Facebook has many illicit groups and Mark Zuckerberg was never charged with anything. I assume this is more related to privacy where US government has backdoor to Facebook while doesn't have one to Telegram.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
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Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#892He is also United Arab Emirates citizen. So it's safer to live in UAE, than to be a citizen of free West :D
A man in the UK was given 2 years in prison for putting up stickers. Peaceful protesters in Canada had their bank accounts frozen.
“Liberal democracy” my ass, the West is a police state. Carl Schmitt was right.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#893Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#894Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal has, it seems, successfully avoided being coerced by the USG, at least thus far.
It literally has government funding.
As did (does?) TOR.
I have the impression that the US intelligence services are always in an internal struggle - some parts wants and needs invisibility, deniability and secure communication - other part wants transparency for intelligence. Both realize that there is no such thing as a safe backdoor.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#895Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#896Durov has a French passport, so he will be charged as a French citizen. What is weird is that he sure knew that he was on the watchlist in France, though he has chosen to go there. Why?
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.
Other comments mentioned France doesn't extradite citizens.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#897Not 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…
> According to the French authorities, Durov, who is estimated to be worth €13.9 billion by Forbes, is being charged as an accomplice to crimes including drug trafficking, fraud, terrorism and crimes against children over Telegram’s alleged “lack of moderation and cooperation with law enforcement”, as well for Telegram’s use of disposable numbers, and for allowing cryptocurrency transfers that cannot be monitored by the authorities. - https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/08/25/russian-billiona...
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#898Facebook has many illicit groups and Mark Zuckerberg was never charged with anything. I assume this is more related to privacy where US government has backdoor to Facebook while doesn't have one to Telegram.
> Facebook has many illicit groups and Mark Zuckerberg was never charged with anything.
Maybe because their legal compliance strategy is something other than "we will only, and only possibly, comply with law enforcement requests if it concerns terrorism"?
To quote Telegram's from https://telegram.org/privacy:
> If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you're a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities. So far, this has never happened. When it does, we will include it in a semiannual transparency report published at: https://t.me/transparency.
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#899A 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 t…
I am long done with commenting on this platform, as most of Russian people, who cannot write here (and most of other western internet forums) what they think. I will make an exception in this case, however. 1. "I think it is perfectly fair for governments to take down large channels that are clearly against the law" Telegram obviously acts upon such requests Here in Italy I cannot access the channels of RIA and Sputn…
> [...] your US bubble, which you THINK guarantees free speech [...]
That's a very common misunderstanding (even among Americans) of what the First Amendment actually guarantees: It protects you from government censorship of speech, but does absolutely nothing to compel private individuals or corporations to carry your speech. (In fact, compelled speech has been ruled to be a violation itself.)
That absence of such legal protections can definitely be seen as having a chilling effect on free speech in practice, but as I interpret it, currently the assumption seems to be that legal intervention is not necessary due to market forces achieving the same or a similar outcome implicitly. There's also strong resistance from a value perspective against the idea, since these provisions themselves might be incompatible with the FA for reasons mentioned above.
You can definitely have some discussions around whether additional "duty to contract" rules should apply, e.g. in the same way as there's a law in Europe that makes it illegal for banks to not give somebody a bank account in certain circumstances, but nothing like this exists at the moment.
> Right now, it is the ONLY wide audience platform in the world, where Russian people can freely (as opposed to, say, HN) write what they really think
Hackernews has always been very strictly moderated to maintain a specific type and culture of discussion. By necessity, that excludes certain types of comments. In that sense, it's always been very far away from a "free speech platform".
Re: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport
#900I don’t know how much this founder is personally complicit in any of the charges brought against him, but if he’s just being held accountable for running a service where others did nefarious things, then this should be a chilling effect for all founders.
Why would anyone want to innovate and develop privacy technologies if this is what happens? So, your best bet is to work with government agencies if you want to work on this tech? What if the government isn’t one you agree with? No one has good answers for these, but criminals aren’t the only ones who need to use privacy-preserving tech.