Founder and CEO of Telegram messaging service arrested in France
Founder and CEO of Telegram messaging service arrested in France
[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 ...
(Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26559848/)
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:
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.
I don't care much for the guy, but the fact he gets arrested for the service is a bad sign for private messaging in Europe.
I think it's even more of a French thing than an EU thing. France is known for implementing censorship and stuff recently.
If you don't care for the guy, you will nearly certainly lose privat messaging in Europe. Maybe, it's even too late by now.
No. Pavel Durov is a nut and he is not out there saving private communication. Signal is offering the most accessible e2ee messenger right now. Telegram has questionable security on their optional e2ee chats which is also not the default.
But the people trying to save e2ee in europe are activists and politicians. Patrick Breyer has done excellent reporting on the chat control plans of the EU.
Durov is just some dude peddling his mid messenger
Telegram is good for citizen journalism (like what's going on on the ground in Gaza and Ukraine), funny videos and memes, tech support, and casual conversation. Never privacy though.
What should be alarming is what thus means for other services. Can you get arrested for running a Matrix server in France? It seems like this is very slippery
I personally don't like Telegram as it is centralized, not private and is to close to the Russian government. However, it should be allowed to exist.
If you own a house, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own a farm, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own a school, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own an office building, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own an internet service provider (ISP), can see see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own any land, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own a public forum, can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested. If you own a public messenger (because Telegram is very much not private or encrypted) can see crime is being committed there and take no action to stop it you are a criminal and should be arrested.
I don't see this as a slippery slope.
Why not? Unlike whatsapp and signal, telegram private chats are not synchronized. So if you lost your phone and started a new one, the chats will not magically recover as in whatsapp. Because recover is unsecure. So the telegram is quite private.
or do you mean that encryption is not enabled by default in every chat? This is not an indicator of the messenger's privacy.
Although Tox takes them all by the head, of course.
Unlike whatsapp and signal, telegram private chats are not synchronized. So if you lost your phone and started a new one, the chats will not magically recover as in whatsapp.
That's not true. Signal stores all messages on device.
or do you mean that encryption is not enabled by default in every chat? This is not an indicator of the messenger's privacy.
Encryption on Telegram only works in 1 on 1 chats and is turned off by default meaning no one use it.
This is a global push to destroy systems the government's can't control. He fact he was arrested says everything.
He was not arrested for privacy, there are huge open groups on Telegram for piracy, csam and cyber criminals.
These groups are not encrypted, everything is stored in plain text on their servers. He is being arrested for not removing/moderating this content.
Well, he caused this himself in the end, he failed to deliver on the part of secure and private messaging because default chats are insecure and secret chats are a buggy joke. If he delivered in the promise of providing a real secure and private messenger and did real effort to fight against spam, then things mind have turned out differently. Decentralization should also have been part of it.
In the end, he chose for fancy features instead.
"Sure".
Wrong community mate.
Isn't everything? shrug
Why is this posted here? Telegram is not a private or secure messenger.
No such thing as a secure and private messenger exists
Not even Signal?
You know you are an authoritarian country when you arrest CEOs of messaging apps.
But's not just a messaging app. Telegram is a public forum (non-private and unencrypted btw) where they know crimes are being committed and are taking no action to mitigate them.
If you let people commit crimes in your house you are a criminal. If you own a mall and let people commit crimes in it, you are a criminal. If you own a boat and let people commit crimes in it you are a criminal. Same concept here. Pavel Durov created a public forum and not only allows crime to happen, but lies to people telling them its secure and private.
If I were a tinfoil wearing kind of person, I'd think Pavel was in on the whole thing and helping some 3-letter agency because Telegram has been a "privacy" scam from the beginning and it seems criminals are too dumb to realize they fell for playbook similar to Anom, just on a bigger scale.
All CEOs should be arrested actually.
Which country is not authoritarian by that measure?
This is a actually pretty worrying
This is a actually pretty worrying
Why?
Telegram is not an encrypted platform, so they're not going after him for providing end-to-end encrypted services. They're going after him because they have full insight into what's going on in their platform and not taking appropriate action and in some cases completely ignoring it. It's pretty common that if you're providing a public platform that you comply with authorities. Signal doesn't have this problem, they have no insight into anything their user base is doing; you can't be asked to enforce things you can't see.
So you want so start seeing platforms practice mass censorship? That's what's going to happen as they aren't going to take on risk.
What's worse is that spells the end of the fediverse and smaller hosted media. The admins who are bold enough to host a Lemmy or Mastodon instance are eventually going to get taken by authorities. It doesn't matter what country they are in. Admins can't moderate everything and there will always be content that is illegal somewhere.
I and many tens of thousands of others use it for accurate and timely war updates. Where are we expected to go if Telegram starts censoring everything?
This could be catastrophic for the war effort online.
Edit: I should note that with the exception of illegal things, like child pornography, being made aware of to the owner of the platform they should have to act on that. That's excluded from the ramifications this will have on important matters. Any platform should be made to act IF they are made aware of such activities.
Durov, as a citizen of France, recently sent them away when they asked for access, and then flew to them to test the strength of democracy. Imbecility and courage.
There are open groups on Telegram in which people post that they want to see person XY dead... Everyone who joins the open group can read it anyway.
They decided not to moderate this and not to delete illegal content once reported, although it's easily possible without breaking encryption.
IMO, this has not much to do with privacy.
This is like posting that we should kill someone on Reddit and nothing is happening.
It still isn't a great future to look forward to
Does that mean that French Lemmy admins are now liable for everything that is said by others? That seems like a huge liability and it is impossible for them to catch everything. Also what happens if someone criticizes the French government? Do they have the power to have random comments removed?
If they receive a notice that there is illegal content, that it should be removed and then refuse to cooperate?
Then yes, e2e is not under fire, not cooperating in moderating/Removing known criminals is
This is like posting that we should kill someone on Reddit and nothing is happening.
Have you been there in early 2022? Tons of "we must exterminate Russians". Or in 2015 or so, go to /Europe, see what they say about migrants. You might wanna lower that high horse of yours
They wouldn't even have to break encryption to moderate, message groups cannot be (end-to-end) encrypted on Telegram, as secret chats only support one-to-one conversations
I don't see how that's his problem.
People who think it is, should report for their duty in Kursk as soon as possible.
But Telegram does give data to law enforcements afaik. So even that is not enough nowadays? Even more sad to see it right after the election. EU citizens really have to reconsider their voting choices now.
This is all perfectly legal. This is about public and unencrypted data not being monitored. This is good. I don't want child pornography in my Instagram feed and I also don't want it in a Telegram channel. What voting choices are you referring to in particular?
This is all perfectly legal.
Same as repressions in DPRK or social credit system in China.
This is about public and unencrypted data not being monitored. This is good. I don't want child pornography in my Instagram feed and I also don't want it in a Telegram channel.
I (and everyone else for that matter) think it's all about oppression of private messaging, Telegram does ban child pornography as it's against their TOS and also how is it different to Reddit for example? Telegram is just not completely E2E encrypted and has some data available to read so the government found a "legal" way to oppress it.
What voting choices are you referring to in particular?
Democratic government elections. Idk what parties support such oppressions but people should pay attention and think if they want it to continue.
Got carried away with democracy and attempts to feel like someone. So what kind of moron do you have to be to get EU citizenship? Thought he would run away from the democrats and liberals. Well, he's an idiot and that's it.
There exist not EU citizenship because the EU is not a country. That aside, EU countries have stronger dmocracies, and especially stronger privacy protection laws than any other country in the world. What are you talking about? Are you in the correct community?
It's you protonmail who will tell how they disclose user data, which leads to arrest in Spain. Source
Feel better grandpa?
It's own fault, you shouldn't have taken the citizenship of this stinking pad... You should have taken the citizenship of the Emirates or India or Brazil, for example... Having French citizenship now is a disgrace.
You don't seem to know what you are talking about. Are you a child or on a primary school or something? Read more.
He has dual citizenship - French and UAE.
I was too lazy to just google it, but he has citizenship in Russia, the UAE, France, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.