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Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

theguardian.com

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#321
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

To be clear, the legislation in France and in the EU that is most likely behind this arrest is that companies have to at least try to do some moderation. There is an understanding that not everything can be moderated (obviously, the entire Internet would be banned otherwise) but there has to be a genuine attempt. Which every company does more or less. The fact that Telegram doesn't reach this extremely low, very low…

Telegram allows to report illegal posts; I suggest that France arrests those who saw the posts but didn't report them instead.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#322
A bunch of people in comments here seem to misunderstand what telegram is. It is not just a messaging app, it is essentially a platform like twitter, with channels, hundreds of thousands of subscribers to those. While I fully support E2EE communication with no back-doors, I think it is perfectly fair for governments to have some control to take down large channels that are clearly against the law. I do not know the true cause for the arrest, but I hope it is because of the latter not the former.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#323
post #303

We changed the URL from https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/info-tf1-lci-le-... to an article in English. If there's a better article in English, we can change it again.

One detail that's missing from the English article is why he got arrested.

The French article mentions:

Why was he under threat of a search warrant?

The Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes him an accomplice to drug trafficking, child-crime offenses and swindling.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Telegram has much less E2EE than Signal or Whatsapp. It's not on by default, works only between 2 devices, they both have to be online at the same time and you can't access anything from the web. And group chats don't support it at all. Private chats are not end to end encrypted by default and it's actually quite clumsy to encrypt them so almost nobody uses it. It's really weird that Telegram is singled out li…

Because Telegram is not just a messenger, it's a platform for distributing news/info through channels. Signal simply does not have that.

Signal and WhatsApp do have that. You can easily use group chats that way, you just have to get invited. You can't look for them and join them.

It's really easy for e.g. a drugdealer to post QR codes or something on lamp posts with their contact and then they can invite people. Making Telegram go away is just going to hide the problem, not solve it.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how his passport changes the whole thing? France can and will charge anyone on its territory no matter what passport you hold.

Usually courts are a lot more lenient with foreign citizens. Try to get jailed in Mexico as an French citizen - pretty hard unless you do obvious bad stuff.

From what I've seen, it's the opposite. Nobody wants an outsider coming into their territory and committing a crime. And it also makes you a flight risk, so that's going to factor badly into any pre-trial detention.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#326
post #84
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You realize that every social media/forum/messaging app should be banned then and every CEO in jail. Bad actors will use anything they can.

The Telegram fanatics for some reason are unwilling to hear it but we'll say it again: the reason why we still have an Internet in 2024 is that all those services at least attempt some form of moderation.

With more or less success, sure, but they can at least say there is an attempt and they do take down stuff. Durov pretty much brags about not doing the bare minimum.

It's that simple.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#327
post #103

The detainment order was outstanding for some time, and Durov certainly knew that. Still he plainly landed in France and was detained. Why? My pet tinfoil-hat theory is that he decided that staying in a French prison is safer for him than being out in the open and get some polonium, or whatnot.

He has a lavish lifestyle and France is the capital of luxury

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#328
post #32

[flagged]

Based on media reports, Telegram has been continually used by a hostile autocratic government to recruit, organize and direct various gray-zone attacks against Europe, on European soil. Now it sounds like Europe finally put the foot down. And why wouldn't they?

Telegram is also one of the very few places where ordinary Russians can read alt-news and not only Kremlin-approved propaganda. And Russia's stringent internet censorship is only tightening as years go by.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#329
post #303

We changed the URL from https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/info-tf1-lci-le-... to an article in English. If there's a better article in English, we can change it again.

Thank you! There was no English article yet when I first posted this.

There is now also https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/telegram-messaging-app-...

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#330
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You might be surprised to learn who's doing the pushing: https://www.wired.com/story/europes-moral-crusader-lays-down... https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/july/police-should-have...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
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