from Hacker News

Telegram founder charged with wide range of crimes in France

by NayamAmarshe on 8/29/24, 4:50 AM with 127 comments

  • by neonate on 8/29/24, 7:44 PM

  • by janmo on 8/29/24, 7:16 AM

    It is even possible that Durov has saved lives by not communicating user information to the french intelligence services.

    Recently have been a bunch of scandals where french intelligence officers where involved in murder plots.

    - There is "Haurus", a french intelligence officer who sold personal information on the darknet, in one case he sold personal information including the address of a drug dealer. Something that is believed to have helped in his murdered by a "competitor".

    - There is the murder of racing driver "Laurent Pasquali" who is presumed to have been killed by a french intelligence officer. The plot involved over 20 people with several of them being french intelligence officers. In fact they got his personal information and address to plan the murder plot through the french intelligence database.

    You can Google all this, it is true.

  • by Arch485 on 8/29/24, 7:40 AM

    There seems to be a lot of arguments citing that "$otherPlatform should be held liable for the same things!"

    The main takeaway here is that Durov is not being arrested strictly because his platform contains illegal material. He is being arrested because (allegedly)

    - he is aware of the illegal material, and - he refuses to cooperate with law enforcement to remove that material.

    So the French authorities are charging him with being complicit in a lot of this stuff.

    Platforms like Signal can get away with this because they are properly E2E encrypted, and cannot identify illegal content. Telegram, on the other hand, has decryption keys for the messages and media sent in group chats, meaning they can identify and remove illegal content if they choose to.

  • by sschueller on 8/29/24, 7:33 AM

    If Durov is liable for crimes committed on his platform how far away are we from making phone companies and ISPs liable for crimes committed using their services?

    This is a very slippery slope.

    I don't see a problem with requiring a company to cooperate with a court order to release data. However if a company does not have this data (because it's encrypted) it should not be liable or be required to collect such data.

  • by Arnt on 8/29/24, 5:53 AM

    https://archive.is/wDlpb

    I found it a little low on detail, though.

  • by axegon_ on 8/29/24, 8:35 AM

    I love it how fast people are jumping in to defend a guy who is by all accounts guilty because "well how is he supposed to know illegal stuff is happening on his platform?". He knew and everyone behind telegram knew. Well read this: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2000/31/oj

    Telegram has legal obligations and we all know they haven't fulfilled them-you can easily verify that on your own: you don't need to be a government agency to do that - open telegram and use the search function, hell even the auto suggestions lead you to a ton of illegal stuff.

  • by stanislavb on 8/29/24, 6:55 AM

    Some interesting facts:

    - Durov is, according to him, living in exile outside of Russia since 2014 - due to Russian gov persecution.

    - Since his "exile" - he has travelled 50-60 times to Russia https://www.reddit.com/r/Telegram/comments/1f2pgg3/pavel_dur...

    - Most Russian billionaires that live in exile and are persecuted by the RU gov fall from windows (or something tall) quite often. Durov has been living lavishly though.

    - Russia is trying to protect him now that he is being charged.

    i.e. a lot of odd and contradicting moments.

  • by jokoon on 8/29/24, 9:02 AM

    In the end, if that annoys Russia, that's a good thing.

    Telegram is used by Russia, terror groups, and so on.

    It's always funny to hear people talk about free speech in that situation.

  • by originalvichy on 8/29/24, 8:08 AM

    I’m disappointed to see how few people are up to date on what legal responsibilities platform hosts have.

    Didn’t we have months and months of this discussion around the last US presidential election? Haven’t we had this discussion years ago when piracy was rampant on ”surface web” sites?

    Businesses have always had legal requirements based on the nature of their trade.

  • by silexia on 8/30/24, 8:53 PM

    France has turned into a Soviet style communist state with persecutions of people for exercising what should be a basic human right - the right to free speech.

  • by wellthisisgreat on 8/29/24, 7:34 AM

    I am not a Durov fan, but wouldn’t it make sense that if a top exec of a platform is criminally liable for the crimes happening on the platform, the head of state who has an authority to use force against the citizens should be legally liable for crimes happening in their country?

    Edit: the argument about Durov not ”trying to do anything” after the French requests don't seem that relevant as it aligns with “I tried” excuse of a poor student’s missing homework, i.e. trying isn’t enough - crimes are either stopped or they aren’t.

    Edit2: ha @ downvotes w/o any opinions.

  • by fahrenheit154 on 8/29/24, 7:38 AM

    [flagged]

  • by pikseladam on 8/29/24, 6:39 AM

    Is there any website owner with a million users who can't be held accountable for the same crimes? According to the logic in France, since criminals use Windows, the CEO of Microsoft could also be blamed.