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.
This is a very bad faith argument. It relies on assuming that “western government bad” without any basis of statement as to WHY youre claiming this. Would you say Twitter is good for privacy too then? It fits the same argument. The western governments are currently Trying to shut it down, the EU has threatened to shut off access completely. Is Twitter good for privacy because the western governments are trying to shut it down? No. Twitter is absolutely awful for privacy. On the same card, so is telegram. Telegram can not be publically audited. Their backend is closed source. You dont know what theyre doing with your data. For all you know, they took your phone number and sold it to a bail bondsman for when they see you talking about doing crimes on their platform. They could’ve sold any data you gave to them to anyone and you wouldnt be able to prove it because theres no way for you to personally audit them. You know what you can audit? Signal, XMPP, Matrix, fuck you could even audit OpenPGP over email. The argument you put fourth is completely bad faith and is full of holes.
Dis you miss the entire Snowden revelations? Western governments are hostile to online privacy and freedom.