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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

#261

Post by vzaliva »

Well, this is the consequence of Telegram's poor privacy choices. Most chats are not end-to-end encrypted, and they could have access to their content. This makes them liable when they refuse governments' requests for such information. It also raises the question of whether they have given such access to other governments like Russia (coincidentally, Durov was in Baku at the same time Putin was visiting, and there is speculation that they may have met).

In contrast, Signal does not have access to any chats or user information (except the timestamp of when users last logged in) and could not be forced to wiretap.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#262

Post by cdchn »

mdhb wrote: post #47
thamer wrote: 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…

A French citizen running a service in France is going to be subject to French laws and can expect to be arrested when they step into the country of France if they have charges pending. This isn’t some grand conspiracy theory.

I wonder what his gameplan was trying to become a French citizen in the first place.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#263

Post by baybal2 »

tokai wrote: post #151
codedokode wrote: post #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 r…

Prepaid sim cards, bought with cash by mules, make the phone number requirement completely inefficient.

[dead]

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#264

Post by popcalc »

vizzah wrote: post #85
chad1n wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has been complaining about Telegram's end-to-end encryption for a long time and they want to implement some regulations to basically add backdoors into all messaging apps. I don't really see how this case will go on since at least private chats are encrypted so Telegram (theoretically at least) can't see the contents.

Private chats are a hassle to initiate and not multi-device. Most use normal chats. With anonymous accounts, using anonymous +888 numbers, whose price has increased from $16 to $1000+ in a matter of a year, it is indeed a very convenient playground for all sorts of activities.

Security theater.

SimpleX is the real deal.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#266

Post by mmsc »

gck1 wrote: post #258

Funny story - there were some protests in my country some months ago. We're a semi-autocratic country on the verge of becoming a dictatorship. During the protests, the government used masked 'civilians,' or what you'd call 'titushkis,' to beat up activists at their home addresses or elsewhere in public. We were also getting calls from fake numbers on our personal numbers with threats. A channel was created on Telegra…

In case anybody was wondering, OP is talking about Georgia the country.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#267

Post by kgeist »

timeon wrote: post #197
kgeist wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Durov was notorious in Russia for refusing to cooperate with FSB (successor to KGB), too. I remember when FSB asked him to give access to protester communications on VK (in 2011 during mass protests), he mockingly responded with a picture of a dog with its tongue out (showing your tongue means "I won't give it to ya" in Russian culture). That's why he left Russia, because he felt he'd get arrested soon. Quite ironic…

> Telegram was also banned in Russia for a few years. What has changed since then?

IIRC the bans weren't successful because the Telegram client had a system which announced new servers/IPs via push notifications. So they easily evaded it. Plus, the agency responsible for the bans got a bad rep after accidentally banning lots of unrelated services, ruining random businesses in Russia.

Maybe they also understood that if you can't defeat them, lead them. Currently, Telegram has a lot of pro-war, pro-Kremlin channels.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#268

Post by scrlk »

gmueckl wrote: post #99
codedokode wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Twitter already got warned about hosting Trump by the EU.

That warning was not an official EU position:

> "Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, had posted the warning letter on X, the platform owned by Musk, hours before the billionaire interviewed US presidential candidate Donald Trump, also on X."

> "On Tuesday the European Commission denied Breton had approval from its president Ursula von der Leyen to send the letter."

https://www.ft.com/content/09cf4713-7199-4e47-a373-ed5de61c2...

https://archive.ph/zugnf

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#269

Post by vessenes »

chucke1992 wrote: post #23
vessenes wrote: post #19

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…

> I don't believe there are any western nations that want non-locally-backdoored messaging of any sort But that's what exactly they want no? EU is literally implementing a regulation that will allow to "circumvent end-to-end encryption to address child sexual abuse material". I believe it failed to pass recently, but they will try again - and nothing stops countries to implement it independently. I think France is th…

I think you read my clumsy sentence backwards. They absolutely want to get in the middle of messaging, all of them. This is behind many of the calls for E2E interop as well -- all the proposals I'm aware of call for termination somewhere in the middle; you can imagine who'd like to be at that termination middle point. This is why Apple will not "move over" to RCS, ever, as a first class transport -- it's fundamentally no more secure than OTA plaintext to existing persistent threat actors.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#270

Post by mrtksn »

artembugara wrote: post #26

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…

AFAIK Telegram isn’t e2e for the interesting bits, that’s the group chats etc.

If I have to guess, I would say that the authorities would be interested in identities of some users and access to private group chats with shady stuff and Telegram would be able to provide these.

These are probably already available to the Russian intelligence considering the low radiation levels in Pavel Durov’s blood stream and no novichok experience.

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