Telegram founder's arrest is radical — if it's a crime to build privacy tools, there will be no privacy
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Pavel Durov's arrest suggests that the law enforcement dragnet is being widened from private financial transactions to private speech.

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.

  • WaveEnglish
    11·
    15 days ago

    Just because their technical backend let’s them?

    Yes. They can VERY CLEARLY SEE that the platform is being misused. Signal can’t. Signal is genuinely clueless as to what you do on their platform. If you’re going to promote your service as “privacy respecting” and not mean it, you better count on any world government getting on your ass for not taking down CSAM material. The difference between being ignorant and being irresponsible is ignoring the issue after you’ve been made aware of it.

      • WaveEnglish
        11·
        14 days ago

        And then no one will use Signal because there is no way someone won’t notice immediately. It is OPEN SOURCE. Look at the xz backdoor that got figured out in less than a day. Signal is more popular than a Linux tool for extracting files. Stupid statement.

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
          11·
          14 days ago

          But with that small tweak to their front end they can “VERY CLEARLY SEE that the platform is being misused.” So per your own argument, the government should force them to do so (and presumably anyone that’s uncomfortable with that can “just not use Signal”).