Telegram founder's arrest is radical — if it's a crime to build privacy tools, there will be no privacy
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Pavel Durov's arrest suggests that the law enforcement dragnet is being widened from private financial transactions to private speech.

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.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    429·
    2 months ago

    The crime is not responding to authorities when obviously illegal content such as CSAM is posted. Don’t let the right try to spin this as a free speech thing. It’s not.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      171·
      2 months ago

      Other encrypted platforms: we have no data so we can’t turn over data

      Telegram: we collect it all. No you can’t know who is posting child abuse content

      • Pilferjinx@lemmy.world
        5·
        2 months ago

        Wait, telegram has collected it, knows about and, ultimately condones it? Or is it more of a wilful ignorance and resistance to forced compliance?

      • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        It’s clearly wrong. Matrix does have non-encrypted channels and honestly most of publicly accessible channels are non-encrypted. Do you consider matrix also on the Dame “bucket” as telegram? In matrix you can created encrypted channels but they work very badly in terms of performance with huge number of people like 1000+

    • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      We still don’t have a legal definition of “hate speech”. Yes it’s defined it is what it is, you can’t find any international legal definition and it’s left to the interpretation of judges. Don’t you consider it worrying?

      About crime, as far as I know, child abuse and sex content is taken down. Drugs not - there are many countries with very lax drugs policies.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        2 months ago

        I didn’t comment on hate speech. I commented on CSAM, which the sources I’ve read and listened to (podcasts) say Telegram pretty much never answered when contacted.

        • endofline@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Well, I didn’t see child pornography on telegram but I saw sex channels being removed. Comparing to Instagram, I didn’t see happening this on Instagram. Minor soft pornography is flourishing on Instagram. CSAM or terrorism is always a case brought up to take some unpopular things down

          • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
            1·
            2 months ago

            CSAM or terrorism is always a case brought up to take some unpopular things down

            I’ll concede this point.