russia invading a NATO country are essentially zero simply because it would, almost certainly, lead to nuclear war. The idea that nukes wouldn't come out is contradicted both by decades of wargaming. In fact this is exactly what led to the end of the Cold War.

At one time the US thought we could end the Cold War by waving a bigger stick. But Proud Prophet [1] was an extremely elaborate war game played out in the 80s that demonstrated that literally every single aggressive strategy, regardless of how innocuous, invariably spiraled rapidly towards nuclear war and the depopulation of the Northern Hemisphere.

This led the US to sharply scale back rhetoric against the USSR, drop ideas of successfully fighting a nuclear war, and a sharp shift towards de-escalation and away from strong-arming. 7 years later the first McDonalds would open in the USSR. The next year, the USSR would collapse.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet

This has nothing to do with anything. Nobody said anything about nuclear war or formal invasion.

Let's review.

Russia shot down a civilian airliner, killing all 298 people onboard, mostly Dutch nationals.

Russia performed a radioactive poisoning attack on British territory, contaminating British civilian areas and

Russia also used a deadly nerve agent twice within a few months on British territory, including poisoning two non-Russian British nationals, killing one and injuring the other.

And they actively fund far right and white supremacist organizations in western European countries and blatantly interfere in local politics, and also run active bot farms for the purpose of undermining social solidarity and democratic governance.

Those are just a few things we know about.

The threat from Russia is not external or invasive. It is internal and ongoing.

The fact that they haven't nuked and won't nuke the entire western hemisphere is a bit of a strange bar to set.

His comment said that "in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms." And in the past Europe dealt with never-ending wars which culminated in a war that left tens of millions dead. And even after that war, there was the never-ending threat of nuclear annihilation that was 100% justified as both sides lined up their nukes at one another and very nearly fired them. Nothing in your list is anywhere near the same scale. The only thing that would suffice is a fear that Russia invades a NATO country and effectively triggers WW3.

none of the countries that Putin could and would invade, e.g. Finland, the Baltics, Poland, have nukes.

It would depend on the UK, France, and the US to back them with nuclear weapons. Would the UK electorate be willing to trade their existence -- potential nuclear holocaust -- for Latvia?

And the US is under Putin's puppet, so they're not launching nukes.

Would Britain and France go to war over an invasion of Poland? They did once, and didn't have a great time...

I think there are three big factors that make involvement almost guaranteed. The first is that in modern times political leaders prefer to believe what they want to believe, instead of what is genuinely most probable. They won't see it as trading their existence for anything. They'll convince themselves that they'll decisively win, or that Russia won't retaliate, or won't be able to retaliate.

The second is that the leaders of these countries are very unpopular. Starmer has an approval rating of 22% which is somehow twice as high as that of Macron who has reached a simply impressive 11% approval rating. Politicians love nothing more than war when they're unpopular, because it gives the electorate something to focus on outside of their own internal problems -- Diversionary War Theory. Also I certainly disagree regarding our insecure 'peace president' who has an affinity for bombs and a trend towards megalomania.

And finally there is the wargaming results. Some of the actions that led to nuclear holocaust were relatively innocuous, including performative nuclear strikes intended to 'send a message' rather than actually cause much real damage. It doesn't even sound like a bad idea, at first. Make it clear that you're serious and this is the path we're going down.

But it fails to consider the most probable response. You want to send me a message? Okay, here's your answer. How do you like my message? And of course you can't let such a provocation then go unmet. It's easy to see how what sounds like a reasonable idea is in reality a very bad one, but modern political leaders in the West make endless poor decisions with predictably poor results. You've gotta be something special to have an approval rating of 11%. Were such things measured in the past, even Caligula would probably be looking down at you!

> in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms, what more do you fucking want?

For people not to get killed, abused, and exploited? You don't sound like a "libertarian" you sound like an anarchist.

You know who has a large part of the population under global 24/7 surveillance right now? Google, Facebook, Microsoft.

The libertarians that want to live in the woods have a point.

The problem is the libertarians that want to burn it all down and build a corpo-state.

It’s important to defend libertarian values even when things are good. Small violations of civil rights have a tendency to stick around and snowball into something worse.

The katamari will grow until morale improves.

> I think I see the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods.

AFAIK, you're not allowed to live in a cabin in the woods in Europe.

Except in Finland :)

Unfortunately summer cottage can't be your primary residence in Finland either

try it, like these people https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7iJDMU43iUk

"... the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods."

I hope that's not what you think libertarianism is about. I'm sure there are libertarians who DO feel that way, but it's not a core tenet to personally isolate and live off the land.

Libertarianism sees not left vs right, but instead the people against the government. Libertarians focus on personal liberty and solving problems together, voluntarily, as individuals cooperating. A libertarian would say, for example, that if I think a bridge should be built, then I should either build it myself or convince other people to help me out voluntarily - but not use government to force people to help (via taxes, etc).

Libertarians are against force/coercion, and see government as the ultimate expression of force.

There are some loony libertarians, as there are of any political party, but most of us have pretty ordinary and mainstream beliefs and priorities.

Libertarians reject governmental force but provide no barriers to corporate force. There are innumerable documented examples of corporate force having greater control over the population than a government. These examples are not just historical but also include the time we are currently living in.

I don't think this is true of libertarianism. Libertarians reject use of force, except to prevent other use of force. I.e. I can use force to stop someone else from using force on me (or others).

Corporations are not exempt from this. A libertarian would support using force to stop a corporation from using force to coerce people to do something.

But Libertarians reject a premise that a corporation is required to serve you. You can opt-out and the corporation should leave you alone. But you are not entitled to service or employment from that corporation. Your rights cannot depend on the performance of another. I have a right to produce or purchase my own food, but I do not have an right/entitlement to food that I have not purchased or produced.

I still don't see how Libertarians can solve the current problems we have with corporate abuse of force. For example, if a company is a major employer in town and pollutes both the ground and the water, how is an individual going to push back against the company's power? How is an individual going to apply force to a corporation to get them to stop and/or clean up the pollution?

How can an individual or even a group of individuals stop a corporation from underpaying its workers so that they need to use some public assistance, food, or medical care?

There are many similar examples, but they all boil down to the asymmetry of power. An organization capable of employing many lawyers, or even a single good one, can grind you down until you have nothing left. I still see libertarians as having no answer.

I think the only way to fight back against corporate abuse is to build a stronger center of power. Something like a union, a citizenry willing to take collective action, or even a Government that is not beholden to corporate interests.

In your example most (not all) libertarians would agree that you need some regulation of those corporations to prevent or minimize external costs, or in some other way factor them in. But the regulations should be as local as possible, and directed only toward the stated objective, with a little other government control as possible. E.g. you can tax my carbon emissions, but you can't regulate my vehicle or fuel consumption.

For example, regarding pollution, prohibiting any discharge of the offending pollutants, or measuring and taxing them in some way - but with no requirements about HOW a corporation should meet these regulations or otherwise run their business.

Unions are fine, and people should obviously be free to join them if they want. But there should not be any laws that require or favor unions, and government employees should not be allowed to unionize.

A government beholden to corporate interests doesn't matter much if the government doesn't have much power. But with power comes interests and influence, always.

> We’ve been made to believe that the greatest fight of our generation is to destroy everything our forefathers left us: tradition, privacy, sovereignty, the free market, and free speech.

Read: "Hi, I'm a right-wing populist."

Tradition is virtue signalling to them. Sovereignty is to fuel this anti-EU trend (a Russian propaganda point).

Durov is a Russian asset, I'm sure of it. Why, cause he got ties with the underworld, that is why. He didn't want to act on warez, narcotics, criminals, scams, etc. None of that he took serious, because in the viewpoint of a Russian criminal (the Russian state is the head of the criminal enterprise) all of that is just business. Which is also why he gets along so well with Trump. But when he didn't want to act on child pornography, he went too far. Because approximately all adults oppose that sexual preference. That is when France got his ass handed on a silver plate.

If this guy would care about free speech he'd be a lot more vocal about Trump and Putin instead of France and EU. The EU is under attack by Russian trolls, ask anyone who works in SOC. It has become worse...

> I don't buy their official reasoning.

Why not? Have you used Telegram? Before Durov’s arrest there was open drug trade everywhere, afterwards they started to actively ban groups.

In the Pavel case, it involved child pornography groups on Telegram and the fact that they ignore a court order.

But I agree with you for the authoritarian logics in Europe (even America) with Chat Control and other actions like the French gov. just did....

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