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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

#631

Post by Fnoord »

4bpp wrote: post #361
wkat4242 wrote: post #196

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…

In a way, Durov's arrest retroactively vindicates every EU citizen's decision to use Telegram (up until now), as it proves that they haven't been getting what they want from him. I am not nearly as concerned about Durov himself or the government of Dubai getting to read my messages as I am about the EU or one of its member states doing so, as there simply isn't much I can see the former doing with that data. The real…

Why would you be afraid of EU LE? Unlike countries such as Iran, Russia, SA, UAE it has reasonable laws.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#632

Post by oska »

twelve40 wrote: post #570
stiltzkin wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the reason Telegram is based in Dubai, it was bad move from Durov flying to France.

No, that doesn't matter in the least. It is trivial to kick him off the Western appstores and arrest him in Dubai, so it really doesn't matter. He was allowed to operate - almost certainly in some kind of a deal - until he wasn't.

It's not at all 'trivial' for the EU to have him arrested in Dubai (as opposed to France).

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#633

Post by Fnoord »

ein0p wrote: post #575
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…

The main problem with Telegram is it’s not subject to Western surveillance and censorship. Best I can tell, it’s also not subject to Eastern surveillance and censorship which is why it was (unsuccessfully) banned in Russia in 2018. As of right now, this is one of the few places where you can find true information about WW3 which is currently ongoing in Ukraine. This is true of all sides of the conflict: the only trul…

> [..] That is why Durov is in jail.

Speculative. We don't know why he is in jail. Maybe his lawyers know why, maybe not. Maybe the prosecutor knows, maybe not. We don't know if there's a case. There's hardly anything we do know.

My take is he doesn't reply to LE requests related to CSAM. That is one of the few things we (as in: our governments) don't like anywhere in the world, and Telegram is known to respond slowly to [such] requests. But I won't pretend I know for sure. Cause either way, it is a neat honeypot compared to technically better protocols.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#634

Post by phkamp »

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…

I do not know french laws specifically, but...

There are lot of direct laws about record-keeping (company accounts for instance) but there are also a lot of laws which indirectly impose requirements of record-keeping, because having records will be the only way to comply with the requirement (tracking of origin for food recalls for instance).

France almost certainly has a law that says that if you run a telecommunication service, you must respond to court orders with the following information: X, Y, Z & W.

If non-compliance with such a law is the basis for the arrest, it will be his damn problem to convince the judges, that despite being subject of many such court orders, he had a stronger legal basis for not keeping the necessary records to comply.

However, my money is on Al Capone: I would be very surprised if the charges do not (also) contain tax-evasion, securities fraud, money laundering.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#636

Post by raverbashing »

martinbaun wrote: post #156
artembugara wrote: post #72

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.

For minor stuff, sure

For more complicated stuff, quite the opposite.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#637

Post by yorwba »

jack_pp wrote: post #602
Barrin92 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, your analogy is broken -- roads, telephones, pen and paper, motor vehicles all fit your description just as aptly. and they're usually public property and policed. Routine police inspection on a road and in particular control of borders and key nodes in your transportation infrastructure isn't exactly controversial. (unless you're part of some extreme political faction). You know a lot of countries where peop…

That's because they are different, police can come with a warrant to check your house for illegal activity but they can't monitor you remotely 24/7 with barely any human intervention and store everything you do indefinitely. With electronic communication you either get full privacy or none. And no, putting company's in charge of your privacy isn't a solution, if they can be compelled to give away your communication h…

Police got a warrant for Durov and arrested him. How is that different? Yet some people are upset anyways.

And it's not true that with electronic communication you either get full privacy or none. You can have end-to-end encrypted messages with unencrypted metadata, so that when police observe a message implicating the sender in a crime (e.g. on an arrested suspect's phone) they can get a search warrant for the IP address or phone number associated with that account and then visit the owner in person to look at the messages on their phone. This doesn't allow police to read everyone's messages all the time undetected, but does allow them to read specific people's messages if they get a warrant.

Since Telegram doesn't only have unencrypted metadata but also plenty of unencrypted messages, there must've been many cases where a search warrant would've yielded lots of useful information. If Telegram didn't properly respond to all warrants, it seems fair to launch an investigation.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#638

Post by biscottigelato »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #483
garrettgarcia wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there? By your logic, the owners of every ISP that provides a pathway for those criminal bits also should be in jail. Every single organization in that pathway would be liable from the registrars to the developers of web libraries or other app services. The governments themselves would be liable in many cases where the government has nationalized internet services. There is a principle in the free world that…

> Why stop there? Because we want to, and we can. I don't get how HN consistently fails to understand the actual social and political process by which regulations are made. I constantly see this argument which effectively boils down to "if you ban a thing, you will also need to ban everything else, which is absurd, so you shouldn't ban anything". But in real life we can choose what we ban. Everything is a trade-off;…

Because 'we' want to. Who is this 'we' you are speaking about? Globalist authoritarian elite that you are somehow part of? Democratic voters? Communication application users? Whose this 'we'?

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#639

Post by biscottigelato »

zerodensity wrote: post #237
CactusOnFire wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, any app that provides privacy from governments spying is a criminal enterprise.

Well I mean in many countries, blocking the surveillance agency from listening in on your calls/texts/chats is illegal. So making an app that interferes with the agencies ability to "listen in" is infact a criminal enterprise. Don't have to like it but the law is the law.

So all implementation of encryption is illegal, that's basically your stance? Because that's exactly what encryption does.

Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

#640

Post by wkat4242 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #564
JeffAllen wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a website you don't like you would ban for everybody else as well just because you decided that it is merely marketing crap there making you nauseous. So you then conclude it should be banned for everyone else? How do you think the world would look if everybody had the power to ban things with similar reasons? We'd have nothing left in the world. Scary.

I know, it's just wishful thinking on my part :) It won't happen but that doesn't mean I can't wish for it.

PS: I'm just annoyed being pretty much forced to "profile myself" there in order to be considered for jobs. I used to avoid it but several recruiters told me they would rank people without a linkedin profile lower and even people inside the company where I work now insist on it.

I really hate that kind of corporate evangelisation. If it didn't exist I wouldn't have to take part in it, that's all.

The company I work for is the same. We were one of the last to close our Russian offices when the war started. They say they're committed to LGBTIQ+ rights yet do huge business in Saudi and the rest of the middle east (and don't even display the rainbow banners on our site there). The C-Suite say they care about sustainability yet fly all over the world in private jets.

So that's why I'm a bit sour about that.

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