Telegram founder arrested in France

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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Well that and the fact that the founder of Silk Road paid a hit man for a murder that he thought occurred (the FBI staged a fake hit with accompanying pictures).
 
From Vox:
“Details on exactly what led to the arrest are limited. However, according to French prosecutors, Durov is being held as part of a larger French investigation. The New York Times reported that prosecutors said they are looking into a “person unnamed” who they believe may have committed an extensive list of crimes — apparently with the aid of Telegram — that include the distribution of child sexual abuse material, money laundering, and drug trafficking. The Washington Post has reported that French police have suggested that “child sex crimes” are an area of particular focus for officials.”

You can’t let Child Porn go unchecked.
 
ronjon said:
From Vox:
“Details on exactly what led to the arrest are limited. However, according to French prosecutors, Durov is being held as part of a larger French investigation. The New York Times reported that prosecutors said they are looking into a “person unnamed” who they believe may have committed an extensive list of crimes — apparently with the aid of Telegram — that include the distribution of child sexual abuse material, money laundering, and drug trafficking. The Washington Post has reported that French police have suggested that “child sex crimes” are an area of particular focus for officials.”

You can’t let Child Porn go unchecked.
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Well of course no one wants to let child porn go unchecked and I suspect that's one of the reasons they picked this particular case but should we be arresting people that provide a service and don't cooperate with government officials?

I could see arguments for both sides but I'm really leaning towards not arresting in this case.

I should also add that telegram's PR department claims they are taking down posts from child porn groups all the time along with posts on other illegal activities. What they don't typically do is cooperate with officials who are trying to read the texts of people they are interested in.
 
Maybe the West is stocking up on Russians to trade with Putin at a later date.
 
Update: Durov has been released from police custody after 96 hours. He is not in jail but is not free to leave the country as he now faces questions from a French judge to determine if the investigation will continue.

There is also a report that Durov also faces ab arrest warrant in Switzerland on an unrelated criminal matter.
 
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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Telegram is like a more protected version of WhatsApp with some additional functions (but at the core is the messaging). Opposition/Resistance groups in Venezuela, Nicaragua and other Latin America countries use it as a "safer" alternative to communicate. Also very popular for sports books, swingers (there's a way to search for groups...that always pops up) and dealers. one man's rebel is another's terrorist: I can easily see how it would be the channel of choice for criminals.
 
CRHeel94 said:
Telegram is like a more protected version of WhatsApp with some additional functions (but at the core is the messaging). Opposition/Resistance groups in Venezuela, Nicaragua and other Latin America countries use it as a "safer" alternative to communicate. Also very popular for sports books, swingers (there's a way to search for groups...that always pops up) and dealers. one man's rebel is another's terrorist: I can easily see how it would be the channel of choice for criminals.
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I'd say it's the channel of choice for some criminals but that's like saying back when they were still around that payphones were the choice for mobsters. Yes, pay phones were used for criminal activity but the overwhelming majority of people didn't use them for anything nefarious and the overwhelming majority of people do not use telegram for illegal purposes.

I think the issue is should Durov and Telegram be forced to cooperate with law enforcement around the world to see those messages? The phone company in the US would be required to wire tap a phone if the police had a warrant, but no one is arresting Tim Cook for not giving law enforcement the key to unlock an iPhone, although I know they can't now.

So where do we draw the line as Western democracies? I think this French arrest is gross overreach but I could certainly see arguments both ways.
 
And law enforcement developed techniques to monitor those pay phones.

I agree that most people use it as a messaging tool, but in certain regions its the choice du jour for illegal activities.

FTR, I don't think it should be shut down. Feels like ever since 9/11, the positions shifted on the type of access granted to intelligence services. I don't have a fully formed opinion on the matter...very slippery slope. Can see cases when governments wants to stop illegal activities, but in the hands of the wrong people can also be a dangerous weapon of oppression.
 
Sheetsfaced said:
Well that and the fact that the founder of Silk Road paid a hit man for a murder that he thought occurred (the FBI staged a fake hit with accompanying pictures).
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Amazingly, he wasn't actually prosecuted for that because of concerns about admissibility of evidence. It did factor into his sentence.

This is the part where the "Free Ross" lunatics go off the rails and/or have nothing to say.
 
Update: Durov has been indicted by the French justice system. He can get out of jail by paying 5 million Euros but cannot leave the country. He has been charged with "complicity in running an online platform that allows illicit transactions, child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as the refusal to communicate information to authorities, money laundering and providing cryptographic services to criminals."

 
Here’s the rub, the Trump Crime Family - Trump, along with everything else that was going on… “Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been teasing a “big announcement” this month related to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi. On Thursday, Trump announced a new cryptocurrency project called “The DeFiant Ones” and linked to a Telegram channel set up on August 6, the same day Eric posted that such a project was in the works.

Telegram is a social media app launched by Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov, and it is the main communications tool in Russia. Durov was arrested today in France on charges that Telegram has been used for money laundering and other crimes.” - Doc HCR

So the Trump Crime Family is in bed with Pavel, and who knows who all else, or what all else…

We all know that trump and his ilk are great at projecting and accusing others of doing the crap that they themselves are actually doing. Let us recall all the BS, trumped up charges and accusations about Hillary and the Dems running child trafficking ops in the basement of a Pizzaria… or all this BS about the”Biden crime family” etc. etc.

So now we have the Trump crime family in bed with Pavel and his “Telegram” company of money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, illicit transactions and child pornography….

Wow. What a tangled web we weave.
 
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Centerpiece said:
Here’s the rub, the Trump Crime Family - Trump, along with everything else that was going on… “Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been teasing a “big announcement” this month related to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi. On Thursday, Trump announced a new cryptocurrency project called “The DeFiant Ones” and linked to a Telegram channel set up on August 6, the same day Eric posted that such a project was in the works.

Telegram is a social media app launched by Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov, and it is the main communications tool in Russia. Durov was arrested today in France on charges that Telegram has been used for money laundering and other crimes.” - Doc HCR

So the Trump Crime Family is in bed with Pavel, and who knows who all else, or what all else…

We all know that trump and his ilk are great at projecting and accusing others of doing the crap that they themselves are actually doing. Let us recall all the BS, trumped up charges and accusations about Hillary and the Dems running child trafficking ops in the basement of a Pizzaria… or all this BS about the”Biden crime family” etc. etc.

So now we have the Trump crime family in bed with Pavel and his “Telegram” company of money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, illicit transactions and child pornography….

Wow. What a tangled web we weave.
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So Trump's kids have a Telegram channel set up and that's in bed with Telegram? It's going to be a really tangled web. Kamala Harris has a telegram channel. Hamas and Netanyahu both have multiple telegram channels. France's President, Macron, use telegram all the time. That must be the largest bed in the world.
 


“Thanks everyone for your support and love!Last month I got interviewed by police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.

This was surprising for several reasons:

1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles “Telegram EU address for law enforcement”

.2. The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France

.3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a simplistic approach. Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.

Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You have to reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and local laws with EU laws. You have to take into account technological limitations. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally, while also ensuring they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we’ve always been open to dialogue.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave that country. We've done it many times. When Russia demanded we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.

All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities could be confused by where to send requests is something that we should improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports. We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.

However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.

I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — safer and stronger.

Thanks again for your love and memes ”
 
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