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Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

theguardian.com

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Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#61
post #2

I did not see the info anywhere else, but it was just broadcasted by the main French tv channel. Pavel Durov, the Telegram founder was just arrested out of his airplane in the Bourget airport in France near Paris. There is no info about why exactly he was arrested but it looks like that French police had a warrant for him. But it looks like it is because that he is accused of being an accessory of a lot of things lik…

Feels very much like a political crime, how soon until Mark Zuckerberg is arrested for WhatsApp?

There’s a world of a difference between refusing to hand over data you have to the authorities, and plausibly not having stored them in the first place.

By end-to-end encrypting messages, but uploading backups to Google Drive and iCloud, and in a non-end-to-end encrypted way by default, WhatsApp (and iMessage, which does largely the same) have quite cleverly maneuvered themselves out of that potential source of legal problems without cutting off law enforcement access entirely.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#62
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically as he did not provide access to the encrypted messages and communication in Telegram, they accused him for supporting the criminals. That's all to it. It is basically the part of the current politics in EU where they are trying to force access to all encrypted traffic across devices.

Do you have any proof of this whatsoever or are you just making this up?

just one google away https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#63

According to this source he’s accused in non-cooperating. He’s not accused of terrorism, drug, or slaving directly. Very interesting to see where it will all go. I don’t understand how they’re going to convince French judges that he’s guilty for not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for…

According to which source?

The one this HN post links to

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#65
post #55

Not clear right now if France thinks he was actively complicit with the four horsemen listed, or if just the act of running Telegram makes him complicit in their eyes, or something in the middle, e.g. they asked for help and Telegram turned them down. This will be an interesting case to watch -- I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort -- but generally my un…

But here's the thing. If your app is known to be uses heavily by criminals ranging from Pedo's to drug dealers. You are liable. You run a carrier service. Much like the owner of omegle found out, yes you do have a duty of care. You can't just provide a service that knowingly provides a platform to criminal activity and do jack shit. You live in fairytale land if you think you can.

What do you mean by "knowingly providing a service to a criminal"? Is Elon Mask then guilty for providing access to Twitter for Trump?

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#66
post #40

From the article, that's a massive pile of charges they're dumping onto him, all apparently because people use Telegram in ways the French state disapproves of? > Why was he under threat of a search warrant? > The justice department considers that the lack of moderation, lack of cooperation with law enforcement, and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) make him an accomplice to dr…

Well of you provide a service and it's knowingly used by criminals and you just implement features to benefit the criminal activity but make no effort to curb it. Yes, your an accomplice.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#67
post #4
post #2

I did not see the info anywhere else, but it was just broadcasted by the main French tv channel. Pavel Durov, the Telegram founder was just arrested out of his airplane in the Bourget airport in France near Paris. There is no info about why exactly he was arrested but it looks like that French police had a warrant for him. But it looks like it is because that he is accused of being an accessory of a lot of things lik…

>I can easily guess that assholes in secret service would probably like very much to use that to blackmail him to add backdoors to telegram Do you unironically believe it's not already backdoored for Russian government?

There is no need for a backdoor since the vast majority of messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted. Just read from the server!

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#68
post #49
post #32

[flagged]

Telegram is used heavily in both Ukraine & Russia. But I doubt it has anything to do with it.

Between Ukraine and Russia, Telegram is the only choice for Russia.

Ukraine has many many other options.

What else is there for Russians to communicate with the outer world?

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#69
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he intentionally cooperated with criminals then it is one thing. But if someone posted something illegal, and nobody reported this, then it obviously is not Durov's fault. If you are too lazy to report illegal content then you should arrest yourselves first.

Maybe just wait a moment for things to come out through the natural course of justice rather than getting yourself all worked up here. The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.

- "probably reasonable to assume"

Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions doesn't exactly have a great track record.

I remember when the GoF tried to blackmail a Wikipedia admin with prosecution threats, to coerce them to censor Wikipedia entries it didn't want people to read,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)")

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#70
They claim that criminals use Telegram, but it is not the best choice for doing crime because Telegram requires a phone number to sign up, and a phone number can be linked to identity and full location history (telcos record full location history for every number).

However, Telegram might be involved in cooperating with criminals; for example by not deleting channels related to protests against government at govt's request, by not blocking channels of allegedly spreading misinformation Western media like BBC. This is indeed illegal in Russia.

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