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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

#41

Post by KaiserPro »

sschueller wrote: post #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.

> how far away are we from making phone companies and ISPs liable for crimes committed using their services?

Very far. but france is a civil law system. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_responsibility_in_Fre...)

if you don't comply with legally valid requests, then you are going to be held liable for it.

But thats the same in common law as well. If an hosting provider in the USA refuses to act on reports of hosting copyrighted material, then they are liable for damages. Safe Harbour has its limits.

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

#42

Post by xvector »

Shank wrote: post #30
Arch485 wrote: post #27

There seems to be a lot of arguments citing that "$otherPlatform should be held liable for the same things!" The main takeaway here is that Durov is not being arrested strictly because his platform contains illegal material. He is being arrested because (allegedly) - he is aware of the illegal material, and - he refuses to cooperate with law enforcement to remove that material. So the French authorities are charging…

> Platforms like Signal can get away with this because they are properly E2E encrypted, and cannot identify illegal content. Telegram, on the other hand, has decryption keys for the messages and media sent in group chats, meaning they can identify and remove illegal content if they choose to. I feel like I must emphasize this because it's repeatedly missed. Telegram has mainly 3 different components. The first is a s…

We have robust cryptographic constructions for channels at this point. One is described in https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-to-end-e...

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

#43

Post by jeroenhd »

sschueller wrote: post #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.

That's the deal: ISPs aren't responsible for hosting child abuse content, phishing sites, crime ring messaging infrastructure, or pirated content, as long as they work with the relevant authorities to take such content down or hand over relevant evidence.

ISPs hand over phone records and anything else they have on people. They set wiretaps, they can triangulate users, you name it. When the government asks Telegram for information, they get a history dump. When they ask a carrier for information, they get a history dump (for anything stored on ISP servers, such as email or some text messages, depending on the warrant) _and a live copy of every bit of information that flows over the connection_.

Email inboxes get handed over all the time, and server hosts must take down content within days to hours depending on how illegal the content reported is. Services like Google have been handing out information like "what users were in this general area at this time" because they track that stuff (which is why Android's location history has degraded significantly; Google moved that stuff to on-device storage for this reason).

As for data collection: in some places, the government can force you to collect data. Some "logless" VPN/email providers have been compelled to turn on logging for certain accounts, for instance.

The alternative, which was almost a thing in the early internet, was that ISPs were responsible for all content on their systems.

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

#44

Post by flanked-evergl »

originalvichy wrote: post #39

I’m disappointed to see how few people are up to date on what legal responsibilities platform hosts have. Didn’t we have months and months of this discussion around the last US presidential election? Haven’t we had this discussion years ago when piracy was rampant on ”surface web” sites? Businesses have always had legal requirements based on the nature of their trade.

Just because something is law does not mean it should be law. Not all legal responsibilities should be legal responsibilities. There is no way in which we will accept that what the French government is doing is legitimate merely because it's legal for them to do it in France.

What France is doing is unjust. They should stop. If their laws are not just they should be repealed.

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

#45

Post by thefz »

sschueller wrote: post #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.

> 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 wonder what is hard to understand. Is there CP/violent content in Instagram? Nope. In Facebook? Nope. In YouTube? nope.

Why? These companies are held responsible for the public content, published in clear, on their platforms and they enforce moderation to remove illegal content.

Telegram is in clear and has public content violating the law. They should have done the same, they did not.

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

#46

Post by BlueTemplar »

Shank wrote: post #25
stanislavb wrote: post #10

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…

In 2022 and beyond, Durov has posted very publicly about Ukraine, inclduing support for Ukraine and reiterating parts of his history with the FSB at VK [0]. Telegram was also blocked in Russia for a period of time while they argued about compliance [1]. I think it is far more likely that Russia understands that Durov is one of the most influential people that acts as an emissary to their country. His past altercation…

> In just the same way that US agencies can compel investigations with US companies, I'm sure that Russia exerts some amount of control on Telegram for investigation purposes.

Not in the same way, since Telegram (unlike, say, vKontakte), is NOT a Russian company.

(At least officially, also quite anti-Putin at its funding... less clearly now.)

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

#47

Post by hagbard_c »

dools wrote: post #29
hagbard_c wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person's 'disinfo' is another's info, that same person's info is propaganda to another. The recent acknowledgement by Zuckerberg that the Biden/Harris regime pressured them into censoring information should give you some thought about what is 'disinfo'. In other words don't be too quick in condemning channels which allow voices outside the desired narrative to be heard because the day might come than you need to…

> One person's 'disinfo' is another's info, that same person's info is propaganda to another Yeah the only difference is that one person is right and the other person is wrong. > The recent acknowledgement by Zuckerberg that the Biden/Harris regime pressured them into censoring information should give you some thought about what is 'disinfo'. Of course they fucking did, and so they should have. Also, you think the cu…

> Yeah the only difference is that one person is right and the other person is wrong.

Says everyone. While there are clear examples where this is the case - e.g. SARS2 vaccines do not protect against infection nor do they protect against infecting others - there are many other situations where 'right' and 'wrong' are not so clearly defined. When someone claims a certain party or presidential candidate is a 'threat to democracy' there is no clear 'right' or 'wrong' as these are opinions, not facts.

Your following statements with regards to the 'current Republican-controlled senate' show where your bias lies and explains why you react the way you do. Now try to step outside your bubble for a while - and yes, you are in a bubble just like most others (myself included) are - and step in another one, say the bubble inhabited by a Russian or someone who supports the current Russian regime. That person would consider it 'patently obvious that Facebook (et al) are American operations. The messages can be intercepted by the operators who censor on behalf of the American regime.

If you are happy using platforms which are controlled by this or that government, fine. I prefer to be able to say what I want without either the American or Russian or French or Swedish or Dutch (etc.) governments interfering or censoring so I run my own services. This happens to be dead-easy and nearly maintenance-free.

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

#48

Post by an_guy »

KaiserPro wrote: post #38
janmo wrote: post #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…

> It is even possible that Durov has saved lives by not communicating user information to the french intelligence services. If you ignore the missing human rights activists were using telegram and then suddenly disappeared. as pointed out before, telegram is utterly compromised security wise. Its really advantageous that "naughty people" are documenting their stuff there as it leaves a loverly indelible trail of acti…

What does missing human rights activists have to do with telegram?

What are your sources on "utterly compromised security on telegram"?

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

#49

Post by KaiserPro »

pikseladam wrote: post #4

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.

> Is there any website owner with a million users who can't be held accountable for the same crimes?

Go and look at "Safe Harbour" rules. Its not a blank cheque to say "oh it wasn't us, it was the users". your protection from being sanctioned is contingent on complying with requests to take down posts(be that copyright or other).

The same thing applies here

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

#50

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

xvector wrote: post #42
Shank wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Platforms like Signal can get away with this because they are properly E2E encrypted, and cannot identify illegal content. Telegram, on the other hand, has decryption keys for the messages and media sent in group chats, meaning they can identify and remove illegal content if they choose to. I feel like I must emphasize this because it's repeatedly missed. Telegram has mainly 3 different components. The first is a s…

We have robust cryptographic constructions for channels at this point. One is described in https://www.ietf.org/blog/mls-secure-and-usable-end-to-end-e...

If you’d have read the comment you’re replying to, you’d know that “robust cryptographic constructions” are irrelevant here, because channels are publicly-accessible.
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