EU Founder and CEO of encrypted messenger Telegram questioned in France - Telegram founder Pavel Durov detained on arriving in France from Azerbaijan. shit is VERY BAD

Featured on Aug 24, 2024 by Null: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov held in France under a litany of charges, including terrorism, for failing to moderate Telegram to French standards.
https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-fait...ee-telegram-interpelle-en-france-2316072.html ( archived https://archive.ph/edvkC )

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the encrypted messaging Telegram, was arrested around 8 p.m. this Saturday evening when he got off his private jet on the Tarmac of Bourget Airport. This 39-year-old, this Franco-Russian was accompanied by her bodyguard and a woman.

The arrest was carried out by the gendarmes of the GTA (gendarmerie of air transport). Boarded at the FPR (File of Les Persons sought), Pavel Durov arrived straight from Azerbaijan. Above the head he had a French research mandate issued by the OFMIN of the National Directorate of the French Judicial Police issued on the basis of a preliminary investigation.
Why was he under the threat of a research mandate?
Justice considers that the absence of moderation, cooperation with the police and the tools proposed by Telegram (disposable number, cryptocurrencies ...) makes it accomplice of drug trafficking, pedocriminal offenses and scam.

This research mandate ran if, and only if, Pavel Durov was on the national territory. "He committed a dumpling tonight. We don't know why ... was this flight only a step? In any case, he is boxed!", Slips a source close to the investigation at TF1/ LCI. Since he had known himself persona non grata in France, Pavel Durov used to travel to the Emirates, in the countries of the ex-USSR, in South America ... He traveled very little in Europe and avoided the countries where Telegram is under surveillance.

And now ?
Investigators of the ONAF (National Antifraude Office attached to the Customs Department) notified him and placed him in police custody. It should be presented to an investigating judge this Saturday evening before a possible indictment on Sunday for a multitude of offenses: terrorism, narcotics, complicity, fraud, laundering, concealment, pedocriminal content ...

"Pavel Durov will end up in pre -trial detention, for sure," comments an investigator from TF1/LCI. "On his platform, he suggested an incalculable number of crimes and crimes for which he does nothing to moderate or cooperate," analyzes a source close to the file.

His pre -trial detention at the end of his indictment is in fact no doubt. Pavel Durov, a billionaire, has substantial means for fleeing and its guarantees of representation will hardly convince the judges.

A draft to international resonance
For investigators, this draft with international resonance with various objectives. First, it allows you to kick the anthill, impress and dissuade the authors of crimes and crimes which, so far freely, on Telegram. Then, they aim to put pressure on European countries to accentuate the common work to bend the encrypted messaging on terrorist files.

Indeed, Telegram is a hive for criminal content. At the moment, the platform is making the news with the illegal broadcast of Ligue 1. matches but on this encrypted messaging, many accounts are used by organized crime. Beyond terrorism, the most dangerous pedocriminals communicate on Telegram to exchange content. "For years it has become the number 1 platform for organized crime," comments an investigator.
 
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The worst part is if you ask anyone on the street their reaction is going to be 'who's that'? 'What's telegram'? 'Ok whatever'. That or they'll actually defend this because they like the thought of being helpless. It will be like Julian Assange. 'Oh but I heard he's accused of crimes? Well whatever.'

We are becoming more and more like serfs and people are completely oblivious to it and cannot be told.
 
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Lose an Assange, gain a Durov. The 14 year saga begins anew. Season 2!

Also echoing other posts saying how in god’s name he was so careless in the Modern Audiences world of fully globohomo’d europe.
Poor bastard.

I hope the people in charge of the telegram company and servers consider any requests ostensibly coming from him from here on to give up data or put in tracking or whatever to be under duress and refuse. Fingers crossed
 
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To be fair, Telegram has very poor and (intentionally?) finicky moderation and tools, not just for governments but also for regular people/admins/scam victims, on top of poor opsec.

For instance, i've been using it since like 2015 and maxed out groups/channels/stickers. I've witnessed the fiascos during HK protests, multiple recurring revenge porn scandals, app store blocks, you name it. And now with all the crypto crap, premium, paid stars as if it was twitch or something, you'd expect some kind of improvements in moderation, but no chance.

There's still searchable channels from 2018 with revenge porn of underage girls. No matter how many times i report it, some just go private and get to stay up. The trick is to create a new channel with a link to the private one and you're set.
It's also an hotbed for degenerates, OF scum and druggies, again all searchable through the default search. You can find anything from "truck stop" groups where lonely truckers act disgustingly, to random OF/dominatrix/fetish channels where you're solicited for donations, to "nearby search" users advertising sex, drugs, etc.

And oh boy the scams, it's so full of crypto bullshit scam groups that once your username gets added to some actively sold list of actual users, expect to have to lock down all the privacy and security features. They constantly have to add some to combat scams, like fully hiding your phone number (for two reasons, first the chinese government during HK protests used fuzzing and bruteforcing techniques to find out users phones #, and if you add someone as a contact they'll be able to see yours, regardless of privacy settings), controlling who can talk to you, who can add you to groups, etc.
Seriously, with a basic/known username, try leaving the aforementioned settings disabled and watch how many groups you get added to, and how many scammers will dm you, sell their shitty services, threaten you, you name it.

What tools have you got you may ask? Well, when someone messages you and they are not in your contacts, you can block and report them right? They will get labeled as spam, scam, fraud or something, right? Unfortunately (i think) it's entirely statistics based under a certain threshold. What i mean is, if someone is determined to fuck with you, a telegram account is like 50 cents on grey markets. They can start fresh everytime with no strings attached. Just free up the username before getting too many reports, and transfer it to a new account, or use many front accounts and redirect people to your main one, where you won't be able to report it since you are the one starting a conversation.
My theory is that they have so many reports that it's impossible to review them all, even if they have jannies and free volunteers, so for example a new account/group/channel might need to be reported at least X times to be selected for investigation. That's why raids seem to work well in my experience.
You can also report individual messages, but it's basically useless.
Something that worked (only rarely though) is making a report to the @scam bot which i found entirely by accident. There's a bunch more bots like it for terrorism, fraud, csam, but they are even harder to find, and they all are a one way conversation.

I get that moderation is hard, but it's been 10 years and the situation is only getting worse, there must be a breaking point. I remember Durov's philosophical posts about waking up at 6, bathing in ice, on how life as a russian social media monolith is such and such. Then, having built a platform with such low quality users, they morphed into how hard is it to keep it going, should i monetize stuff, would you pay for it, polls, promises to keep a base experience free. So far base features are still free, but paid stuff is turning from gimmicky to just a bit more (bandwidth, file size, group/channels limit). And all without a single change in moderation.

Edit: to be clear, all of this is entirely on the unencrypted part of Telegram, which is groups, channels and regular DMs. The only encrypted part of it is private chats (NOT regular DMs). This is not in any way advocating for any action against encryption, but rather i'm just sick of the complete lack of moderation for most of Telegram's "public spaces".
 
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WhatIsThePunchline said:
The worst part is if you ask anyone on the street their reaction is going to be 'who's that'? 'What's telegram'? 'Ok whatever'. That or they'll actually defend this because they like the thought of being helpless. It will be like Julian Assange. 'Oh but I heard he's accused of crimes? Well whatever.'

We are becoming more and more like serfs and people are completely oblivious to it and cannot be told.
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Telegram is popular outside of America actually.
 
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The French are as bad as the English.

6 of my colleagues were arrested a gunpoint in Paris a few weeks ago, they were denied access to lawyers, phone calls, were threatened with prolonged periods in custody, denied food and drink and the women were subjected to strip searches. What had they done?

Had a bus protesting the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

https://premierchristian.news/en/ne...ers-arrested-paris-over-olympic-ceremony-demo

What I don't understand with this arrest is that say, a paedophile sent horrific images through the post, to their network. The Royal Mail wouldn't be held accountable for not opening the envelope and intercepting it.
 
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It is such a disheartening state of affairs to see what has become of our allies across the Atlantic ocean. I weep for Europe and the United Kingdom's people. They never asked for any of this, yet they are forced to accept these ruthless conditions against their will. I fear the United States is next on the chopping block. May God have mercy on us all.
 
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complete freak said:
Is anything actually going to happen to him though? He's a billionaire so the worst he'll face is a house arrest in a jumbo mansion or something for a few weeks. The only time a billionaire gets any punishment is if they go after a billionaire with more b's. We'll just have to see.
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The regime wants this man humilliated. It could get pretty nasty
 
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