Pavel Durov’s arrest suggests that the law enforcement dragnet is being widened from private financial transactions to private speech.
The arrest of the Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France this week is extremely significant. It confirms that we are deep into the second crypto war, where governments are systematically seeking to prosecute developers of digital encryption tools because encryption frustrates state surveillance and control. While the first crypto war in the 1990s was led by the United States, this one is led jointly by the European Union — now its own regulatory superpower.
Durov, a former Russian, now French citizen, was arrested in Paris on Saturday, and has now been indicted. You can read the French accusations here. They include complicity in drug possession and sale, fraud, child pornography and money laundering. These are extremely serious crimes — but note that the charge is complicity, not participation. The meaning of that word “complicity” seems to be revealed by the last three charges: Telegram has been providing users a “cryptology tool” unauthorised by French regulators.
That’s not the point. The hunting down on tools and their creators (and on our right to privacy) is the issue here. At least, imho.
It has nothing to do with privacy. Telegram is an old-school social network in that it doesn’t even require that you register to view the content pages. It’s also a social network taken to the extreme of free speech absolutism in that it doesn’t mind people talking openly about every kind of crime and their use of its tools to make it easier to obtain the related services. All that with no encryption at all.
Free speech is good. Government regulated speech is bad.
free speech can be good. free speech can also be bad. overall, it’s more good than bad however society seems to agree that free speech has limits - you can’t defame someone, for example
free speech absolutism is fucking dumb; just like most other absolutist stances
this also isn’t even about free speech - this is about someone having access to information requested by investigators to solve crimes, and then refusing to give that information
This is pure nonsense.
Western governments hate Telegram because until now Telegram didn’t cooperate with Western intelligence services like American social media companies do. Everything on Meta or Google gets fed into NSA, but Telegram has been uncooperative.
This will likely change after Durov’s arrest, but it was nice while it lasted.
we don’t disagree about that: governments don’t like that telegram doesn’t cooperate; that’s not in dispute
where the disagreement comes is the part after. telegram (and indeed meta, google, etc) have that data at their disposal. when served with a legal notice to provide information to authorities or shut down illegal behaviour on their platforms, they comply - sometimes that’s a bad thing if the government is overreaching, but sometimes it’s also a good thing (in the case of CSAM and other serious crimes)
there are plenty of clear cut examples of where telegram should shut down channels - CSAM etc… that’s what this arrest was about; the rest is academic
Was it? The French authorities did not provide any convincing evidence, just accusations.
you think they’re going to link to still available (that’s the point - they’re still available) sources of CSAM?
if that’s your burden of proof then buddy i’m sorry to say there’s no way anyone’s going to convince you, and that’s not a good thing
This is the standard excuse for authoritarian governments. Use a crime category no one can object to.