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Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

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Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#681
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it pretty ridiculous to assume that any dev would comment on the inner workings of their employers software in any way beyond what is publicly available anyway. I certainly wouldn't.

Why not? If I think my employer is doing something unethical, I certainly would. That would be the moral thing to do. This tells me most of the people implementing this are either too-scared of the consequences, or they think what they're implementing is ethical and/or the right thing to do. Again, both are scary thoughts we should be highly concerned about in a healthy society that talks about these things. One othe…

It’d be quicker just to say when Facebook did something ethical.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is no logical link between the two events. Russian govt can protest that for propaganda reasons: to make a point that Western governments are restricting freedom of speech.

They're hitting that Uno Reverse card. Tbf, the US does a LOT of the stuff that we openly criticize Russia and China for. Which, I would hope that people have enough insight to recognize that this is a bad thing across the board. The only people who get hurt and face consequences from this kind of a thing are the citizens.

Can always count on HN for whataboutism.

Good thing it’s legal to say so in the countries that dominate its user base.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#683

This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again. Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything. Hell, then there's the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery s…

Dotcom got extradited (which was declared legal much later). Durov landed in a country that had an arrest warrant out for him. I hope his situation isn't similar to Dotcom's, as Dotcom was shown to be complicit in the crimes he was being persecuted for. Convicting the megaupload people would've been a LOT harder if they hadn't been uploading and curating illegal content on their platform themselves. As a service prov…

Wrong.

https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/-i-m-not-leaving---kim-do...

1) There was an order signed recently. He has not physically left NZ yet. 2) He's not convicted, he hasn't been in front of a judge for the charges against him

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#684
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He refuses to implement backdoors as well. We have no way to know this, and (unlike Signal), Telegram doesn't give us best-effort assurances by doing things like open-sourcing its code.

> We have no way to know this Well, other than his arrest ;-)

I did not see in the list the 'did not allow us adding backdoor to their service' charge. Did I miss something?

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#685
post #99

A lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less. The comparisons to other providers is off base because either other providers are cooperating more when they possess actionable, unencrypted information and taking s…

> One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement. Should you remove e.g blasphemy which is illegal in many countries including some of what I assume you call "developed world"?

I am pretty sure that aiding criminal activity or child pornography are illegal in more countries than not, which are on the list of charges, and can be expected to do against from anyone, and ontopic here. Unlike blasphemy.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do [...] maybe I'm just being naive? In this case, the comment does strike me as naive. Back in the 1990s the tech community convinced itself (myself included) that Napster had zero ethical responsibility for the mass piracy it enabled. In reality, law in a society is supposed to serve that society. The tech community talked itself into believing tha…

This comment can itself be said to take for granted the naive view of what law it exposes. Law is a way to enforce a policy on massive scale, sure. But there is no guarantee that it enforces things that are aiming the best equilibrium of everyone flourishing in society. And even when it does, laws are done by humans, so unless they results from a highly dynamic process that gather feedback from those on which it appl…

You know, I agree with nearly all of these points. I even think there is something to your point about Napster 'being a symptom' but (as people love to say around here) it's 'orthogonal' to the original point I wanted to make.

Few things would please me more than to live under a system where arts and culture were freely available to all, and artists didn't have to starve in the process. It doesn't strike me as far-fetched either; it wouldn't take much to improve on the system we currently have.

But my original point was that, given the society we actually had when Napster came along, it was unreasonable for Napster unilaterally to decide for everyone else that existing laws and expectations no longer mattered.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#687
post #6

Telegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it. When you create something that is objectively great, everyone will use it - including bad actors.

The masses do not care much if ones do not do agains bad actors what are in their power just their pretty platform shall keep running, they will keep this one alive too and argue for it to the death, don't worry, the masses could argue for any malicious thing that they find pretty or nice or like for some reason. Can organize some protest or even riot too in a - unencrypted by nature - group channel, there will be scores to participate, as recent example show in other precious matters, maybe can loot some good scores too on the side of the big party about a dear matter for the heart! Paris deserve the revenge! : /

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even then you don’t have to tell them it’s illegal. Just what you earned. Frankly they don’t care where it came from as long as you report and pay.

No, you have to specify where it came from. You don't have to say what crime you committed, but you'd list the income under "income from illegal activities".

It’s very loose. You can just say cash and that’s fine.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not assume When in doubt, ask. I was replying to any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your service I mentioned criminal lawyers because their job is literally to "offer their services to criminals or to people accused of being criminals" and they have no obligation whatsoever to minimize bad actors from using your service , in fact bad actors are usually their regular clientele and they a…

> The premise of this story is that Telegram offers a service which is very similar to safe deposit boxes, the bank it's not supposed to know what you keep in there hence they are not held responsible if they are used for illegal activities. This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or Hacker News. Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content Moderatio…

> This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or Hacker News.

e2e encryption cannot be broken though

> Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content Moderation is expected from all internet platforms as part of Section 230 (USA), Directive 2000/31/EC (EU), Defamation Act 2023 (UK), etc.

I have no sympathy for Durov and I don't care if they throw away the keys, but what about Mullvad then?

I guess that a service whose main feature is secrecy and anonymity should at least provide anonymity and secrecy.

> CP, Illicit Drug Transactions, Threats of Violence, and other felonies

you understand better than me that the request is absurd all of this is in theory, in practice nobody can actually do it for real, the vast majority of illicit clear text content are honeypots created by agents of various agencies to threaten the platforms and force them to cooperate. nothing's new here, but let's not pretend that this is to prevent crimes.

also: the allegations against Telegram are that they do not cooperate, but we don't actually know if they really crack down on CP or other illegal activities or not, because if they don't, the reasonable thing to do would be to shut down the platform, what does arresting the CEO accomplish? (rhetorical question: they - I don't want to throw names, but i think that the usual suspects are involved - want access to and control of the content, closing the platform would only deny them access and would create uproar among the population - remember when Russia blocked Telegram?)

also 2: AFAIK Telegram requires a phone number to create an account, it's the responsibility of the provider to KYC when selling a phone number, not Telegram's.

also 3: safe deposit boxes are not necessarily linked to bank accounts. I pay for a safety deposit box in Switzerland but have no Swiss bank account.

So my guess is EU wants in some way control the narrative in Telegram channels where the vast majority of the news regarding the war in Ukraine spread from the war front to the continent.

> First, it's Pinkman BIATCH not Pinkam.

Sorry. I'm dyslexic and English is not my mother tongue, but the 4th language I've learned, when I was already a teenager.

> was previously suspended by the NM Bar Association

that was the point. TV dramas need good characters and a criminal lawyer who's also a criminal is more interesting than a criminal lawyer who's just a plain boring lawyer that indulges in no criminal activity whatsoever.

Re: Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one out of ten thousand people use your product for illegal deeds you’re fine. This logic clearly makes the prison of someone like the owner of Telegram difficult to justify, since 99.999% of messages in telegram are completely legal.

If 10,000 people out of 10 million are doing illegal things and you know about it or you are going out of your way to turn a blind eye then you’re gonna have a bad time. This really isn’t that complicated.

But how would you know about this illegal activity, if the product can be used by anyone? Only if you were eavesdropping on your users...
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