BREAKING: France Provides Charges Related to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's Extension of His Arrest, and Violates Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs
The Telegram Founder and CEO Durov was arrested by French authorities on Sunday evening as he boarded his private plane to leave the country. Includes Article 36.
See the Press Release from the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office below. It states that on Saturday, August 24, 2024, at 8 p.m. at Le Bourget Airport, the Telegram Founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested and taken into police custody.
The Press Release Cites 9 Charges Against An “Unnamed Person”
I numbered them, as the Press Release did not.
Complicity in the creation of a web platform for the purpose of carrying out an illegal transaction in an organized group:
Refusal to provide information or documents necessary for the conduct and implementation of a wiretap permitted by law upon request of law enforcement agencies;
Complicity in the storage of pornographic images of minors;
Complicity in the distribution, offering or providing access to pornographic images of minors in an organized group;
Complicity in the acquisition, transportation, storage, offering or sale of narcotic substances;
Complicity in the offer, sale or provision without good reason of equipment intended to gain access to or damage the operation of an automated data processing system;
Complicity in organized fraud;
Laundering of funds obtained from offenses and crimes;
Provision of cryptographic services, as well as import of cryptological tools for the purpose of ensuring confidentiality without permissions.
This measure was taken as part of a public judicial inquiry on July 8, 2024, following a preliminary investigation initiated by the J3 (combat cybercrime - JUNALCO) department of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office.
Source: https://t.me/sonar_21/12552
Earlier today we wrote about the arrest and how it already raised a lot of questions that didn’t have easy answers. Soon after that post went out, the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris released a press release with some more details about the investigation (in both French and English). All it does is leave most of the questions open, which might suggest they don’t have very good answers.
First, the report notes “the context of the judicial investigation” which may be different from what he is eventually charged with, though the issues are listed as “charges.”
I would bucket the list of charges into four categories, each of which raise concerns. If I had to put these in order of greatest concern to least, it would be as follows:
Stuff about encryption. The last three charges are all variations on “providing a cryptology service/tool” without some sort of “prior declaration” or “certified declaration.” Apparently, France (like some other countries) has certain import/export controls on encryption. It appears they’re accusing Durov of violating those by not going through the official registration process. But, here, it’s hard not to see that as totally pretextual: an excuse to arrest Durov over other stuff they don’t like him doing.
“Complicity” around a failure to moderate illegal materials. There are a number of charges around this. Complicity to “enable illegal transactions” for “possessing” and “distributing” CSAM, for selling illegal drugs, hacking tools, and organized fraud. But what is the standard for “complicity” here? This is where it gets worrisome. If it’s just a failure to proactively moderate, that seems very problematic. If it’s ignoring direct reports of illegal behavior, then it may be understandable. If it’s more directly and knowingly assisting criminal behavior, then things get more serious. But the lack of details here make me worry it’s the earlier options.
Refusal to cooperate with law enforcement demands for info: This follows on from my final point in number two. There’s a suggestion in the charges (the second one) that Telegram potentially ignored demands from law enforcement. It says there was a “refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law.” This could be about encryption, and a refusal to provide info they didn’t have, or about not putting in a backdoor. If it’s either of those, that would be very concerning. However, if it’s just “they didn’t respond to lawful subpoenas/warrants/etc.” that… could be something that’s more legitimate.
Finally, money laundering. Again, this one is a bit unclear, but it says “laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes.” It’s difficult to know how serious any of this is, as that could represent something legitimate, or it could be French law enforcement saying “and they profited off all of this!” We’ve seen charges in other contexts where the laundering claims are kind of thrown in. Details could really matter here.
In the end, though, a lot of this does seem potentially very problematic. So far, there’s been no revelation of anything that makes me say “oh, well, that seems obviously illegal.” A lot of the things listed in the charge sheet are things that lots of websites and communications providers could be said to have done themselves, though perhaps to a different degree.
So we still don’t really have enough details to know if this is a ridiculous arrest, but it does seem to be trending towards that so far. Yes, some will argue that Durov somehow “deserves” this for hosting bad content, but it’s way more complicated than that.
I know from the report that Stanford put out earlier this year that Telegram does not report CSAM to NCMEC at all. That is very stupid. I would imagine Telegram would argue that as a non-US company it doesn’t have to abide by such laws. These charges are in France rather than the US, but it still seems bad that the company does not report any CSAM to the generally agreed-upon organization that handles such reports, and to which companies operating in the US have a legal requirement to report.
But, again, there are serious questions about where you draw these lines. CSAM is content that is outright illegal. But some other stuff may just be material that some people dislike. If the investigation is focused just on the outright illegal content that’s one thing. If it’s not, then this starts to look worse.
On top of that, as always, are the intermediary liability questions, where the question should be how much responsibility a platform has for its users’ use of the system. The list of “complicity” in various bad things worries me because every platform has some element of that kind of content going on, in part because it’s impossible to stop entirely.
And, finally, as I mentioned earlier today, it still feels like many of these issues would normally be worthy of a civil procedure, perhaps by the EU, rather than a criminal procedure by a local court in France.
So in the end, while it’s useful to see the details of this investigation, and it makes me lean ever so slightly in the direction of thinking these potential charges go too far, we’re still really missing many of the details. Nothing released today has calmed the concerns that this is overreach, but nothing has made it clear that it definitely is overreach either.
Russian Embassy in Paris Denied Access, A Violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs!
In the meantime, France has blocked Russian embassy officials from visiting Pavel Durov, the Telegram app Founder and CEO who has been jailed in Paris since Saturday.
The Paris Russian embassy officials have now accused the French authorities of "refusing to cooperate".
This is no small matter - it is a violation of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Affairs!
See References below for Article 36.
Russian Citizens Show Support
Russian citizens are fighting back and showing their support of Pavel Durov by placing pieces of paper “telegrams” outside of Moscow’s French embassy.
Durov appears to be the latest victim of the speech police, who are waging an ongoing war against tech CEOs who won't bow to their requests to manipulate them.
Mike Benz on End-To-End Encrypted Messaging
There is no way hell would sooner freeze over before France would unilaterally arrest the founder of Telegram without at least notifying let alone coordinating with or getting permission from the US Embassy in Paris to do so - because Telegram is essential to United States statecraft.
Source: https://t.me/realKarliBonne/262835
Mike brings up the “encrypted” cell communication service used by Crooks and someone else he was communicating with.
My contacts tell me that the military uses Telegram, and that no one can break into it - which is probably why criminals can use it. But as with all things, most of us feel that the “encryption” may have some faults and weaknesses on protections for 100% secrecy - that seems to be less likely, given Durov’s arrest.
There are many other encrypted apps, including Signal and Wire.
WHAT I REALLY THINK
⬆️ Someone else said it all.
I would be remiss if I did not discuss an alternative created by Mike Adams. Here's what he says,
EMERGENCY COMMS REMINDER: There's a good chance the deep state will invoke the so-called "internet kill switch" before the election. All websites that they don't allow to exist will be taken offline simultaneously by shutting down DNS (Domain Name Servers).
This will take ALL your favorite websites offline, including Infowars, Natural News, Brighteon, X, Rumble, etc.
We released an emergency backup distributed social media content solution earlier this year called Brighteon.io which runs on a distributed peer-to-peer blockchain structure, with no central servers.
When you download and install the app (https://brighteon.io/applications) it BYPASSES DNS and can fully function even after the internet kill switch is activated, as long as you have ANY access to bandwidth. It's built on the Bastyon backbone.
Windows tried to block the app by popping up warnings when you install it. These are false warnings.
The app is a P2P distributed content system for emergency comms, and it can survive a nuclear war as well as extreme global censorship.
Follow my username there which is "healthranger" in order to receive emergency comms from me if other social media sites are taken offline, which seems increasingly likely.
The arrest of Telegram founder Panel Durov is just the beginning of what's coming. The globalist criminal cabal is going to carry out a massive false flag attack, combined with a takedown of comms they don't control. Prepare now or be cut off. My Telegram is RealHealthRanger
Source: https://t.me/c/1701876489/21954
P.S. Join my Telegram channel: https://t.me/therebelpatient
What is this “ensuring confidentiality without permission” nonsense? Why and from whom do you need “permission” to have a confidential conversation? The whole notion that the state can require you to obtain permission to have a private conversation is sheer evil madness.
Shocking
What is this “ensuring confidentiality without permission” nonsense? Why and from whom do you need “permission” to have a confidential conversation? The whole notion that the state can require you to obtain permission to have a private conversation is sheer evil madness.