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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 g

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…

BoredPositron 2y ago
According to which source?
- artembugara 2y ago
  The one this HN post links to
  - Kailhus 2y ago
    See sibling comment for a more accurate description https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341848
abcd_f 2y ago
> According to this source he’s accused in non-cooperating. With the context that you omitted it makes more sense: Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes it an accomplice to drug trafficking, pedo-criminal offenses and swindling.
- artembugara 2y ago
  Yes you’re correct.
- codedokode 2y ago
  That's probably exaggeration or straight lie. There are open-source messengers who don't even require a phone number, and phone number is not legally required for registration in most countries (but, for example, in Russia you cannot signup users in a messenger without getting their phone number. So those open source messengers are technically outright illegal). As for moderation, any post in public or private groups can be reported to moderators. As for one-to-one chats, this might not work, but you should not be chatting with random people anyway.
- loceng 2y ago
  Government, and said justices paid by the taxpayer pool of money, is arguably guilty of similar things when taxes are forced-required, no? It's just they're the current power structure, so they can get away with the state monopoly on violence et al?
mikae1 2y ago
> not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for… Except he (or his corporation) has keys for almost all initiated chats on the Telegram network. Only the private chats are E2EE and they're not default and rather inconvenient because they don't sync between devices (unlike Signal's E2EE chats).
- NayamAmarshe 2y ago
  Not really no. > To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. > Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people's privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world. https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    That's funny, because some time ago (well, some years ago) I swore people were crapping on telegram's encryption and telling it was almost fake But if it was so weak then various intelligence agencies wouldn't be bothering with it
    - croes 2y ago
      You wouldn't anybody to know if it was easy to break. So we actually don't know if it's weak or not.
  - croes 2y ago
    Actually yes. There is a difference between can't and won't. They just make it hard to force them but they could if they want to. Proper encrypted message can't be decrypted no matter how much they want to.
mrtksn 2y ago
AFAIK Telegram isn’t e2e for the interesting bits, that’s the group chats etc. If I have to guess, I would say that the authorities would be interested in identities of some users and access to private group chats with shady stuff and Telegram would be able to provide these. These are probably already available to the Russian intelligence considering the low radiation levels in Pavel Durov’s blood stream and no novichok experience.
baby 2y ago
My immediate guess is that there’s more. The french secret service strikes me as much more “intelligent” than the US secret service (which I heard is mostly ran by mormons), so I would think this type of move is heavily calculated
- oska 2y ago
  This is the same French secret service that bungled the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior ?
  - baby 2y ago
    You’re seriously giving an 1985 event?
commandersaki 2y ago
If he's taking a privacy stance then it's bloody stupid since he's protecting an insecure app. In contrast Signal would've cooperated and provided essentially nothing useful.
aorloff 2y ago
I'm guessing the DOJ has some unlocked client devices with recipient messages that are damning
phkamp 2y ago
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.
lxgr 2y ago
> 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… That false statement is refutable trivially: Just perform the mud puddle test [1] in front of the judge (and a cryptographer explaining the implications to the judge). [1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-who-holds-key/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-w...

BoredPositron 2y ago

According to which source?

artembugara 2y ago
The one this HN post links to
- Kailhus 2y ago
  See sibling comment for a more accurate description https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341848

abcd_f 2y ago

> According to this source he’s accused in non-cooperating. With the context that you omitted it makes more sense: Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies...) makes it an accomplice to drug trafficking, pedo-criminal offenses and swindling.

artembugara 2y ago
Yes you’re correct.
codedokode 2y ago
That's probably exaggeration or straight lie. There are open-source messengers who don't even require a phone number, and phone number is not legally required for registration in most countries (but, for example, in Russia you cannot signup users in a messenger without getting their phone number. So those open source messengers are technically outright illegal). As for moderation, any post in public or private groups can be reported to moderators. As for one-to-one chats, this might not work, but you should not be chatting with random people anyway.
loceng 2y ago
Government, and said justices paid by the taxpayer pool of money, is arguably guilty of similar things when taxes are forced-required, no? It's just they're the current power structure, so they can get away with the state monopoly on violence et al?

mikae1 2y ago

> not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for… Except he (or his corporation) has keys for almost all initiated chats on the Telegram network. Only the private chats are E2EE and they're not default and rather inconvenient because they don't sync between devices (unlike Signal's E2EE chats).

NayamAmarshe 2y ago
Not really no. > To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. > Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people's privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world. https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests
- raverbashing 2y ago
  That's funny, because some time ago (well, some years ago) I swore people were crapping on telegram's encryption and telling it was almost fake But if it was so weak then various intelligence agencies wouldn't be bothering with it
  - croes 2y ago
    You wouldn't anybody to know if it was easy to break. So we actually don't know if it's weak or not.
- croes 2y ago
  Actually yes. There is a difference between can't and won't. They just make it hard to force them but they could if they want to. Proper encrypted message can't be decrypted no matter how much they want to.

mrtksn 2y ago

AFAIK Telegram isn’t e2e for the interesting bits, that’s the group chats etc. If I have to guess, I would say that the authorities would be interested in identities of some users and access to private group chats with shady stuff and Telegram would be able to provide these. These are probably already available to the Russian intelligence considering the low radiation levels in Pavel Durov’s blood stream and no novichok experience.

baby 2y ago

My immediate guess is that there’s more. The french secret service strikes me as much more “intelligent” than the US secret service (which I heard is mostly ran by mormons), so I would think this type of move is heavily calculated

oska 2y ago
This is the same French secret service that bungled the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior ?
- baby 2y ago
  You’re seriously giving an 1985 event?

commandersaki 2y ago

If he's taking a privacy stance then it's bloody stupid since he's protecting an insecure app. In contrast Signal would've cooperated and provided essentially nothing useful.

aorloff 2y ago

I'm guessing the DOJ has some unlocked client devices with recipient messages that are damning

phkamp 2y ago

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.

lxgr 2y ago

> 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… That false statement is refutable trivially: Just perform the mud puddle test [1] in front of the judge (and a cryptographer explaining the implications to the judge). [1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-who-holds-key/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-w...