{"id":15567,"date":"2024-08-28T21:48:41","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T21:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1409751"},"modified":"2024-08-28T21:48:41","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T21:48:41","slug":"when-everyone-is-in-the-wrong-telegrams-durov-must-remain-in-france-and-post-a-e5m-bail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=15567","title":{"rendered":"When everyone is in the wrong: Telegram\u2019s Durov must remain in France and post a \u20ac5M bail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This just in: French prosecutors have charged<\/a> Telegram\u2019s Russian-born founder Pavel Durov with a wide range of crimes and banned him from leaving the country. He\u2019s now placed under a heavy judicial control with twice-a-week police check-ins and has to post a \u20ac5 million bail, according to a statement by Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau.<\/p>\n

This development marks a major milestone in what seems to be one of this year\u2019s most important technology news stories that started less than a week ago when French authorities arrested Durov at Le Bourget airport outside Paris. Soon after, the prosecutor\u2019s office released a list of charges<\/a>, which now have been officially brought against Telegram\u2019s founder.<\/p>\n

The said list contains 12 items, mostly related to Durov\u2019s alleged complicity in money laundering, drug trafficking, and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Additionally, there are charges related to refusal to cooperate with authorities on lawful interception requests and providing unlicensed encryption tools. (That last bit appears to refer to a specific French law that requires certification<\/a> for any cryptography tool imported into the country.<\/p>\n

Over the four days since Durov\u2019s arrest, the backlash has been coming in from all the wrong directions. From Elon Musk and American far-right influencers to Russian government representatives and even Kim Dotcom<\/a>, many people with less-than-spotless reputation seem to be concerned.<\/p>\n

Russia and the UAE had also requested consular access to Durov during his time in custody; there\u2019s no information on whether either of them was granted. According to media reports, Durov currently has four passports \u2014 of France, Russia, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis.<\/p>\n

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The <3 of EU tech<\/p>\n

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

What\u2019s Telegram been up to<\/h2>\n

The issues with Telegram are aplenty. For anyone with any knowledge of the platform\u2019s operations, it\u2019s impossible to deny that Telegram has indeed tolerated terrible things, from trading CSAM to drug dealing to war criminals\u2019 coordination and communication. The amount of mis- and disinformation spread through it has been staggering too.<\/p>\n

In addition to that, Durov\u2019s possible connection to Russian secret services is worrisome, although there\u2019s no smoking-gun evidence of its existence. It is, however, already obvious that the image of someone being at odds with the Russian establishment that Durov spent a lot of time building in the 2010s has been heavily undermined.<\/p>\n

Take for instance Durov\u2019s flight that brought him to Le Bourget on Saturday. The tech founder travelled there from Azerbaijan, where he had spent a few days; coincidentally, Vladimir Putin was there at the same time. Russian state media were quick to report that Durov sought a meeting with Putin but was turned down \u2014 though no sane person would take those reports at face value.<\/p>\n

Even more recently, several media outlets reported on an alleged massive leak<\/a> from Russia\u2019s border service, which, among other things, shows that Durov had visited the country over 60 times between 2015 and 2021. At that time, Telegram\u2019s founder publicly distanced himself from his motherland and actively cultivated the image of a world citizen.<\/p>\n

Another part that\u2019s worth mentioning is that Telegram positions itself as an inherently secure, privacy-focused, and encrypted messaging platform. That\u2019s not quite true though, since one-on-one chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default, and group chats and channels can\u2019t be end-to-end encrypted by default. This means that it is technically possible for someone inside the company to read most messages sent on the platform.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Telegram without a doubt had been instrumental for citizen communication in Ukraine in the first days and months after the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion. It was often local grassroots public channels that warned people about missile attacks and Russian troops\u2019 movements before any official media did. Telegram has also been used by dissidents and protesters around the world for communication and coordination.<\/p>\n

The enfant terrible<\/h2>\n

With all that being said, however, it appears that Telegram\u2019s cardinal sin was not what had been happening on the platform per se, but rather its brazen unwillingness to cooperate with law enforcement. In her statement, the prosecutor emphasised the \u201cnear total absence of a response\u201d from the company to multiple requests originating from different countries across the EU.<\/p>\n

This echoes a particularly pointy comment by Casey Newton in his recent Platformer newsletter<\/a>: \u201cFending off onerous speech regulations and overzealous prosecutors requires that platform builders act responsibly. Telegram never even pretended to.\u201d<\/p>\n

From an objective (and privacy-minded) standpoint, this appears to be one of those unfortunate situations where everyone is in the wrong. Arresting the CEO of a technology company for apparently refusing to disclose data on its users is a dangerous precedent that may have far-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, experience of Telegram\u2019s peers on the market \u2014 from Signal to Apple \u2014 shows that there are ways to work with the authorities without compromising your users\u2019 privacy, and there was no good reason for Durov to fully ignore the existence of laws and regulations. By failing to realise that, he may very well have made things worse for everyone who cares about online security, privacy, and the right for encryption.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This just in: French prosecutors have charged Telegram\u2019s Russian-born founder Pavel Durov with a wide range of crimes and banned him from leaving the country. He\u2019s now placed under a heavy judicial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}