Evidently, the French authorities are alleging Durov has committed “fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime and promotion of terrorism”. (The link goes to Yahoo.) Oh, and at least one investigator is surprised he came to France.
“Enough of Telegram’s impunity,” said one of the investigators, adding they were surprised Durov came to Paris knowing he was a wanted man.
It does indeed seem very dumb for him to have shown up France if he was known to be a wanted man.
I do wonder what they actually have on him. Is it just the mere fact that the app has been used for bad things? Because that would be a hard sell in most of the world. Many products can be used maliciously. It doesn’t make it illegal. And the fundamental concept of the product means he can’t moderate it in any way, any more than you can moderate what someone writes on a piece of paper and then just give to someone else.
But maybe they actually have some evidence he has worked in facilitating those uses. For their sake, I hope so. Turning the guy into a political prisoner is not a good idea. And it will not stop services like his from existing. The idea that the government has the right to view everything you say or do is antithetical to the concept of liberal democracy.
From the linked article:
Durov is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform.
Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which has led to accusations that it makes it easier for false information to spread virally, as well as for users to disseminate neo-Nazi, paedophilic, conspiratorial and terrorist content.
Competitor messaging service WhatsApp introduced worldwide limits on message forwarding in 2019 after it was accused of enabling the spread of false information in India that led to lynchings.
What isn’t clear from the article is whether any of these charges had been formally laid before he was arrested. Was there the French equivalent of a warrant for his arrest, before he went to France?
A bit more technical background in the Ars writeup.
I think it’s too early to know exactly what France is alleging here. It could be anything between trying to hold Durov accountable for the platform generally (which will be a tough sell) and showing evidence that Durov was personally present in group chats where illegal activities were discussed. Until we have more specifics it’s unknown how this will play out.
Yes, there was an open warrant, issued by OFMIN, the French minor protection agency, and he was aware of it, by all accounts.
It should be pointed out also that he is a French citizen.
Garry Kasparov thinks it may be connected to Telegram’s ties with Russia and the Ukraine war.
You seem to believe that the first ammendment to the US constitution is universally valid. That is wrong. Many countries including liberal democracies believe their citizens should not be allowed to shout Heil Hitler! in a crowded theater or in social media and have adopted laws against that kind of thing.
Section 230 is valid in the USA, but some people believe it is wrong to give social media immunity from the content they publish and some, even in the USA, believe the tables should be turned.
I wish the French prosecutors all the luck in the world. May Musk and Zuckerberg be next in line! Not going to happen soon, I know, but let the possibility just sink into their brains like a worm and wiggle just enough for discomfort.
This is Telegram. We are talking about private communication here, not public. And, by private, I don’t mean “private company.” I mean private individuals talking only to each other.
Furthermore, we are talking about requiring the government to have a backdoor to any and all security. It violates basic privacy rights.
If this is done, then you’ve just shut down any and all ability for people under oppressive governments to be able to talk to each other online, without the government intervening.
Plus, if the government can just go read your private communications without a warrant, then so can the bad guys. They will find the backdoor. They will steal those extra keys.
I meant what I said. It violates the concepts of a liberal democracy.
If they go after public platforms like Facebook and Twitter, who actually have the ability to moderate? That’s completely different. This is like going after the concept of texting or email.
In fact, in most countries, Telegram is how you text. And it is definitely how you text if you are in an oppressive government, like China.
If this goes through, the next companies they would go after are Apple and Google. Both provide secure texting. Neither has the ability to moderate what you say. No more than your ISP can moderate what you spend your money on in your bank account.
They literally do not know what is being sent.
Telegram is a social media platform as well as a private messaging app, much the way that Facebook has a messenger. So not everything done with the program has a presumption of privacy.
We don’t know the details yet regarding what the specific accusations are or how the information was acquired, so I think this criticism is premature.
As posted above:
What is private? Is a whole country like Andorra private?
I am sure that all government already try this, and the worse the government, the more they do. And the NSA is probably the most competent at it. And criminals? Of course they try, and often succeed. Phishing is a problem.
So of course you need safeguards. But giving the so called social media carte blanche is not sensible, and we see the results already. See Twitter, and Telegram. France has decided the moment has come to try to push back. I think it was about time. Their courts will asses how far they can go. I trust their due process. More than I trust the Kreml or the current SCOTUS, for instance.
I think this is overstated. I’ve never had a single person here in Europe ask me to connect via Telegram. Whatsapp is the go-to.
I specifically said in my OP that I was hoping they had more on him than the fact that people have used the app to do bad things. I’m being told off by someone for that position.
Public forums are obviously be something else. It’s not the main use Telegram, which is entirely its private messaging. That’s why it was formed.
I agree with you. I wish you would not have tried to tell me off like I’m some sort of freeze peach guy.
Come on. I’ve been very publicly in favor of hate speech laws coming to the US. But those are always about public communication. Not private.
As I said, I hope they have more on this guy. I trust France more than the others you mention, but I also know they made those ridiculous arguments about people wearing Islamic head coverings, and will deny people citizenship if they are “insufficiently French.”
I hope they have their limits in place. But I don’t assume it. A lot of governments are trying to get those backdoors in and compromise privacy protections. It’s an ongoing problem in the tech industry.
That may be true for some people, but it seems that incredibly few Chinese avail themselves of overseas based services. Yes, there are VPNs available although illegal (unless you wish to register it with the government) and for Chinese services, codewords to avoid the censorship, such as using May 35th for June 4th. Obviously, you’re not going to register the codewords.
China does have an authoritarian government but it’s not what many people in the West believe it is. It’s not North Korea.
Sorry that it came acrosss like that, please accept my excuses. I must have had too many discussions with Americans about their “holy” first and second amendments, my tolerance of spurious arguments has worn thin. I must re-learn to not assume the worst attitude as a default. It is not easy.
Now, FTR, the French are far from perfect as a state and as political system. Better than others, but really really not perfect. Still, let them try to act now before they get even worse, for instance if LePen wins the next presidential election. Even more so if this helps her not winning the next election.
Background article on the Telegram founder. Extremely detailed about his reasons for founding Telegram as well as his personal life.
Very strange man, this.
Perhaps in population terms? Telegraph is said to be very popular in India and other populous countries, for example.
Telegram has a reputation of being a trap that lets people think they are speaking privately, then the Russian government arrests them for dissidence. I think you are attributing virtues to it that it doesn’t have.
Can you cite this claim? It’s one of several things you’ve said about Telegram that are pretty surprising to me.
The facts that I’m seeing here–and admittedly I’m very new to thinking about Telegram --is:
Numbers 2, 3, and 5 make it very difficult for me to sympathize with the arrested dude.