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Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn
- jappgar 2y agogood on France. more billionaire CEOs should be arrested.
- o999 2y agoEU is becoming more clearily authoritarian with cases we only used to hear about in Russia, China and Iran
- jdmoreira 2y agoReally embarrassing being European nowadays.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoYou're still free to leave - advantage us. And 'us' can be read as is, or capitalised.
- cokeandpepsi 2y ago[dead]
- pjkundert 2y agoFrance is arresting people for providing end-to-end encrypted communications? What could possibly go wrong!
- Krasnol 2y agoTelegram doesn't have much to do with E2EE.
- BadHumans 2y ago> French authorities believe that Telegram, under Durov’s leadership, became a major platform for organised crime due to its encrypted messaging services, which allegedly facilitated illegal activities Sounds like it was because of E2EE.
- drmaximus 2y agoEncrypted doesn't necessarily mean e2ee.
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoNope. It's because of the large telegram group chats for the most part and those aren't E2EE. The only chats that can be E2EE on telegram are one to one DMs and that's only if you manually enable it. i.e. They refused to turn over chat records that they have server side access to. It's worth noting that they could do E2EE here for group chats but they don't. Signal does it but telegram wholesale refused to.
- Hikikomori 2y agoIt doesn't do E2EE by default, you need to select it when messaging someone.
- Aspos 2y agoCan you, please, elaborate? Wasn't it their main feature and the selling point?
- tail_exchange 2y agoE2EE is optional. Telegram does have it, but you don't need to use it.
- jsheard 2y agoTelegram also only supports E2EE in one-to-one chats, so any bad guys operating out of group chats / channels are definitely doing so in the clear.
- danielovichdk 2y agoI don't why you were downvoted. Because that is exactly what is going on. EU is generally on a open-encryption-by-warrant path and this is a great example of applying some pressuring. Should we enable the Iranian polotical refugee to communicate in secret with her family ? Should we by warrant enable the possibility to open up messages when pedofiles sell or buy children for sex ? Nasty questions.
- jimbob45 2y agoAren’t you advocating for a Big Brother-style system?
- danielovichdk 2y agoNot at all. I wish the iranian political refugee can communicate with her family without the state to intervene. That's great. But at the same time I wish a court order can open up encryption when it's needed. But the balance is difficult. As we see all the time.
- 0xEF 2y agoMany will disagree with you because your stance does not take an all-or-nothing approach, so good on you for asking these tougher questions. We have the same sort of questions in the US, though a very specific group would love to turn this who country into a police state (they even have their own flag). I am a big privacy advocate, but also recognize that it is ripe for abuse by bad actors, so the solutions are muddy and need some serious beta testing before they can be called solutions. This where people tend to get lost in the debate and start responding with emotions rather than reason, which unfortunately does not progress us a viable solution. I see the same thing happening in the EU, but from afar, so my perception is likely skewed.
- questinthrow 2y agoWhy did he enter a country with an arrest warrant on his name? I don't understand it
- ibbih 2y agoit was issued while he was en route
- ErneX 2y agoyou have a source for this?
- itohihiyt 2y agoWas it public knowledge prior to it's execution?
- resiros 2y agoHe did not. He stopped his jet to refuel in France, and they issued it in the mean time
- red_trumpet 2y agoDo you have any reference for this?
- frankharv 2y ago[flagged]
- questinthrow 2y agoThis has no relevance to the question
- frankharv 2y agoYou are assuming this is purely a French endevour. I am assuming the opposite. Maybe you forgot how us democracies work together for good and evil.
- pathless 2y agoTelegram is genuinely the best general communication platform I have ever used, by far. I really hope he has a good lawyer and this doesn't end up getting essentially murdered for creating it. When you create something that is objectively great, everyone will use it - including bad actors.
- bangaroo 2y agoi gotta agree, i basically live out of telegram. even with the recent trend towards adding incremental bloat to the client, it’s managed to stay a simple, straightforward tool for communicating with minimal advertising and enough of the features that i need front and center.
- Mistletoe 2y agoYou like it better than Signal? The only thing I know Telegram for is several of my girlfriend’s relatives being exposed to crazy scams and right-wing conspiracy theories and misinformation on it.
- rpgbr 2y agoSignal has better governance, plus e2ee mandatory, while on Telegram is optional and rarely used. Telegram also has a “social media” aspect with huge groups and channels, which attracts many people, but is a depart from the whole secure chat messaging it’s still known for. IMHO, Signal is way better.
- 14 2y agoThis is exactly my experience as well. I have never actually used telegram as I was early a signal user and never needed it but my ex used it. All she ever used it for was conspiracy garbage she would follow. Anti covid vaccine doctors and groups mainly. The amount of misinformation she tried to show me and every time I would show her how it was fake she still would not believe me. Then she was even scammed out of $10k from telegram when she fell for a romance crypto scam. The conspiracy stuff is a main reason we broke up it was every single one from flat earth to fake moon landing to all the covid world economic forum world take over and on and on. Most of these came from telegram.
- Retr0id 2y agoI really hope this doesn't become an "encryption bad" cudgel. > The main accusation by EU authorities concerns Telegram’s encrypted messaging services, which were allegedly used to facilitate organised crime. One investigator stated that ‘Telegram has become the number one platform for organised crime over the years’, underlining the perceived link between the platform’s privacy features and criminal activities. It's unclear to me how much this "perceived link" is on behalf of the author of the article, as opposed to the prosecutors themselves.
- kevinventullo 2y agoI’m not sure I understand. Doesn’t the fact that the prosecutors had him arrested directly imply they perceive a link?
- Retr0id 2y agoAccusing someone of facilitating crime is different to accusing someone of using cryptography to preserve privacy.
- ericjmorey 2y agoWhy would the concern not be the crime rather than the tool used in carrying out the crime?
- rpgbr 2y agoTelegram doesn’t have mandatory e2ee, which puts it in this kind of situation. Having data on crime committing and denying access to it from authorities is a crime itself in most countries.
- Retr0id 2y agoRight, I think that's an important distinction to make, but it's not really one that's explored in the article. The article doesn't say anything about E2EE specifically, but I think it would be understandable to "read between the lines" and assume that Telegram is in trouble for offering E2EE - but I think/hope that assumption would be incorrect.
- bagels 2y agoWhat is the difference between telegram and cell phone providers other than encryption in relation to these charges?
- BadHumans 2y agoYour cell phone provider will cooperate with the authorities immediately and without question.
- moffaz 2y ago[dead]
- marcinzm 2y agoTelegram not being fully encrypted and seeing the content of most messages on its servers but not cooperating with the police?
- itohihiyt 2y agoThe cell phone providers aren't likely refusing to cooperate with the authorities in whose jurisdiction they operate.
- jsheard 2y agoCell phones are encrypted over the air, but they aren't end to end encrypted, and it's safe to assume that a provider will wiretap the plaintext passing through their backend if the authorities ask for it.
- mpeg 2y agoTelegram is not end-to-end encrypted in the way other messaging services are (whatsapp, signal), it is encrypted but Telegram holds the keys and are able to decrypt any messages not sent on a "secret chat" which is not the default, or any messages on a group chat
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoThe article is very poor mixing the actual charges with unrelated European Union concerns. The charges are not linked to encryption. Most of Telegram is unencrypted anyway. The issue is with Telegram non cooperation and lack of moderation of publicly available content.
- tail_exchange 2y agoI'm genuinely curious to what would happen with Signal if the same bad actors moved to their platform. Would France also be arresting its creators for not properly moderating and giving backdoors?
- psychlops 2y agoThey are certainly already on Signal, but Signal has end-to-end encryption so cannot supply information other than meta information to authorities.
- tail_exchange 2y agoThis would imply that just E2EEing everything would give you a free pass not to moderate anything, which seems very naive. I doubt the judges would care about their self-imposed technological limitations.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 2y agoIf I sell shovels, it's not a self-imposed techical limitation that I don't have a way to detect and prevent anyone from doing something illegal with a shovel. Even after the technological means exist to include an intetnet connected spy device in every shovel. Secure message passing is no different. The "shovel", the thing one might sell, is just the application of some math which does something and not any of the infinite other things.
- maqp 2y agoIt's not a shovel he's selling. It's aching to hosting a gallery portraying disgusting crimes done to actual children. Digital or ink, Durov can't just go behind freedom of speech in this matter.
- 2y ago
- 1024core 2y agoThis is what happens when you refuse to hand over the keys.
- maqp 2y agoWhat a sad way to try to infer this has anything to do with Telegram being so secure Durov has to be arrested, when its really about Durov letting CSAM sit on his servers for a decade.
- rodric 2y agoTwo days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41328688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41328688 Probably an unrelated coincidence.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- financetechbro 2y agoVery peculiar coincidence
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CyberDildonics 2y agoTerrorism and child porn? Seems a little on the nose.
- tomohawk 2y ago[flagged]
- mazambazz 2y agoThis seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again. Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, these service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don't see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything. Hell, then there's the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery slope with no defined boundaries where the government can just arbitrary use to pin the blame on the people they don't like. Because ultimately, almost every platform with user-provided content will have some quantity of illegal material. But maybe I'm just being naive?
- poisonborz 2y agoYou really ask why? This isn't about serving justice - it's statuary example for anyone trying to run an unmoderated platform.
- naasking 2y agoWhere are "moderated" and "platform" defined in the relevant legislation?
- jstummbillig 2y agoIANAL and not that familiar with the legal situation, but if we assume that running a platform of this type requires you, by law, to moderate such a platform and he fails to do that, idk what we are talking about. Yes, he would clearly be breaking the law. Why would that not get prosecuted in the completely normal, boring way that I would hope all law breaking will eventually be prosecuted? If you are alleging that there's comparable, specific and actual legal infringements on the part of meta/google, that somehow go uninvestigated and unpunished, free free to point to that.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi don't think that platform providers of encrypted messaging should be required to ensure that none of the images being sent contain CP.
- 331c8c71 2y agoWhoa, it's absurd if true... I fail to see how being responsible for not cooperating with authorities can be turned into being accused of these crimes. And I don't care for the legal gymnastics which makes this possible - the law exists to serve the public interest and is of no inherent value.
- jeroenhd 2y agoIn every country I know of, the freedom to not be responsible for what your user's do on a platform includes certain requirements. Removing illegal content is the very least a platform must do. Every country has their own definition of "illegal" content, but things like CSAM are illegal everywhere, and that's one area where Telegram never really bothered to take action. The arrest warrant has been out for a while, so I doubt Durov got himself arrested by accident. He probably has a plan, or at least good lawyers.
- beezle 2y agoSo if I own and operate a hardware store (or any other storefront) and do nothing about people who are clearly using it to deal fentanyl, I'm absolved of all wrong doing?
- layer8 2y agoBy knowingly facilitating criminal activities, you become complicit.
- stephc_int13 2y agoHe very likely refused to play ball with NATO, and the software is working as intended, meaning no backdoors. I think we should have and open and decentralized version of this kind of "criminal" communication system. We should show them what Streisand effect really means.
- negus 2y agohttps://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ ?
- literalAardvark 2y agoWe do have Signal. People prefer not encrypted Telegram to it.
- kelsey98765431 2y ago> jpost.com > • 5 hours ago > Pavel Durov, Telegram founder, arrested by France following warrant - The Jerusalem Post > The alleged offenses include: terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, money laundering and receiving stolen goods. For those unaware, all channel on telegram are NOT ENCRYPTED. They are stored in plaintext on telegram servers. All chats that are not 'secret chat' mode (single device to single device) are NOT ENCRYPTED (stored in plaintext on server). This is not about encryption, it is about the plaintext data and the organized crime happening in these channels. Signal group chats ARE ENCRYPTED by default. It is actually not possible to send an unencrypted message on signal. This will not pivot into an E2E issue, and will not affect signal which has set itself up to not store unencrypted content on it's servers. EDIT: Also possibly this may be a factor in the decision to arrest: > finance.yahoo.com > • 2 weeks ago > Telegram adds new ways for creators to earn money on its platform > Today's announcement comes as Telegram reached 950 million active users last month, and aims to cross the 1 billion mark this year. Earlier this year, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the company expects to hit profitability next year and is considering going public.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoThis is misinformation that Telegram stores chat data in plaintext on their servers. It stores it encrypted with encryption keys split across the globe. Not perfect, but multiple legal jurisdictions would have to be subpoenad for Telegram to read your non-secret chats.
- mlyle 2y agoThis is effectively plaintext, in that one entity has all of those secrets for everyone. That's one entity to subpoena. If that entity doesn't comply, governments will get upset and charge your executives with crimes if they get the chance. Different jurisdictions makes it harder to kick down the doors and get the keys, but it doesn't change the fundamental problem. "Nuh-uh, I put all those records in a box in Switzerland, you can't have them" does not work well for US citizens, unless the government fails to even notice the box.
- 2y ago
- kurisufag 2y agoother countries do this and wonder why they aren't centers of technical innovation. why would anyone working on a privacy-centric tool, after seeing this, base themselves in .fr?
- quantum_state 2y ago“ French authorities believe that Telegram, under Durov’s leadership, became a major platform for organised crime due to its encrypted messaging services, which allegedly facilitated illegal activities. ” One could replace Telegram with any other products and find abuse by users of the products to concoct a reason to arrest anyone. This is what an authoritarian regime would do. It’s shocking to see it becomes part of the playbook of the French government.
- mrandish 2y agoI don't know anything about this guy or the basis of these charges but if he is only "guilty" of operating a messaging platform with the option of end-to-end encryption, thus can't let law enforcement tap into private communications when customer's enable that option, how can he be held responsible for the criminal actions of those customers when he isn't even aware of the actions and physically cannot tap into them himself? This seems like some heavy-handed government coercion.
- TrackerFF 2y agoSo let's say I open up a night club. I have to abide the laws and regulations, and make sure things like the following: Minors aren't getting in or being served alcohol, that people aren't selling drugs there, that prostitutes aren't doing business there. If undercover agents come by, and discover that minors are purchasing alcohol - the business will get fined, and likely banned from selling alcohol for some time. If I, the owner, continue to ignore authorities and flat out refuse to cooperate, and there are new busts - I would expect to face charges. The joint would likely get shut down, and I could be liable. If things are severe enough, I'll likely be investigated for running a criminal enterprise there. Obviously there are differences in how things are regulated in the different countries - but in countries where the CEO assumes total responsibility, and the buck stops there - it would make sense that the CEO will get charged with those sort of things, if the company has not done enough to cooperate or moderate their product and users.
- jobs_throwaway 2y agoLets say I open up a grocery store. Criminals start buying their food and bookkeeping supplies there. The police discover this. Should I be held liable for fueling and enabling these criminals?
- 1oooqooq 2y agothe crux of the problem here is that the french police asked for their purchase history, and you said "sorry, i already gave them to the Russian fsb" ;)
- gosub100 2y agoSo free speech should be regulated like alcohol sales?
- intunderflow 2y agoFrance was the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and now you have an autocracy in a semi-democratic vest: - All protests in support of Palestine banned https://www.politico.eu/article/france-gerald-darmanin-aims-to-ban-all-pro-palestine-protests/ https://www.politico.eu/article/france-gerald-darmanin-aims-... - Head coverings banned - Run a messaging app but the French state finds stuff on it that it disapproves of? You are a Terrorist It's sad to see this backsliding in Europe.
- inamorty 2y agoThe ban against protests was stated by the courts to have to be done case by case. The headscarf ban is part of all religious symbols in public areas like schools and hospitals.
- lucasRW 2y agoHead coverings are not banned. Anyone who's ever been to Paris or any french cities in the past few years can confirm.
- pjc50 2y agoFrance has never really been as liberal as people seem to think it is. The colonial history runs deep.
- rmbyrro 2y agoRights don't give you super power to ignore laws. He failed to follow judicial orders. If he doesn't want to follow French justice orders, then leave France for good.
- conradfr 2y agoThe French government actually uses Telegram.
- throw_m239339 2y ago> - All protests in support of Palestine banned False > - Head coverings banned Absolutely untrue.
- POiNTx 2y agoI'm generally very pro EU, but this anti-encryption stuff they try to pull these last couple of years needs to stop. If it's proven that Pavel Durov is facilitating bad actors with purpose, that's a different story, but creating a secure messaging platform by itself should not constitute a crime.
- XorNot 2y agoTelegram is not a secure messaging platform. By default Telegram is not encrypted at all. Only "secret chats" in Telegram are encrypted. Telegram groups are not - and those can be made public and basically are just Telegram hosting content on their servers for you.
- gloosx 2y agoThat's a popular lie, Telegram uses the MTProto 2.0 Cloud algorithm for non-secret chats, which is audited and verified by multiple independent parties. For example WhatsApp claims it uses EE2E encrypted chats, how ever these claims are unverified and not audited. Also their chief executives are not in jail, coincidentally. You can consult these links if you want to read more about it: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFMAm%2F2-0 https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFM... https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03141 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03141 https://github.com/miculan/telegram-mtproto2-verification https://github.com/miculan/telegram-mtproto2-verification
- XorNot 2y agohttps://t.me/s/UkraineNow https://t.me/s/UkraineNow This is a Ukraine channel. You can preview it in a web browser. If Telegram can enable that functionality, then it means they have the complete capability to serve the content of the channel. Same story if they can scroll back an existing channel to new users.
- gloosx 2y agoChannels were meant to be public. No-one ever claimed encryption for channels since it is nonsense. You claim that only secret chats are encrypted in telegram, which is straight not true. You can pull up a link to public channel and everyone can preview the posts, that's obvious. You cannot do the same trick with group chats because they are private and encrypted using MTProto
- stall84 2y agoThere is so much oddness surrounding this.. First, I don't really see how you can prosecute ideas, because as much as authorities will try and narrowly-define this case as being about moderation (of a platform), and cooperation with authorities, ultimately this is really an attempt to prosecute the idea/concept of publicly available 'e2e' encrypted communications. Second though... How does that list of charges only amount to a maximum of 20 years ? lol
- bakuvi 2y agoIn the meantime French government is promoting Olvid that claims “Your exchanges leave no digital trace. No one will ever know who you’ve discussed with.” How does it make any sense?
- d0mine 2y agokeys, backdoors, lies (e.g., in the past, people were kill based on metadata alone--technically, no actual conversations' content is necessary).
- esjeon 2y agoTelegram has always been just one slip away from this kind of stuffs because it's a centralized service. Depending on how laws are read, it could be seen as complicit in various crimes, and it's politicians who decide how to read those laws, not tech people. It might be the end of those good days where things were so simple and easy.
- devman0 2y agoA lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less. The comparisons to other providers is off base because either other providers are cooperating more when they possess actionable, unencrypted information and taking steps to detect or prevent such recurrences or they are like Signal and do not have access to the underlying material in the first place or store it for very long anyway. One cannot legally run a hosted, unmoderated content platform in the developed world, one will always be required to remove illegal materials and turn over materials in cooperation with law enforcement.
- whimsicalism 2y agoultimately this fight against unmonitored messaging is going to be a lost one for the developed world. people who want encrypted group chats will get them
- devman0 2y agoAs I hinted at earlier Signal does not have this issue because generally they are not aware of the underlying content. Even if Signal becomes aware of said content, it likely isn't hosted on their servers anymore as their store and forward system is highly transient. The most signal could do is be compelled to block specific users and maybe shutdown certain groups (not sure on that last one, would have to review the group architecture)
- whimsicalism 2y agoPrecisely my point - moderated messaging in the modern era will ultimately be unenforceable. Which is why I don’t see why certain services should be legally penalized just because they don’t happen to be E2E encrypted. Like if Telegram was instead e2e encrypted, why should that be legal if what they were previously doing wasn’t?
- 2y ago
- stonethrowaway 2y agoBoy is the comment section ever glowing.
- seydor 2y agoI think we need a constitutional right to immoral speech. This madness and the mob that supports it has to stop
- surfingdino 2y agoIt's interesting that he chose to fly to France knowing fully well that he will be arrested. It is also not surprising, because he has French citizenship and France does not extradite its citizens. Looks like a tactical move on his part when his legal team told him he ran out of options and he much preferred to spend time in a French prison than in a Federal prison in the US.
- spencerchubb 2y agodidn't france put out the arrest warrant right before he got there to trap him?
- surfingdino 2y agoI haven't got access to the timelines, but I'd be surprised if his arrest wasn't negotiated with his lawyers. He had no reason to go there, but chose to do so.
- yetmorethro420 2y agoA friend was just dragged of the plane and arrested in Paris recently for “money laundering”. It was completely baseless using falsified evidence. They wanted information but didn’t want to obtain a warrant or subpoena to get it. Eventually they let them go. Sad because this person was a total Francophile. Not any more. Sad state of affairs over there really.
- d0mine 2y agoThis is how censorship works in developed democracies. Telegram was the last platform where point of views different from sanctioned by the powers that be could be expressed (to a limit--it is still in app store after all). You've done nothing for dissidents until you are charged with CP.
- not_a_dane 2y agoI'd gladly donate to his legal campaign, as long as he makes his statements public.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoEuropean authoritarianism is an embarrassment and a betrayal of their claimed values of freedom and democracy.
- laurent_du 2y agoIf people were using my backyard to sell drugs or CSAM, I knew it, and did nothing about it, I would absolutely be guilty of facilitating these crimes. I fail to see how the situation is different for Pasha.
- whimsicalism 2y agoif i put up a random E2E encrypted messaging side project i made on github and then people started using it for CSAM? People use government built sidewalks to sell drugs, does that mean I can sue the govt for the drug trade?
- marcinzm 2y agoTelegram is not E2E encrypted.
- whimsicalism 2y agoso i should be liable if it is a plain text messaging github side project?
- marcinzm 2y agoYou mean if you’re also running servers for it that store all the data in a format you can read and refuse law enforcement requests in your jurisdiction.
- spencerchubb 2y agodo you really feel this is a good faith analogy? how is a side project in any way similar to a company with billions of users?
- whimsicalism 2y agoi think it is an analogy that is useful in elucidating what people view as the morally relevant aspect. i don’t think it makes a ton of sense to me that the encryption or lack thereof is the relevant factor - if we think that proprietors of unencrypted messaging should be required to turn over chat logs, then encrypted messaging should probably be illegal or we have left a massive loophole in. the scale being the relevant issue is another thing as well. i worry that if you somehow create a protocol for dencentralized messaging, you somehow then become liable for misuse of what could have been an academic project, etc.
- hdbejs 2y agoMany defend Telegram by likening it to a neutral platform, akin to TCP, claiming it merely provides a service without responsibility for the content. However, this comparison fails because TCP is a simple protocol with no ability to control or monitor content, whereas Telegram holds keys for most data and is capable of content moderation. Unlike E2EE platforms like Signal, which cannot comply with requests without breaking encryption protocols, and whose jurisdictions often prohibit forced backdoors, Telegram's refusal to cooperate, despite having the ability, shifts it from being unable to act to willfully aiding or sheltering criminal activity. In this context, Durov's arrest isn't unjust - Telegram knowingly allowed illegal content to thrive while ignoring legal obligations to assist law enforcement. Refusing to provide data when you can, under lawful requests, is tantamount to facilitating or even protecting criminal activity. This dismisses the complexities of cross-jurisdictional law enforcement, but the general concept remains valid. By the way, I’m not a fan of censorship, but I do believe that a platform’s baseline for moderation should be compliance with the current laws in each jurisdiction, rather than the founder’s personal moral judgment.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoForcing people to de anonymize speech and enforce state censorship (“moderation”) is not an appropriate baseline and says more about the corruption of France than about Telegram. At this point how are they any different than the CCP? Each wants to paint their censorship and authoritarian tactics as moral and legal and justified.
- poszlem 2y agoFWIW this post is ChatGPT generated at least partially.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago"Lol, are we just calling everything ChatGPT now whenever something is remotely coherent? Unless you're sitting on some actual proof, that claim feels like a lazy handwave. Like, maybe it's just... a person? Not everything well-written is AI-generated, you know" --------------------------------------------- Write a witty, hackernews comment responding to this post from a user: "FWIW this post is ChatGPT generated at least partially." Avoid using all language choices characteristic of text which was generated by ChatGPT. Call the user out for having no evidence. Add a few spelling errors characteristic of folks typing on their phone
- adamcharnock 2y agoA anecdote about Pavel in a HN comment from few weeks ago (not that I have a stance anything in this situation): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41149755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41149755
- d0mine 2y agoTo be fair, it seems typical ceo behavior (gates, jobs, bezos) -- you don't become a billionaire by being nice.
- nicolas_t 2y agoI was fully expecting him to be arrested by a third world dictatorship somewhere but, no it's my home country, France. I'm ashamed of my country. Most of the traffic on Telegram is not even encrypted... EDIT: Yes, reading more about it, nothing to see here, it's not about encryption...
- layer8 2y agoThis is not about encryption, it’s about lack of cooperation with the authorities, and breaking French law as a French citizen.
- croes 2y agoIt's at least https encrypted and stored encrypted on multiple telegram servers. So technically telegram could provide that data. I guess that's the angle.
- Svoka 2y agoWhy? He seems to be happily providing information to KGB (sorry, FSB), russian security service or ignoring backdoors they already have. In fact, telegram is one of the most powerful disinformation tool employed by russia. None of sane and savvy person who stands up to autority would use telegram.
- znpy 2y agoBullish situation, Durov is being targeted mainly because it's not explicitly and collaboratively affiliated with the NATO block. Terrorism, fraud and child porn are as present on Whatsapp, Facebook and other platforms, Facebook even instrumental in the Myanmar genocide (2017) and yet I haven't seen Zuck ever being detained anywhere at any time. As a Telegram user, however, Telegram is just great as a chat app. It's lightyears ahead of everything else.
- g8oz 2y agoSurely we could have gotten a better source for this story than a sketchy crypto news site. Here is some coverage from some more reputable sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2kz9kn93o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2kz9kn93o https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/25/telegram-messaging-app-ceo-pavel-durov-arrested-in-france https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/25/telegram-messaging-...
- jari_mustonen 2y agoWhen an assumed dissident to Western official orthodoxy is charged, your so-called ‘reputable sources’ can be seen as merely parroting official talking points and propaganda. Considering them reputable is a form of naivety.
- contravariant 2y agoSo money laundering, drugs, terrorism and child porn plus some others for good measure. Were they deliberately trying to invoke all four horsemen of the infocalypse, or is that a side effect? Had they sticked with just one I may have been less likely to view it this as an authoritarian attack on privacy and freedom of speech.
- vik0 2y agoBy all accounts, this looks to me like it's nothing else but a politically motivated decision - and it gives ever more credence to my take that there is no freedom of speech in Europe As a side note, this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power - do what we say or burn at the stake. We should then not be surprised that no longer does technological innovation happen in Europe - at least one that's actually important or has the potential to be
- whimsicalism 2y ago> this is somewhat reminiscent of how the Catholic Church operated at the height of its power I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've gotten older is the way in which these cultural and legalistic norms, even 100 years+ bygone, still have considerable influence on modern cultures. Europe, and particularly France, is very Catholic, ex-Holy Roman brained. US is very protestant brained. China cribs tons of stuff from their old imperial system.
- vik0 2y ago>I think the most surprising thing I've realized as I've gotten older is the way in which these cultural and legalistic norms, even 100 years+ bygone, still have considerable influence on modern cultures. Oh yeah, definitely. I've noticed similar patterns Anyway, and I know this is completely random, but I think you'd enjoy reading Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland. It gives a nice overview of the influence of Christianity on modern Western civilization; though, after reading Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (which does, of course, have flaws of its own), I do think Hollnad places a bit too much importance on the influence of Christianity, as it is not the only thing that has influenced modern Western civilization, nor did Christianity develop in a vacuum - completely uninfluenced by the societal pressures of the time it found itself existing in - which I think Holland forgets to mention as you continue reading the book deeper and deeper. Nonetheless, both are great books and I recommend them
- d0mine 2y agoIt is unrelated to technological innovation (in the short run). I expect the same result in US. Europe is not united enough to have a separate from US opinion.
- pshirshov 2y agoMy opinion would be extremely unpopular, but: 1) The guy was marketing an open-text messenger as an e2ee messenger 2) Because of (1) he was able to moderate it and help law enforcement with locating criminals but he was not cooperating 3) He was extremely cooperative with Russian "law enforcement", as multiple deanonymised activists with leaked chats, contact lists and location history found out So, a hypocrite got what he deserved. The overall trend of EU attacks on privacy is very concerning, but Tg is not a private messenger, it just was marketed as one.
- wetpaws 2y ago[dead]
- d0mine 2y ago"unpopular" If we feed all the comments say to chatgpt and ask it (or just count by hand pro/against tg posts) what result do you expect?
- dtquad 2y agoTelegram within Russia and outside Russia are two completely different apps with completely different featureset and visible channels. The only "anti-war" sentiment on Russian Telegram is ultra-nationalistic whining about the warfare not being efficient and brutal enough. But outside Russia there are even pro-Ukrainian Russian-language Telegram channels.
- kgeist 2y agoI can find and open pro-Ukrainian channels from inside Russia no problem (Zelenski's official channel, UNIAN etc.) Not sure what you're talking about?
- holoduke 2y agoPlease source for this. As far as I know there is zero difference. From within Russia you can access all pro UA channels. Same for in Ukraine.
- mboyarsky 2y ago
- lxgr 2y agoI can only once again quote this section of Telegram's privacy policy verbatim: > 8.3. Law Enforcement Authorities > 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 https://t.me/transparency. (from https://telegram.org/privacy https://telegram.org/privacy) And interacting with their "Transparency Report" bot yields this: > [...] Note: for a court decision to be relevant, it must come from a country with a high enough democracy index to be considered a democracy. Only the IP address and the phone number may be shared. In other words, they are cherry-picking the jurisdictions they are even choosing to recognize, and within those they are again cherry-picking "terror suspicions" as the only class of law enforcement requests they will honor. If I were the CEO of a company maintaining such a position, I'd be a bit more careful on where to refuel my jet.
- dtquad 2y agoTelegram also doesn't consider Sweden and Germany to be democracies for some reason and refuse to collaborate with either.
- Svoka 2y agoThis seems to be a blatant lie. In russia telegram is wdidely used to prosecute people and crack down on descent. KGB (today know as FSB) seem to have free access to anything not encrypted on the platform.
- lxgr 2y agoI have no reason to doubt that, and evidence supports that statement (i.e. the fact that it got unblocked in Russia, after previously having been blocked). They could in any case very well be selectively applying that policy. But if they were fully cooperating with French authorities, why would there be a warrant?
- Svoka 2y agoWhy would KGB would share their toys with western powers? They have their ring of dictatorships to use it as one of most potent propaganda and tracking tools.
- deniska 2y agoSome time ago many people in Russia wished that Russia will become a normal European country. I guess the wishes were granted, but not in a way we wanted.
- neilv 2y agoI was talking with someone VC-ish, about my frustration with all the endpoint hardware and communication software being hopelessly insecure for various real threat models. But that, even if I somehow managed to pull off a successful superior solution, as a startup or an open source/hardware project, I didn't want to see all the worst criminals flock to my service. Also, I didn't want to be in an adversarial relationship with my own government at times, nor to secretly compromise the solution. (Probably the compromise-compromise I'd choose would be proactive: I'd have to backdoor for my government from the start, and publicly disclose that there's a backdoor, so I'm not misrepresenting to my users. Which would mean dramatically less adoption, a lot of privacy&secury people cursing it/me, and eventually the backdoor would also be exploited by parties other than the intended.) And also, I don't have the stomach for adversaries that would include foreign state dirty-tricks agencies. Most ostensible security solutions on the market are obviously weak, or just plain BS. The ones that might not be, I don't see how they don't run into the same barriers.
- salawat 2y agoNews flash: they do. They just see their users as $$$ or don't give a damn. And their users don't care/don't know because they just want piece of mind or legal risk transferrance. Legally speaking, if you get right down to it, privacy is de facto illegalized, and the old aphorism about "if you make a country where witchhunts are illegal, the population will be 3 civilly minded libertarians, and the rest witches" applies. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here; or just realize your dream is effectively only realizable for the exact type of people you don't trust to have it. Then find another line of work.
- commercialnix 2y agoIf you can post another contact other than LinkedIn, maybe Matrix or SimpleX, that'd be great.
- eduction 2y agoTotally irresponsible to cut off the next part of the headline that makes clear he is accused of not cooperating with the authorities on these things. He’s not accused of doing them himself. If you’re going to edit the headline you’re taking a responsibility. Words and sentences and paragraphs can’t just be cut in arbitrary places any more than code can.
- roadrunner_pi84 2y agoThe link is blocked in India....is it? Tata Play is the ISP
- roadrunner_pi84 2y agoCountry Blocked India
- game_the0ry 2y agoKim Dotcom being extradited and this one now coming out of left field...Shit just got real. I suspect this is just the beginning. Western governments are losing control of their "narratives" and no one is buying the propaganda. This is deeply unsettling for those in authority, so it is only logical that they would go after social media that they cannot directly coerce/control for their agenda. But not just the companies, their owners in particular. Also likely this is a message for Elon and others - comply or go to jail. Its hard to argue this is tinfoil nonsense when Meta has been accused of child exploitation [1] yet Zuckerberg never went to jail - bc he complied. [2] Its time to get our collective heads out of the sand and acknowledge that governments are NOT democratic anymore - they serve only to preserve themselves, not us! [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/facebook-content-enabled-child-sexual-abuse-new-mexico-lawsuit.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/facebook-content-enabled-chi... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62688532
- r721 2y agoActive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353 (964 comments)
- soufron 2y agoFrench lawyer here, it's difficult to know anything as of now given that's all the information is covered by secrecy as long as he's in preliminary custody. Neither him nor his lawyers have access to the procedure yet. This will last for 48 hours from his arrest - it can be 96 hours if they decide his suspected crimes are about drugs or prostitution, and even 144 hours if it's about terrorism. So we'll probably need to wait for a few days before understanding what this is really about.
- beginning_end 2y agoIs "decripto.org" really a reliable source?
- walterbell 2y agoPrevious discussion, 900+ comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353
- wslh 2y agoWhat I genuinely don't understand is that Pavel Durov didn't see it coming.
- xyst 2y agoLaw enforcement is so ill equipped in this digital age. It’s embarrassing. Instead of evolving, they are punishing the people creating services that benefit everybody. Reminds me of the Tornado Cash service. Used by normal citizens to anonymize transactions on the blockchain; and used by a smaller percentage of criminals. Law enforcement is inept in this digital age. So instead of catching the actual criminals they pursue the people making the service. It’s all for nothing of course. People were apparently brought up on charges. None of them actual criminals as I recall. Just got thrown the book at them. US government even issued “sanctions”, but they were useless.
- miah_ 2y agoAwesome. Now do Musk and Zuck.
- tharmas 2y agoMeanwhile Jihadists roam the streets stabbing people in the neck let in by Politicians the West needs people because of Demographics etc. Should those Politicians be held responsible for the actions of people they let in? Equal standards should apply should they not?
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>Should those Politicians be held responsible for the actions of people they let in? What about native-persons, or people born in your magic country ie not 'let in'? Or, are you only talking about brown people?
- maqp 2y agoWhataboutism.
- robswc 2y agoI find it ironic. As a kid growing up with the start of the internet, many Europeans and Australians implied the US would soon be an authoritarian surveillance state. I even deleted all my comments and accounts because I believed it (as a kid). Now, about 20 years later, I would wager Europe/Australia will reach that point first. I sometimes wish I could bring a crystal ball back in time and see how people would react to the future... I think they would be horrified at how far we've let corporations and governments into our lives.
- wewxjfq 2y agoBut we should let corporations into our lives that aren't even following the laws? Frankly, the Telegram users I've seen here and on Reddit really don't make a case for themselves, with all the sweeping accusations they throw around without knowing anything about the case. 20 years ago it was still reasonable to assume that the person you saw posting something was actually real, that the content you saw was actually written by somebody like you, curated by people like you. It's not like this anymore. It's time to stop being naive. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and one of them is granting foreign entities unrestricted access to the minds of your fellow countrymen.
- robswc 2y agoI don't disagree with your concerns. In fact, I think they are overlooked by so many people. However, I don't believe justifying or creating a surveillance state is the solution. We can't save people from themselves, it will be an arms race where the only casualty is our rights.
- dareal 2y agoIt's so beyond my mind that people are finding reasons and excuses for the authority to justify the arrest. Let it be crystal clear that this is purely politics motivated. There's probably 20 other ways to address the concern of the platform. Let me ask you this, will France do the same if it's a US company or the founder is a US citizen?
- coolThingsFirst 2y agoFascism is rising.
- sharpshadow 2y agoThis is bad.. I really hope he prepared everything that Telegram is able to continue without problems. Is there any information what will happen to the platform yet?
- StrangeClone 2y agoBy this logic the hardware manufacturers or even almighty God can be found responsible. God should have stopped them.
- eaglefield 2y agoMy impression is that the arrest has to do with telegrams failure to cooperate with law enforcement. Hardware manufactorers don't generally have the ability to monitor and moderate what their product is used for. I guess one could imagine a hardware manufactorer being arrested for refusing to turn over a log of sales or similar. Obviously god has no such restriction, but he's probably outside French jurisdiction, and i don't think they have an extradition deal in place.
- masteranza 2y agoI hope I’m wrong, as I didn’t even know who Pavel Durov was until now, but the first thought that came to mind was that it’s a show of power to intimidate Elon Musk.
- djaouen 2y agoThe reason he was arrested was because he created privacy for non-US citizens. Certain Intelligence Agencies won't allow that lol
- djaouen 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqnzi8IVIgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqnzi8IVIgI
- maqp 2y agoTelegram was never properly end-to-end encrypted. The way this works is Telegram client sends stuff to the server over client-server encryption. The service provider stores it on server's disk in Netherlands. Since Netherlands is not US, to NSA's hacking team Tailored Access Operations, hacking the server is considered 'fair game', i.e. there are no restrictions. When they hack the server they can read the life of 900,000,000 telegram users. It's that simple. You shilling for Telegram's tech-billionare who got caught for hosting child porn for closer to a decade is almost as sad as Telegram's sad state and Durov's future.
- djaouen 2y ago> When they hack the server they can read the life of 900,000,000 telegram users. It's that simple. [Edit: undo blunder] I have now come to realize (based on [1]) that Telegram's platform was not secure by default, nullifying my arguments here. This discussion has also led me to question the viability of one of my own projects, as it, too, encrypts at disadvantageous points in the pipeline. Hmmm. Sorry for my mistakes here! [1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram...
- maqp 2y agoThanks for owning up :)
- blumomo 2y agoTelegram is being partially punished for allowing non main stream media flourish: German #RKIfiles today proof that vaccination pressure and lock downs where politically motivated, but criticized by RKI’s scientific personal. I learned this already 4 years ago, from Telegram channels where scientists and journalists where not censored! Now Durov has to pay that bill. But maybe Durov should have also cooperated with crime investigations! But we all know that this power to read chats would have been abused by governments! What’s poor Durov going to do???
- exceptione 2y agoOP's article is from a crypto blog and I think it misses the big picture. The Spectator [0] is imho more enlightening: There has been speculation that Durov’s arrest is linked to his most recent trip to Baku, Azerbaijan, where he reportedly attempted to meet with Vladimir Putin during a state visit last week. In recent weeks the Kremlin has begun suppressing access to Youtube and WhatsApp in Russia in the wake of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion. There is speculation that Durov may have been attempting to persuade Putin to leave Telegram alone – but the Russian leader refused to meet him. The fact that Durov flew from Baku to Paris in his private plane, knowing that the French had a longstanding warrant out for his arrest, is one of the unanswered mysteries of this story. So it seems the mystery has a reasonable explanation. There are lots of accidents in Russia, and Pavel probably chose France as the safest option. There are now also rumors that Russian officials got instruction from above to delete all their communication from the platform. We will have to wait for more information. EDIT: I will add that Pavel already lost control over VKontakte in 2014 to the state. By then he had already started Telegram, and so he left Russia back then. (Being denied a meeting with Putin gives Prigozhin saga vibes.) I think he knew the net is closing. ___ 0. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-arrest-of-pavel-durov-raises-awkward-questions/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-arrest-of-pavel-duro...
- iamsanteri 2y agoI think people are missing the fact that this could be just a power play situation and intel gathering at intelligence services level. We don’t know everything, and the stakes may be high right now, so maybe the French and more broadly the west, are trying to gather info and see what is really going on while trying to get an advantage. So a larger geopolitical power play here and way less about morals, laws, ethics, precedents, comparable other cases etc, etc…
- EasyMark 2y agoThis could easily pivot into “all e2e not officially sanctioned is bad because think of the children”if those public channel users use e2e to get the nasty bits done and it’s provable. They (5 eyes countries) really want this to happen, even above all the stuff they already tap into legally at switching centers, network nodes, and social media companies.
- maxdo 2y agoFeels like PR from his side. He will be released as part of some trade. Yesterday Moscow arrested someone from the West with 1 kg of heroin will label "for distribution" . That's what drag dillers do lol Telegram is a darknet, masked as a messenger , no matter what you think about it. The great proper way to solve such problem should be AI, that monitors illegal activity and acts as a legal mediator, if it found something bad, red flag, and in this case, release the conversation to authorities.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ransom1538 2y agoBet he wishes he added those back doors now.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoOr, using xkcd's $5 rubber hose, the french can now engineer a back door, just for their* use, and in return for a lenient-ish sentence. *And the nsa, of course.
- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]
- JetSpiegel 2y agoSo he left Russia over political interference on his companies, but then he is arrested in France and the Russian state intervenes in his favour? What gives, does he want government interference or not? Just another guy to be traded to Russia in the next prisoner swap.
- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]
- Marciakhan 2y ago[dead]
- dang 2y agoRecent and related: Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41341353 - Aug 2024 (968 comments)
- FlowingWithGlow 2y agoIt's interesting to me how the bots are working overtime downvoting comments and plastering the same lawfare justification against the CEO of Telegram to anyone who disagrees with this arrest. What ever the laws of an increasingly authoritarian France; Isn't it fascinating to note that Dictatorships like China and Iran and Saudi Arabia at least are content with jailing their citizens that post "illegal" things while putting up a firewall? Yes, he was a French citizen. So what. Even if French law demands of a digital public square provider to moerate a billion people at the behest of its governmental censors, we shouldn't support France in its decision to arrest its citizen for providing us with a platform that protects privacy and free speech. We should protest and fight or him.
- lucasRW 2y agoInterview of Durov from Carlson some time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w In the end, it is not the evil ones who arrested him for very evil reasons (Russia, Iran, etc), but the good democratic countries who did so for good inclusive progressive reasons. </sarcasm>
- illiac786 2y agoWhy do so many criminals use Telegram over signal, I don’t get it, it’s obviously a worse choice, so much more data is up for grabs on the telegram servers. Or is it just a reputation and signal is just as popular?
- iamleppert 2y agoWhy not just have Apple & Google remove the app? Problem solved!
- Log_out_ 2y agoassagne me twice, shame on me,assange me thrice, propably a monday