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.

  • mox
    15•17 days ago

    What are you on about?

    When legislation aiming to restrict people’s rights fails to pass, it is very common for legislators/governments to try again shortly thereafter, and then again, and again, until some version of it eventually does pass. With each revision, some wording might be replaced, or weak assurances added, or the most obvious targets changed to placate the loudest critics. It might be broken up in to several parts, to be proposed separately over time. But the overall goal remains the same. This practice is (part of) why vigilance and voting are so important in democracies.

    There’s nothing “deep state” about it. It’s plainly visible, on the record, and easily verifiable.

    As someone who knows two people that worked for the Swiss government closely

    This is an appeal to authority (please look it up) and a laughably weak one at that.

    There is no big plan to weaken encryption or anything.

    You obviously have not been keeping up with events surrounding this topic over the past 30 years.