has nothing to do with Russia, according to the linked article
Pourquoi était-il sous la menace d’un mandat de recherche ?
La Justice considère que l’absence de modération, de coopération avec les forces de l’ordre et les outils proposés par Telegram (numéro jetable, cryptomonnaies…) le rend complice de trafic de stupéfiants, d’infractions pédocriminels et d’escroquerie.
Ce mandat de recherche courait si, et seulement si, Pavel Durov se trouvait sur le territoire national.
En effet, Telegram est une ruche pour les contenus criminels. En ce moment, la plateforme fait l’actualité avec la diffusion illégale des matchs de Ligue 1. Mais sur cette messagerie chiffrée, de nombreux comptes sont utilisés par la criminalité organisée. Au-delà du terrorisme, les plus dangereux pédocriminels communiquent sur Telegram pour échanger des contenus. “C’est devenu depuis des années LA plateforme numéro 1 pour le crime organisé”, commente un enquêteur.
Several of the defendants were questioned about their use of tools and software such as Signal, Tor and Tails, and about the encryption of their computers and hard drives. The questioning followed the same pattern as the prosecution’s investigations, which we revealed a few months ago: a huge amount of confusion as to the technical understanding of these tools combined with a suspicious approach to their actual use. Three defendants were questioned about their motivation for using such software, as if a well-argued justification was needed, even though the tools are perfectly normal, legal and ordinary.
“It is possible and not forbidden to have these tools, but we can ask ourselves why dissimulate information” the president of the court stated. Suspicion of clandestinity coupled with little knowledge of the subject was evident in their questions: “You explain that the use of this ‘kind of network’ [Signal] was to preserve your privacy, but are you afraid of being monitored?”. Or: “Why did you think it was important or a good idea to find out about this ‘kind of environment’ [the Tails operating system]?”.
Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) makes it complicit in drug trafficking, child crime offenses and fraud.
Same reason Russia wanted to arrest him, failure to do the government’s bidding.
Not really comparable because the illegal content is hosted and distributed through his servers. Which is why most sites are moderated to a degree. This dude basically said “fuck off” whenever takedowns were issued. It’s hardly a surprise that he’s been arrested.
If the CEO of Lyft got repeated warnings that this very thing was happening and ignored them willfully, then yes. In the end he has nobody to blame but himself. It’s no different from hosting a file sharing platform without ever vetting the content and wondering why the cops show up one day. The stupidity of going to France knowing that you’re a wanted man in a number of countries is just the cherry on top.
The rental company, on the other hand, is more than willing to turn you in to not be considered liable. Which they probably would be if they impeded an investigation.
Except that’s disanalogous, since it is impossible for an encryption service to provide the information being subpoenaed by definition. It would be like expecting Hertz to divulge a random customer’s favorite color. Why the fuck would a car rental company know a customer’s favorite color? How would they even find out? And how would an encryption service know what you’re encrypting?
If getting rid of privacy is what you think it takes to be safe and civilized in this world, you are not the latter and you don’t deserve the former.
Illegal content is distributed through snail mail and telephones too, but those are common carriers so they aren’t liable. Why should Telegram be any different?
The Justice considers that the lack of moderation, cooperation with the forces of law and order and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) makes it complicit in drug trafficking, paedo criminal offences and fraud.
But a lot of people are speculating they just fabricated claims to arrest him because Telegram is russian.
As the CEO he should be responsible for anything he was facilitating as part of his business, and that would include crimes committed using telegram that he was aware of and both did nothing to remove from his service and made it harder for law enforcement to prosecute. You know, like how a warehouse owner who knowingly sells space to pedos and does what he can to keep the police from searching the warehouee is complicit.
There are some circumstances where they are unaware or only take halfhearted measures, but in this case it looks like he is being investigated for actively working to enable criminals, including pedos. As the head executive, he doesn’t have to do it personally if he is directing staff to make it happen.
Edit: explaining the logic behind something isn’t the same as agreeing with that logic
I’m sorry, but it’s a private messaging app! Not even the owners are supposed to know what is going on in the chats. It’s not a moderation situation - I don’t know if he rejected a request to ban accounts, but it isn’t how things are supposed to be.
Well, the French police seem to be saying the way he is running the company involves being knowingly complicit, not that they just happen to be hosting/facilitating communication without the company’s knowledge.
They could be wrong, but this is part of the process of finding out.
Isn’t the main problem that most people don’t use the E2E encrypted chat feature on Telegram, so most of what’s going on is not actually private and Telegram does have the ability to moderate but refuses to (and also refuses to cooperate)?
Something like Signal gets around this by not having the technical ability to moderate (or any substantial data to hand over).
Exactly. Telegram has a ton of public channels full of content that is illegal in most EU countries and refuses to comply with any local laws on things like hate speech. They know perfectly well what their platform is used for, they just don’t care. It would be a wildly different case if everything were E2E encrypted by default.
But this is intentional. TG’s ToS forbids alternative clients with their own E2EE.
Also he’s the VK founder, which kills any idea of “trustworthy” immediately.
It’s part of TG’s business model, I think, something in the price list for governments. And the way they treat alternative clients in reality also hints that maybe backdoors are as well. Say, a new message format of the day (they add them really often) arrives in a new official Telegram version, somehow it’s nowhere to be seen in the channels and groupchats you’re in, but some day a DM arrives with harmless text and some code runs on your client machine.
I use Telegram, but trusting it would be asinine. Even trustworthy services can be abused, and TG doesn’t even pretend to be that.
I think he got arrested because happening to be in Baku for a couple weeks and then still be there at the same time with Putin-Aliyev meeting, and their agreements apparently having intersections with Durov’s activity, is openly weird.
Useless. Current allegations are related to the absence of moderation. Moderation of public content, in public channels or chats. As you can guess, end to end encryption does not protect public content.
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.
Pavel Valeryevich Durov(Russian: Павел Валерьевич Дуров; born 10 October 1984)[4] is a Russian-born Emirati entrepreneur who is known for founding the social networking site VK and the app Telegram Messenger. He is the younger brother of Nikolai Durov. As of 29 September 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$15.1 billion. In 2022, he was recognized as the richest expat in the United Arab Emirates, according to Forbes. In February 2023, Arabian Business named him the most powerful entrepreneur in Dubai.
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translation of major allegation :
“The (French) Justice system considers that the lack of moderation, cooperation with law enforcement, and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable numbers, cryptocurrencies, etc.) make it an accomplice to drug trafficking, pedocriminal offenses, and scams.”
I agree but its not even an encrypted messenger. Almost no one uses the weak encryption and im pretty sure they offer decryption to governments considering they were threatened to be banned in russia and avoided it
Making a tool that provides a private communication service literally everyone should have unrestricted access to does not make you an accomplice to anything.
The ISP will absolutely cooperate with law enforcement though, unlike telegram. That seems the nature of the issue in that there is a lack of moderation and oversight, which anonymity is not mutually-exclusive from flagging nefarious activities, ideally. I REALLY am not too keen on giving safe harbor to the likes of pedos and traffickers and what have you.
I REALLY am not too keen on giving safe harbor to the likes of pedos and traffickers and what have you.
Secure communication between individuals is a fundamental right. That nefarious activities can be conducted over secure channels can never be justification for suspending that right.
I’m not sure I yet agree with that. People can have secure communications; that’s called meeting in person and in a private room. That line gets blurred with intercontinental mass-communication that ultimately is beyond the use of the average citizen and is more frequently utilized to nefarious ends. If the damage outweighs the benefits to society, then clearly a rational limit perhaps should be considered.
Ultimately, what matters is respecting the house rules; and if the house rules of France were broken, why in the world would he travel there?
That line gets blurred with intercontinental mass-communication that ultimately is beyond the use of the average citizen and is more frequently utilized to nefarious ends.
I reject the premise of your argument: secure communication is not more frequently used for nefarious purposes than non-nefarious purposes.
But even if I accepted that premise, I would still reject your argument. The underlying principle of your argument is misanthropy: humans are inherently evil. They will always choose evil, and therefore, they must never have an ability to effectively dissent from totalitarian control.
The dangers posed just by the French government greatly exceed the dangers posed by every single person who ever has or ever will “nefariously communicate” over every communications platform that has ever been or ever will be invented.
Yeah I haven’t committed to one side or the other yet. For me it’s less about misanthropy and more about transparency and accountability. The nature of the French democratic government means it is by extension held accountable to some albeit imperfect extent by the people. After all, the laws are by Transitive Property an extension of the people. But who holds accountable the sex trafficker that cannot be tracked? Conversely we can always say, “if you’re doing nothing wrong, then why do you need to hide it?” An age-old dilemma. There probably should be a reasonable middle-ground between privacy and accountability.
The sex trafficker can absolutely be tracked by doing old-fashioned police work: you spend time, money and energy to infiltrate the network, gain their trust and eventually take them down. But this requires police funding and training.
“if you’re doing nothing wrong, then why do you need to hide it?” An age-old dilemma.
It’s not a dilemma, the answer has been given multiple times: under the rule of law, law enforcement has to prove (or at least demonstrate a strong suspiscion) that you’re involved in illegal activities before they can intrude in your privacy.
But with the advent of mass data gathering and the exemple given by the NSA, all law enforcement agencies dream to change this paradigm.
Accountability is something a government owes to the people. It is not something the individual owes to the government or the public. It is not and should not be easy for the government to invade individual privacy.
What “accountability” do you owe when I falsely declare you to be a kiddy diddler? What “accountability” do you owe when the government is the one making the false accusation against you? I ask, and I answer: you owe nothing at all.
Why? They happily hand all your data over to whoever asks and so does everyone else that’s why they can single them out because you’re already bought and paid for.
As always, there’s a lot of nuance which is lost on Lemmy users.
It’s a question of exactly what telegram is being used for, what telegram the company can reasonably be aware of, what they’ve been asked to do, and what they’ve done.
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.
Gotta add that “pedocriminal” thing so people don’t argue against it. Don’t wanna be seen “supporting pedocriminals” by supporting encrypted communications
The catch-22 is that it’s impossible to make this tool freely available as-is without also enabling the child abuse. You can’t pry the apart, or at the very least nobody has managed to yet.
So do we accept the abuse and let it proliferate, in the name of privacy? Or do we sacrifice privacy to make sure theres not a safe place for abusers?
There is no answer where no one gets hurt. It sucks when the interests of good align with the interests of bad, and it’s a shit show one way or the other.
The Catholic Church abuses kids, so… ban that. Ban adults alone in a room with a child—something could happen. Oh, sometimes they get abuse at school… so, that’s gotta go. Oh no, they get abused on the internet… bye bye internet.
You can’t say “this could be used to abuse a child” because you could abuse a child with a spoon, but I’ll be damned if I’ll eat soup with a fork.
The Catholic Church should absolutely face dire consequences for the abuse they perpetuate and defend. Loss of tax status, prison for all abusers and those who assisted them in avoiding jail. You are making a great parallel.
It’s not that it “could be” used to abuse a child, wtf. It’s that is has already been widely adopted. It’s currently happening. Same as the Catholic Church.
You’re really trying hard to make this about “possible” crimes while ignoring the material ones.
No I’m not. Stopping private conversations will only hurt people. Kids will continue to be abused regardless. They were before Telegram, they will be after. Any “protect the children” by removing rights is never about the children.
But roads are heavily regulated and monitored. In fact, they’re directly managed by the government. If I experience road rage I can call the police with the license plate number and there’s databases of drivers with pictures and VINs etc. This is not the point you think you were making.
the lack of implanted radio telemetry …
Absolutely wild that you’re accusing others of idiotic horseshit
Looks like France is enforcing chat control 2.0 a bit prematurely.
The EU council is meeting to discuss it again on October 10. A new vote is likely in mid-December. Many parties and countries have turned their coat to support the proposal.
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.
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.
Firefox french translation, not perfect but usable.
Why was he under threat of a research mandate?
The Justice considers that the lack of moderation, cooperation with the forces of law and order and the tools offered by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies, etc.) makes it complicit in drug trafficking, paedo criminal offences and fraud.
This research mandate ran if, and only if, Pavel Durov were in the national territory. “He made a pellet tonight. We don’t know why… Was this theft just one step? In any case, it is ready-made”, slips a source close to the investigation to TF1/LCI. Ever since he knew himself persona non grata in France, Pavel Durov used to travel to the Emirates, to the countries of the former USSR, to South America … He had travelled very little in Europe and avoided the countries where Telegram is under surveillance.
What now?
Investigators from the National Anti-Fraud Office attached to the Customs Directorate (ONAF) notified him and held him in police custody. He should be presented to an investigating judge this Saturday evening before a possible indictment on Sunday for a multitude of offences: terrorism, narcotics, complicity, fraud, money laundering, concealment, child-criminal content…
If somebody runs a market hall and allows stalls to be set up where narcotics and CSAM is being sold, and profits from it, and ignores police requests to stop it, I would like something to happen against that person. That person is complicit.
What I can’t understand is why telegram doesn’t just set up the some moderation systems. Most of their growth surely doesn’t come from drug dealers and pederasts? It feels like it would be a tiny element of it and not worth the hassle.
I suspect Durov doesn’t like dealing with big teams and can’t be bothered.
I’m a heavy user of Telegram (average about 1h of screen time every day, and pay for Telegram Premium) entirely because all my friends are on it and that’s because it is the best messaging client BY FAR. I’d love not to share this platform with criminals.
Since when did fighting crime become a “totalitarian state” thing to do?
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.
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