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Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

nytimes.com

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Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#11
post #2

https://archive.is/wDlpb I found it a little low on detail, though.

"Telegram has played a role in multiple criminal cases in France tied to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and online hate crimes, but has shown a “near-total absence” of response to requests for cooperation from law enforcement, Ms. Beccuau said."

That's not little low on details.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#12

Is there any website owner with a million users who can't be held accountable for the same crimes? According to the logic in France, since criminals use Windows, the CEO of Microsoft could also be blamed.

> According to the logic in France, since criminals use Windows, the CEO of Microsoft could also be blamed.

That's a very bad take. The charges are because of Telegram repeatedly refusing or being too slow to take down illegal content (illegal in France, that is): child pornography, drugs ads, etc. Meta and X both remove illegal content when a notice from authorities is made, unlike Telegram which drags its feet.

If Telegram was encrypted e2e, Durov would not have been able to know of the existence of that illegal content, and could have plausible deniability. As it stands though, Telegram was notified of publicly available illegal content, and refused to remove it, which is a crime in France, where Durov is a citizen.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#13
post #12

Is there any website owner with a million users who can't be held accountable for the same crimes? According to the logic in France, since criminals use Windows, the CEO of Microsoft could also be blamed.

> According to the logic in France, since criminals use Windows, the CEO of Microsoft could also be blamed. That's a very bad take. The charges are because of Telegram repeatedly refusing or being too slow to take down illegal content (illegal in France, that is): child pornography, drugs ads, etc. Meta and X both remove illegal content when a notice from authorities is made, unlike Telegram which drags its feet. If…

> where Durov is a citizen.

Why is this important? Do you think he would not have been arrested if he had not had a French passport? I would think that all that matters is that his crimes fall under French jurisdiction.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#14

Some interesting facts: - Durov is, according to him, living in exile outside of Russia since 2014 - due to Russian gov persecution. - Since his "exile" - he has travelled 50-60 times to Russia https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/1f2pgg3/pavel_dur... - Most Russian billionaires that live in exile and are persecuted by the RU gov fall from windows (or something tall) quite often. Durov has been living lavishly…

Yeah and Telegram is also the biggest source of disinfo. Total Russian operation.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#15
It is even possible that Durov has saved lives by not communicating user information to the french intelligence services.

Recently have been a bunch of scandals where french intelligence officers where involved in murder plots.

- There is "Haurus", a french intelligence officer who sold personal information on the darknet, in one case he sold personal information including the address of a drug dealer. Something that is believed to have helped in his murdered by a "competitor".

- There is the murder of racing driver "Laurent Pasquali" who is presumed to have been killed by a french intelligence officer. The plot involved over 20 people with several of them being french intelligence officers. In fact they got his personal information and address to plan the murder plot through the french intelligence database.

You can Google all this, it is true.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#16

Some interesting facts: - Durov is, according to him, living in exile outside of Russia since 2014 - due to Russian gov persecution. - Since his "exile" - he has travelled 50-60 times to Russia https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/1f2pgg3/pavel_dur... - Most Russian billionaires that live in exile and are persecuted by the RU gov fall from windows (or something tall) quite often. Durov has been living lavishly…

> Since his "exile" - he has travelled 50-60 times to Russia

That "fact" is disputed. The source of that information appears to have relied on unverified information, among other issues.

I do find it odd that Russia is working so hard to get him out of France, though.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#17

Some interesting facts: - Durov is, according to him, living in exile outside of Russia since 2014 - due to Russian gov persecution. - Since his "exile" - he has travelled 50-60 times to Russia https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/1f2pgg3/pavel_dur... - Most Russian billionaires that live in exile and are persecuted by the RU gov fall from windows (or something tall) quite often. Durov has been living lavishly…

Interesting that this comment is down-voted. I think it's worth noting that Telegram LLC—as organisation itself—is anomalous to the point where it's consistent with Russian "cover" doctrine. For example, you wouldn't find ex-Telegram employees on Linkedin, Telegram itself seemingly doesn't invite people for interviews, there's no ex-Telegram people in the industry. Their open source software is developed using fake-umbrella accounts such as John Preston, DrKLO, Ilya Laktyushin (Telegram Desktop, Android and iOS clients respectively.) There is no executive layer in the company, too. Telegram doesn't seem to compete for engineering talent on labour market, Telegram employees don't go to conferences, are never seen on mailing lists of open source projects, etc.

We're simply led to believe that Telegram (a 950M user base) is developed by a Pavel, his brother, and their "friends" in Dubai. There's no evidence of any physical office in Dubai, too.

In short, there's very little evidence to corroborate their story.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#19
If Durov is liable for crimes committed on his platform how far away are we from making phone companies and ISPs liable for crimes committed using their services?

This is a very slippery slope.

I don't see a problem with requiring a company to cooperate with a court order to release data. However if a company does not have this data (because it's encrypted) it should not be liable or be required to collect such data.

Re: Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

#20
I am not a Durov fan, but wouldn’t it make sense that if a top exec of a platform is criminally liable for the crimes happening on the platform, the head of state who has an authority to use force against the citizens should be legally liable for crimes happening in their country?

Edit: the argument about Durov not ”trying to do anything” after the French requests don't seem that relevant as it aligns with “I tried” excuse of a poor student’s missing homework, i.e. trying isn’t enough - crimes are either stopped or they aren’t.

Edit2: ha @ downvotes w/o any opinions.

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