Telegram founder arrested in France

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gtyellowjacket

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This was mentioned on the Ukraine war thread but I think it deserves its own. This is actually a big deal. France has arrested the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov. The charges are a little bit nebulous as in France, I guess you don't have to State what you're charged with during this stage of the investigation. The official leaks are since telegram is unmoderated, it's being used by terrorists and child molesters and other criminals to communicate. The unofficial leaks are he was arrested because he is refusing to give user data to intelligence and police services.

Telegram, for those not aware, is popular in a lot of countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Imagine it like a cross between Twitter, Slack and the texting service on your phone. The biggest thing is that it is encrypted so that governments can't read your texts without having access to your account. Durov fled the US a few years back because he said he was getting pressure to give the government a back door into the service. Russia banned the service for a number of years because he wouldn't give them access to the encryption. Now France has arrested him.

The official reason that he was arrested was because telegram does not moderate its content And doesn't prevent criminals from using the service. So you see a lot of things like Russian propaganda, Ukrainian propaganda, Hamas videos showing the January 6th attacks, etc. Telegram doesn't take any of that down. This would be the rough equivalent of France arresting, Mark Zuckerberg because people were using the messenger service to sell drugs instead of a used washing machine. Unless something else comes out, it's chilling that a western country would arrest someone over this sort of thing.
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
This was mentioned on the Ukraine war threat but I think it deserves its own. This is actually a big deal. France has arrested the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov. The charges are a little bit nebulous as in France, I guess you don't have to State what you're charged with during this stage of the investigation. The official leaks are since telegram is unmoderated, it's being used by terrorists and child molesters and other criminals to communicate. The unofficial leaks are he was arrested because he is refusing to give user data to intelligence and police services.

Telegram, for those not aware, is popular in a lot of countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Imagine it like a cross between Twitter, Slack and the texting service on your phone. The biggest thing is that it is encrypted so that governments can't read your texts without having access to your account. Durov fled the US a few years back because he said he was getting pressure to give the government a back door into the service. Russia banned the service for a number of years because he wouldn't give them access to the encryption. Now France has arrested him.

The official reason that he was arrested was because telegraph does not moderate its content And doesn't prevent criminals from using the service. So you see a lot of things like Russian propaganda, Ukrainian propaganda, Hamas videos showing the January 6th attacks, etc. Telegram doesn't take any of that down. This would be the rough equivalent of France arresting, Mark Zuckerberg because people were using the messenger service to sell drugs instead of a used washing machine. Unless something else comes out, it's chilling that a western country would arrest someone over this sort of thing.
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Isn’t it exactly like WhatsApp
 
Durov was arrested outside of Paris, France, not in Russia. In addition to drug dealers, child sex traffickers, terrorists, and money launderers, it was the go-to encrypted app for Russia's military.
 
Don’t know details of the case, but the founder of Silk Road is serving time because users of the site used it to sell illegal drugs.
 
1moretimeagain said:
Don’t know details of the case, but the founder of Silk Road is serving time because users of the site used it to sell illegal drugs.
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I think the difference is that Silk Road was set up primarily to sell contraband. No one was buying a blender or a jug of motor oil on Silk Road. Telegram is primarily a messaging platform and is used by billions of people for routine communication and a very small number for illegal activity.
 
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BillOfRights said:
Durov was arrested outside of Paris, France, not in Russia. In addition to drug dealers, child sex traffickers, terrorists, and money launderers, it was the go-to encrypted app for Russia's military.
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And if Telegram’s operations are impacted by this arrest, that could be bad for the Russian military, which apparently uses it for a lot of internal communications and to coordinate with paramilitary support groups.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I think the difference is that Silk Road was set up primarily to sell contraband. No one was buying a blender or a jug of motor oil on Silk Road. Telegram is primarily a messaging platform and is used by billions of people for routine communication and a very small number for illegal activity.
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I think there these sites have a responsibility to at least try to identify and report illegal activity or at least drop accounts.
 
ronjon said:
I think there these sites have a responsibility to at least try to identify and report illegal activity or at least drop accounts.
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That is certainly an option. We make the phone company and Fedex help with criminal investigations. But they need a warrant and they need to be looking for something specific. We typically don't give our law enforcement open access (or backdoors) with those types of communication mediums which is what the US (and Russian) police and intelligence agencies want.

And this is the US. As much as we see police skirting our constitutional rights, it has to be exponentially worse in countries where telegram is popular like Eastern Europe, the Middle East and now Africa.
 
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