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.
Well, except Telegram isn’t a good tool for privacy.
There is no E2EE. Simple encryption is only available for 1:1 chats and disabled by default. Telegram doesn’t disclose their encryption methods, so there is no way to verify the (in)effectiveness. Telegram is able to block channels from their end, so there is no privacy from their end either.
Well, except Telegram isn’t a good tool for privacy.
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.
Questionable interpretation. Privacy doesn’t mean mathematically proven privacy. A changing booth in a store provides privacy but it’s only private because the store owner agreed to not monitor it (and in many cases is required by law not to monitor it).
Effectively what you and the original commenter are saying (collectively) is that mathematically proven privacy is the only privacy that matters for the Internet. Operators that do not mathematically provide privacy should just do whatever government officials ask them to do.
We only have the French government’s word to go off of right now. Maybe Telegram’s refusals are totally unreasonable but maybe they’re not.
A smarter route probably would’ve been to fight through the court system in France on a case by case level rather than ignore prosecutors (assuming the French narrative is the whole story). Still, I think this is all murkier than you’d like to think.
I am going to quote myself here:
The issue I see with Telegram is that they retain a certain control over the content on their platform, as they have blocked channels in the past. That’s unlike for example Signal, which only acts as a carrier for the encrypted data.
If they have control over what people are able to share via their platform, the relevant laws should apply, imho.
I am going to quote myself here:
Allow me to quote myself too, then:
That’s not the point.
I do not disagree with your remarks (I do not use Telegram), I simply consider it’s not the point or that it should not be.
Obviously, laws should be enforced. What those laws are and how they are used to erode some stuff that were considered fundamental rights not so long ago is the sole issue, once again, im(v)ho ;)
Well, except Telegram isn’t a good tool for privacy.
If Telegram wasn’t good for privacy, Western governments would not be trying to shut it down.
E2EE is nice, but doesn’t matter if the government can just sieze or hack your phone. Much better to use non-Western social media and messaging apps.
If Telegram wasn’t good for privacy, Western governments would not be trying to shut it down.
They are not trying shutdown Telegram, they are trying to control it.
E2EE is nice, but doesn’t matter if the government can just sieze or hack your phone. Much better to use non-Western social media and messaging apps.
What kind of argument is this supposed to be? Governments can size your phone anywhere … oh wait … lemmy.ml … yeah, I see…
If it would be a good tool for privacy, Russia would try to shut it down the same way they did with Signal.
Telegram’s “privacy” is fully based on people trusting them not to share their data - to which Telegram has full access - with anyone. Well, apart from the optional E2EE “secret chat” option with non-standard encryption methods that can only be used for one on one conversations. If it were an actual privacy app, like Signal, they could’ve cooperated with authorities without giving away chat contents and nobody would’ve been arrested. I’m a Telegram user myself and I from a usability standpoint I really like it, but let’s be realistic here: for data safety I would pick another option.
Matrix does have this the same. Most of publicly accessible channels are non encrypted. It’s all because of e2e performance issues for big channels. It comes with a cost which is not required for most people
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.
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
Wait, telegram has collected it, knows about and, ultimately condones it? Or is it more of a wilful ignorance and resistance to forced compliance?
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+
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.
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.
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
I thought telegrams encryption was more or less non-existent? Am I missing something?
It would be easy to dismiss the headline’s claim because Telegram’s design makes it arguably not a privacy tool in the first place.
However, it is possible that this arrest was chosen in part for that reason, with the knowledge that privacy and cryptography advocates wouldn’t be so upset by the targeting of a tool that is already weak in those areas. This could be an early step in a plan to gradually normalize outlawing cryptographic tools, piece by piece. (Legislators and spy agencies have demonstrated that they want to do this, after all.) With such an approach, the people affected might not resist much until it’s too late, like boiling the proverbial frog.
Watching from the sidelines, it’s impossible to see the underlying motivations or where this is going. I just hope this doesn’t become case law for eventual use in criminalizing solid cryptography.
You’re thinking too far. As someone who knows two people that worked for the Swiss government closely:
Don’t worry about it. The whole deepstate Idea is absolutely ridiculous.
There is no big plan to weaken encryption or anything. There was probably a single prosecutor working on a case involving Telegram that saw his chance and took it.
Seriously, you should be a lot more worried about google or meta, not western democracies.
Unless you live in russia/china/iran/yourFavouriteDictatorship, then forget whatever I just said. But if you live there, what’s happening in France isn’t a Problem to you anymore since your government does it anyways lol
But yeah, I’m getting a not tired of the deepstate conspiracies. He broke the law, that’s why he gets arrested, not because of some deepstate conspiracy
What are you on about?
When legislation aiming to restrict people’s rights fails to pass, it is very common for legislators/governments to try again shortly thereafter, and then again, and again, until some version of it eventually does pass. With each revision, some wording might be replaced, or weak assurances added, or the most obvious targets changed to placate the loudest critics. It might be broken up in to several parts, to be proposed separately over time. But the overall goal remains the same. This practice is (part of) why vigilance and voting are so important in democracies.
There’s nothing “deep state” about it. It’s plainly visible, on the record, and easily verifiable.
As someone who knows two people that worked for the Swiss government closely
This is an appeal to authority (please look it up) and a laughably weak one at that.
There is no big plan to weaken encryption or anything.
You obviously have not been keeping up with events surrounding this topic over the past 30 years.
There is no big plan to weaken encryption or anything.
This may not be a symptom of such a plan, but there very much is such a plan.
Exportation of PGP and similar “strong encryption” in the 90s was considered as exporting munitions by the DoD.
it was not until almost two decades later that the US began to move some of the most common encryption technologies off the Munitions List. Without these changes, it would have been virtually impossible to secure commercial transactions online, stifling the then-nascent internet economy.
More recently you can take your pick.
Governments DO NOT like people having encryption that isn’t backdoored. CSAM is literally the “but won’t someone think of the children” justification they use, and while the goals may be admirable in this case, the potential harm of succeeding in their quest to ban consumer-accessible strong encryption seems pretty obvious to me.
As a bonus - anyone remember Truecrypt?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/rhodium-enterprises-bitcoin-usd-loan-bankruptcy
