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.
Chris Berg is a professor of economics at the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub.
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Governments want to make it illegal to have privacy. Durov’s arrest was one of the many steps they are taking in that direction.
That might be true but in this case Telegram was hosting lots of CSAM and other illegal activity in public group chats.
Imagine you are the victim of Sex abuse. Your nude images are on a public group chat and yet Telegram does nothing. There is no technical reason they couldn’t remove the images. They just don’t feel like it. What’s worse is that there is a lot of images of children.
I thought telegrams encryption was more or less non-existent? Am I missing something?
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
The world is turning bad, Telegram is not really a private app, but they have one advantage is that they fuck off all the govs that try to get datas from its users! Soon govs will forbid the encryption to watch gently in our digital life. He’s not complice with these crimes, he’s just proposing a tool that make communication more secure and private, but sadly some bad actors use it as a way to do bad things…
Why do they have the data in the first place?
Your communications on telegram are not encrypted by default. You can have e2e encrypted 1on1-conversations, but group chats are blown for them to do everything.
They had a hilarious argumentation where they claimed that the key to unlock your chats is stored on a different server than your chats are and therefore they cannot access it. A company that argues like they (“trust us”) isn’t trustworthy.
Signal has been audited over and over again by internationally respected cryptographers. They cannot decrypt your chats by design. No need for “trust us bro”.
