[VIDÉO] Selon nos informations, le fondateur et PDG de la messagerie sécurisée Telegram a été interpellé ce samedi soir à l'aéroport du Bourget. Pavel Durov, franco-russe de 39 ans, était accompagné de son garde du corps et d'une femme. - INFO TF1/LCI : le fondateur et PDG de la messagerie Telegram interpellé en France (Police, justice et faits divers) - TF1 INFO
Yep. The issue is that they put out a tool that does some good things, but is also heavily adopted by criminals who piggyback on it.
Should we let child abuse just proliferate with these tools, because there’s so much need for privacy? How do you weed out the bad without kneecapping the good? There’s no good answer here. The good parts of the tech working enable the bad parts, too.
There has to be a certain level of knowledge and acceptance of the bad parts to continue developing it. It’s a catch 22, so law enforcement has to pick between sacrificing the privacy or allowing a tool to exist that proliferates child abuse material and other ills.
There are valid arguments for the importance of privacy, and valid arguments for making sure there these crimes shouldn’t have a safe haven. Action to either end will hurt some people and enrage others.
The standard I recall being established back in the nineties as to whether strong encryption was even legal in the US was “substantial non-infringing use” or similar. It’s been awhile.
The problem with key-escrow or anything similar is that any proscribed circumvention is also available to the “bad guys”.
I think Telegram’s stance would be that they can’t moderate because of strong end-to-end encryption. Back in the day the parallel would have been made to the phone system or mail.
Of course this is all happening in France, so I have no idea what the combination of French and EU laws will have on this, but I would still broadly expect that if a parallel can be made to mail or phone, Telegram would be in the clear. The phone company and mail service have no expectation of content moderation.
The huge difference between mail or phone and telegram is that both mail and phone work with law enforcement, with useful records being made available upon subpoena. Telegram, by design, will not.
If you think drawing that parallel is useful to Telegram, they would then also be required to maintain the same standards of security as the mail, with package inspections, drug dogs, entire teams of government officials investigating illegal activities etc.
The criminals use it precisely because it is not a parallel to other available channels, as it circumvents those safeguards.
i dont get this. it can be used as one. its being seen as criminal because of its ability to send encrypted messages. comments like this are meaningless.
Yeah and still we should not push the message that Telegrams encryption is even remotely close to other encrypted messengers. I met more than one person that somehow thought their messages in Telegram are “safer” than they are in WhatsApp (and they never activated the encrypted chat oprion in Telegram)
Probably not, but discord is far worse. Not in functionality, before you say, but in everything else. While it’s questionable whether telegram is private in any level, with discord that’s not a question at all.
Since the post article is in French, here’s an auto-translation:
Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, was arrested around 8 p.m. on Saturday evening as he got off his private jet on the tarmac of Le Bourget airport. The 39-year-old Franco-Russian was accompanied by his bodyguard and a woman.
The arrest was carried out by the gendarmes of the GTA (Air Transport Gendarmerie). Registered in the RPF (wanted persons file), Pavel Durov came straight from Azerbaijan. He had over his head a French search warrant issued by the OFMIN of the National Directorate of the French Judicial Police, issued on the basis of a preliminary investigation.
Why was he under threat of a search warrant?
The Justice considers that the lack of moderation, cooperation with the police and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) makes it complicit in drug trafficking, paedophile offences and fraud.
This search warrant ran if, and only if, Pavel Durov was on national territory. “He made a mistake tonight. We don’t know why… Was this flight just a step? In any case, he’s locked up!” a source close to the investigation told TF1/LCI. Since he knew he was persona non grata in France, Pavel Durov used to travel to the Emirates, the countries of the former USSR, South America… He travelled very little in Europe and avoided countries where Telegram is under surveillance.
And now?
Investigators from the ONAF (National Anti-Fraud Office attached to the Customs Directorate) notified him and placed him in police custody. He is expected to be presented to an investigating judge this Saturday evening before a possible indictment on Sunday for a multitude of offences: terrorism, drugs, complicity, fraud, money laundering, concealment, paedophile content…
“Pavel Durov will end up in pre-trial detention, that’s for sure,” comments an investigator to TF1/LCI. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of misdemeanours and crimes to be committed for which he does nothing to moderate or cooperate,” said a source close to the case.
His pre-trial detention at the end of his indictment is indeed in no doubt. Pavel Durov, a billionaire, has substantial means to flee and his guarantees of representation will hardly convince the judges.
A net with international resonance
For the investigators, this international sweep has various objectives. First, it makes it possible to kick the anthill, impress and deter the perpetrators of crimes and offences who exchange, until now, freely on Telegram. Secondly, they aim to put pressure on European countries to step up joint work to make secure messaging on terrorist cases bend.
Indeed, Telegram is a hive of criminal content. At the moment, the platform is in the news with the illegal broadcasting of Ligue 1 matches. But on this encrypted messaging service, many accounts are used by organized crime. Beyond terrorism, the most dangerous pedophiles communicate on Telegram to exchange content. “It has become for years THE number 1 platform for organized crime,” comments an investigator.
Considering how hard it is for goverments to actually get Telegram to shutdown criminal chat groups or get chat logs (of unencrypted ) groups I think its at least more reasonable than the whole idea of banning E2E encryption.
Most Telegram groups I stumble across for anything even remotely illegal have been shut down, so it’s clearly not as lawless as you’re painting it to be.
It took the german goverment years to force Telegram to comply with their requests to get data and shut down specific groups. Also based on your location things that might be legal are not legal in a different location, from a German legal perspective there still lots of things happening in Telegram that are atleast a grey area(piracy, hate speech, porn) or straight up illegal(drugs, terrorist groups propaganda).
I am not in favor of the arrest or any goverment repression btw, I am just adding why goverments in europe might want to do stuff like this.
Not necessarily. It might be because of the crimes in the public groups and channels in Telegram. That makes it no more immune from responsibility than Facebook or Twitter.
France is an oppressive country. Racism is so high there, especially against muslims which is indicative of their ideology and lack of respect for the individual’s right.
He’s not being arrested because he’s a billionaire he’s being arrested because the French government wants in on his platform and he is refusing to let them in
He’s being arrested on trumped up charges in an attempt to coerce him to comply.
What TOR or I2P chat services are there though? Contrary to popular belief, Telegram blew up because it was so well designed. It was winning design awards year on year back when WhatsApp looked atrocious.
You don’t need to. It connects over TOR and has no back-end servers that it relies on. Briar and Simplex have forward secrecy and are the only two I would personally use
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every encrypted messenger service is complicit in pedophelia apparently.
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I mean yes but that’s like saying Bitcoin is used by criminals to buy drugs and weapons. The problem is that’s not their only use.
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Wait till you hear about the idiots who unironically make that argument for banning Bitcoin too
That’s like saying Voat isn’t only used by incel trolls who got banned from reddit
Bitcoin is a bad example, since it’s not designed as a private currency. Monero/XMR is actually usable.
Yep. The issue is that they put out a tool that does some good things, but is also heavily adopted by criminals who piggyback on it.
Should we let child abuse just proliferate with these tools, because there’s so much need for privacy? How do you weed out the bad without kneecapping the good? There’s no good answer here. The good parts of the tech working enable the bad parts, too.
There has to be a certain level of knowledge and acceptance of the bad parts to continue developing it. It’s a catch 22, so law enforcement has to pick between sacrificing the privacy or allowing a tool to exist that proliferates child abuse material and other ills.
There are valid arguments for the importance of privacy, and valid arguments for making sure there these crimes shouldn’t have a safe haven. Action to either end will hurt some people and enrage others.
The standard I recall being established back in the nineties as to whether strong encryption was even legal in the US was “substantial non-infringing use” or similar. It’s been awhile.
The problem with key-escrow or anything similar is that any proscribed circumvention is also available to the “bad guys”.
I think Telegram’s stance would be that they can’t moderate because of strong end-to-end encryption. Back in the day the parallel would have been made to the phone system or mail.
Of course this is all happening in France, so I have no idea what the combination of French and EU laws will have on this, but I would still broadly expect that if a parallel can be made to mail or phone, Telegram would be in the clear. The phone company and mail service have no expectation of content moderation.
I guess we’ll see.
The huge difference between mail or phone and telegram is that both mail and phone work with law enforcement, with useful records being made available upon subpoena. Telegram, by design, will not.
If you think drawing that parallel is useful to Telegram, they would then also be required to maintain the same standards of security as the mail, with package inspections, drug dogs, entire teams of government officials investigating illegal activities etc.
The criminals use it precisely because it is not a parallel to other available channels, as it circumvents those safeguards.
That’s like saying Voat isn’t only used by incel trolls who got banned from reddit
No, every service provider must remove infringing content when reported. That is not the case on Telegram.
I dont think Telegram is something that I would call an “encrypted messenger”
i dont get this. it can be used as one. its being seen as criminal because of its ability to send encrypted messages. comments like this are meaningless.
Yeah and still we should not push the message that Telegrams encryption is even remotely close to other encrypted messengers. I met more than one person that somehow thought their messages in Telegram are “safer” than they are in WhatsApp (and they never activated the encrypted chat oprion in Telegram)
No ones pushing anything brother.
France is fucking nuts
Just here too look at shits saying this is because racism jesus fucking christ
He’s now been indicted:
https://www.yourerie.com/news/international/telegram-ceo-indicted-in-paris-court/
It’s going to be so over soon
This is no doubt retaliation for not handing over the encryption keys
Yeah, farewell Telegram. He should probably have stayed at home.
Fucking hell what now. We can’t use discord and now this. Theres a TG group I’m in that specifically releases Teknoparrot arcade dumps. SHIT
Discord is banned in France?
No discord bans pirate communities
Probably not, but discord is far worse. Not in functionality, before you say, but in everything else. While it’s questionable whether telegram is private in any level, with discord that’s not a question at all.
@DoucheBagMcSwag @Flatworm7591 What’s the news with Discord and by home you mean Dubai?
Discord gets …“complaints” from corporations and if they don’t like what a channel has, they can request a Thanos snap for the group.
It’s what happened to switch emulator Sudachi and other greyware apps that a similar ilk of us here gravitate to
Matrix.
I’m talking about groups. I don’t believe matrix has those…not easily searchable anyway.
EDIT: Ooohh a shithead are we?
A shithead? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I enjoy Matrix.
What encryption keys?
Some significant news for Telegram users!
See this article for some interesting backstory context on Pavel Durov and Telegram: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-telegram-billionaire-and-his-dark-empire-a-f27cb79f-86ae-48de-bdbd-8df604d07cc8
Since the post article is in French, here’s an auto-translation:
This is pretty funny. The first example of crime is people posting dodgy links to football streams? They can’t be serious.
Piracy is the crime that impacts the billionaire’s wallet - of course it’s the most serious.
Wow. So they’re saying that he’s complicit in all crimes that may have taken place on Telegram. That’s insane.
Considering how hard it is for goverments to actually get Telegram to shutdown criminal chat groups or get chat logs (of unencrypted ) groups I think its at least more reasonable than the whole idea of banning E2E encryption.
Most Telegram groups I stumble across for anything even remotely illegal have been shut down, so it’s clearly not as lawless as you’re painting it to be.
It took the german goverment years to force Telegram to comply with their requests to get data and shut down specific groups. Also based on your location things that might be legal are not legal in a different location, from a German legal perspective there still lots of things happening in Telegram that are atleast a grey area(piracy, hate speech, porn) or straight up illegal(drugs, terrorist groups propaganda).
I am not in favor of the arrest or any goverment repression btw, I am just adding why goverments in europe might want to do stuff like this.
By they logic, France is complicit in all crimes committed within their borders.
Perhaps you can use the same logic to go after gun manufacturers…
Fundraiser to send CEOs on a French vacation?
Not necessarily. It might be because of the crimes in the public groups and channels in Telegram. That makes it no more immune from responsibility than Facebook or Twitter.
See this thread
Signal doesn’t have those.
France is an oppressive country. Racism is so high there, especially against muslims which is indicative of their ideology and lack of respect for the individual’s right.
And men aren’t allowed to know if the child that came out of their wife is theirs
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He’s not being arrested because he’s a billionaire he’s being arrested because the French government wants in on his platform and he is refusing to let them in
He’s being arrested on trumped up charges in an attempt to coerce him to comply.
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the only platform where Hamas could actually share official content, including combat footage kinos ;_; rather than made-up sites attributed to them.
Summary: France “requesting” Telegram keys.
Summary: “we are no longer asking.”
But the act to put him on prison is a way to request the access for no longer asking. Depends on how much Pavel Durov can handle this torture.
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Guys, please move to something using TOR/I2P. I’ve been saying it for a long time now, but clearnet services are just asking to be taken down.
Unfortunately for Europe though, the US has a massive incentive for something like TOR to function appropriately, because their military uses it too.
What TOR or I2P chat services are there though? Contrary to popular belief, Telegram blew up because it was so well designed. It was winning design awards year on year back when WhatsApp looked atrocious.
Several of them could be ran over there, including Matrix.
Probably there are already some chat services. notbob.i2p should list them if so.
Simplex, Jabber, Briar?
I’m sure there’s something over I2P too
SimpleX can be self hosted too right?
You don’t need to. It connects over TOR and has no back-end servers that it relies on. Briar and Simplex have forward secrecy and are the only two I would personally use
Ah, seems SimpleX isn’t the potential messenger I was hoping for.
Why do you need to self-host it if it’s decentralized?
Because I would like to be able to start a conversation on my phone and finish it on my tablet
Briar is a messaging app that defaults to Tor. I have limited usage with Briar and have never used Telegram so I can’t say how they compare.