This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
[French media] said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Europe defending its citizens against the tech giants, I'm sure.
There's a lot of really really dark shit on telegram that's for sure, and it's not like signal where they are just a provider. They do have control the content
Safe harbour equivalent rules should apply, no? That is, the platforms should not be held liable as long as the platform does not permit for illegal activities on the platform, offer proper reporting mechanism, and documented workflows to investigate + act against reported activity.
It feels like a slippery slope to arrest people on grounds of suspicion (until proven otherwise) of lack of moderation.
Telegram does moderation of political content they don't like.
Also Telegram does have means to control whatever they want.
And sometimes they also hide certain content from select regions.
Thus - if they make such decisions, then apparently CP and such are in their interest. Maybe to collect information for blackmail by some special services (Durov went to France from Baku, and Azerbaijan is friendly with Israel, and Mossad is even suspected of being connected to Epstein operation), maybe just for profit.
Why arrest him? Why not threaten to block the app in France or something like that?
And why only arrest him? Should the discord creators also be arrested for some shady channels? Should Elon Musk be arrested because twitter is the equivalent of fhe fifth circle of hell?
So they can make a very convincing case for a backdoor, in exchange for his release. And maybe some compensation for continued cooperation. Both come out winning and they get to claim nothing happened.
Government cyber security dealings as usual. or not. who knows?
It's one of the most popular social media apps in Russia that is not banned or blocked. I would bet they already have a backdoor for the Russian police and intelligence agency...
That conspiracy theory is so dumb.
The government almost certainly doesn't need a backdoor as telegram is almost completely unencrypted (only one-to-one channels can be but aren't by default). The real (but more boring) conspiracy theory is that governments generally don't mind Telegram because its willfully terrible security model allows them to keep an eye on terrorists and activists' communications (I have a hard time believing that the NSA or even DGSE don't have their own backdoors already).
However the EU does have laws mandating the moderation of said unencrypted messages, especially when it comes to CSAM, which Telegram is notoriously poorly moderated. It's certainly reason enough to arrest and question this guy, at least until formal charges are brought or he walks free. Maybe there are additional political considerations, but there doesn't have to be.
Also how would arresting this guy help with backdooring. He doesn't have access to the source code. Whoever he calls to get that done is out of reach of the French police. He has no reason not to disable that backdoor as soon as he gets out of the EU. If he can be bought off he already has been (Crypto AG style except way lamer because no-one clever&important trusts Telegram), you don't need to arrest someone to pay them. I'm no DSGSE bigwig but pressuring lower level engineers to backdoor their code seems like a 1000% more effective approach.
Clearest difference I can see is:
In other words: A high profile person in tech being threatened with arrest / being arrested by western countries is a pretty good sign that they were not cooperating with our totalitarian overlords & providing us with ways to preserve our privacy.
And why only arrest him? Should the discord creators also be arrested for some shady channels? Should Elon Musk be arrested because twitter is the equivalent of fhe fifth circle of hell?
Stop asking question and go back to work
you're right, I forgot about the shareholders!
I don't use Telegram because I don't think it's secure, but this is still bullshit.
Yea, no way I'm giving them my number
You don’t have to, you can use telegram with username only
You still need a phone number to sign up
What do you use?
Signal.
TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram
I would vaguely imagine that they aren't going to be very happy about the Threadiverse when they discover us. There's no global moderator team to make moderate things.
There's moderation per community and per server. There's no "fediverse moderator", of course, but I think you're vaguely worrying for nothing.
It certainly is against the GDPR to federate with US instances. US law enforcement could get their hands on our data!
At some point the Fediverse is going to have to protect itself from Europe.
2015: A Russian performance artist, Pyotr Pavlensky -- notable for some high-profile actions, like nailing his scrotum to Red Square with a nailgun -- is arrested after he sets fire to the door to the headquarters of the FSB.
France extends him political asylum.
2017: Pavlensky is arrested after he sets fire to the door to the Bank of France.
There's a certain degree of symmetry with Pavel Durov.
I don't really know much about this topic even after reading the article. It does bother me however that there's so many channels/server on Telegram full of spammers that seem to offer drugs and prostitution. It's almost like those were the only things that exist in this world. Which is such a huge waste of a chat program.
Also who the hell listens to any of the nonsense influencers/politicians write in their heavily biased channels, seriously, I can't find a sane reason to join those, yet strangely that seems to be the only reason the masses use this tool. It's all just confusing.
He is being charged with W R O N G T H I N K.
