Pavel Durov: criminal, martyr, or double agent?
The current affair of Telegram’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, is stinking big time. This case is absolutely baffling, and I don’t trust in the least what the French authorities have said so far. Or should I? Either way, there are so many speculations in the press that I don’t even want to read or hear anything anymore about that!
At face value, he’s a criminal
If we were to trust the authorities, the “Russian Zuckerberg” (he also founded ВКонтакте, vk.com) was wanted and has been detained for allegations of cyberbullying, fraud, drug trafficking, organized crime and promotion of terrorism on his platform. According to the French, Telegram refused to implement adequate moderation, thus allowed some serious criminal activity, including drug dealing, human trafficking, and child pornography, and more.
A statement by Laure Beccuau, the prosecutor behind Pavel Durov’s detention in France, as translated by Anton Gerashchenko, lists the charges, 6 of which are direct charges, and 6 being charges of complicity in committing crime:
- Complicity – Administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction by an organized gang.
- Refusal to provide the authorities with information or documents necessary for criminal investigations.
- Complicity – Possession of an image of a minor containing child pornography.
- Complicity – Making it possible for organized groups to share child pornography.
- Complicity – Acquisition, transport, possession, and sale of narcotics.
- Complicity – Providing tools for cyberattacks.
- Complicity – Organized fraud.
- Association of criminals with the intent to commit a crime punishable by 5 years or more.
- Organized money laundering.
- Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without a certified declaration.
- Providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.
- Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.
If it sounds like shit, that’s because it is shit. And the language has been simplified in some cases, especially at number 6 (the original reads: “Offre, cession ou mise à disposition sans motif légitime d’un équipement, un instrument un programme ou donnée conçu ou adapté pour une atteinte et un accès au fonctionnement d’un système de traitement automatisé de données.”). Stupid legalese.
But I had to correct the translation a bit. Gerashenko is eating shit when he writes that “The fact that the investigation is taking place under JUNALCO (investigating judges, the highest court in France), shows its highest level.” That’s 100% bullshit. JUNALCO means Juridiction Nationale Chargée de la Lutte Contre la Criminalité Organisée (National Jurisdiction against Organized Crime, absolutely nothing to do with investigating judges, and by no means the highest court in France), and the investigations are conducted by Section J3 Cybercriminalité, in collaboration with the Center for Combating Digital Crime (C3N) and the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF).
Even at face value, this is absurd. Post-factum moderation was never able to completely eliminate such “criminal activities” from Facebook, for example. And Twitter, especially under the reign of Elon Musk, is full of neo-Nazi, pro-Putin, and other noxious accounts. Such people are free to express whatever and however they feel, but I was permanently banned because some unspecified French authority has complained about one tweet of mine in which I said that I don’t want to see the naked breasts of the women who breastfeed in public. When I was suckling, my mother didn’t expose her breasts in public to breastfeed me. But nowadays, from France to the States, women have no shame; they only have rights. Next thing, it will be acceptable to give head in the subway, and complaining about that would get you punished. If feminists say that blowjobs are normal in public, this is how they will become.
Absurd as it is, it’s not unbelievable. The French are completely fucked up. They would like to control everything, to ban everything, to censor, and to punish. (The Brits aren’t any better, I know. They even put people in jail for what they wrote on Twitter.)
They should ban the Internet in France. The Internet can be used to commit all these crimes. You can find “tools for cyberattacks” and everything else.
What nobody talks about
There is something that holds water here. Unlike WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Signal, Telegram is more than a communication tool. It stopped being one long ago.
Telegram is a sort of Dark Web in easy access. One can find everything on Telegram, provided one knows what group to join. I can’t tell about pedophilia, drugs, terrorism, and whatnot. But I can confirm that one can find films to download and TV channels to stream. On Telegram, which was not supposed to host these kinds of servers!
I uninstalled Telegram from my smartphone and from my computer more than a year ago. I was disgusted by the way an alleged communication tool has become a tool favoring criminals.
So if cracking down on some such illegal activities is not only legal, but generally accepted, maybe this part of Telegram should be annihilated. The Dark Web couldn’t be closed down, as it’s decentralized, but Telegram is within reach.
Of course, there are some positive aspects of Telegram becoming a much more diversified platform. In Russia, Telegram channels have become a primary source of news. With two-thirds of Russians getting their news, especially war-related, from Telegram, it has become a dominant platform for information dissemination. This loosely mirrors how WeChat and Weibo function in China. There are some specificities of some countries that aren’t for us to judge. And yet, how come that only France “detected” the various criminal activities favored by Telegram?
What everybody talks about
Context is everything. And this is the context:
- Unlike WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Signal, which claim to feature end-to-end encryption, so that nobody could “give the encryption keys” to the authorities, Telegram uses a mix of client-server encryption and end-to-end encryption, depending on the type of chat. Regular chats and group chats use client-server encryption. The messages remain encrypted on Telegram’s servers, which also manage the encryption keys, meaning that Telegram could technically access the content of these messages if needed. Only the secret one-to-one chats can be end-to-end encrypted, and they’re never stored on Telegram’s servers.
- The entire Russian Army is using Telegram. This has become more manifest since the invasion of Ukraine. Since such communication is not one-to-one, but channel-based, it’s not end-to-end encrypted, making it vulnerable to interception and decryption by anyone who has access to the keys.
So the number one speculation is this: Pavel Durov has been arrested to be forced to give France access to the encryption keys not to fight organized crime, but to fight Russia in Ukraine.
Obviously, Macron strongly denied that this would be the case.
Questions galore
But why would Pavel Durov go to Paris, where he knew he would be arrested on sight?
Speculations are abundant here too. Again, some context.
In the past, Telegram’s founder appeared to be at odds with the Kremlin. He was forced to sell his stake in VKontakte after the 2011–2012 protests against Putin, when he resisted government’s demands to censor content and shut down opposition groups on VKontakte.
He then left Russia, to initially obtain the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, through an investment program. A resident of the Dubai since 2017, he’s a citizen of the UAE since 2021. In an unexpected move, he was also granted the French citizenship in 2021 through an exceptional and highly political procedure, most likely based on his contributions to technology and entrepreneurship. I couldn’t find a reliable confirmation, but the French law allows for the naturalization of individuals who have made “exceptional contributions” to the country, such as in the fields of science, culture, arts, sports, or economics.
So, if he was more or less of a fugitive, how come that the Russian Army is using his Telegram?
Oh, I forgot to mention that the French government also uses (or used) Telegram! They’re supposed to use Olvid, but that app isn’t very practical.
Durov was arrested in Paris on arrival from Baku, from Azerbaijan, where he is alleged to have met Russian President Vladimir Putin, which Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied.
I’ve heard two other conspiracy theories:
- That Durov was warned that the FSB wants to kill him, and he specifically went to France to get protective custody. Should Russia want to fabricate some criminal charges against him, France will not deport him, for he’s a French citizen.
- Durov was a double agent all along. He faked his distancing from the Kremlin. He’s now somehow double-crossing the French and the West.
I’m not keen to adopt any of these hypotheses. They both seem dumb to me. The first one is more plausible, though. Il s’est rendu. He gave himself up.
And then, cherchez la femme. You’ll find Yulia Vavilova (not her real name), 24, his alleged girlfriend that followed him literally everywhere. She even used Instagram to constantly document their whereabouts. That’s almost as bad as sticking a transponder in Durov’s ass. According to Telegram’s channel VChK-OGPU, with links to the Russian security services, Yulia Vavilova even made public that, after a tour of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, they planned to visit France! But she did not arrive in Paris with him.
For a reason that I failed to grasp, someone started to circulate the idea that she’s a MOSSAD agent. WTF?! Che c’entra la MOSSAD?
Oh, wait. Yulia was a crypto consultant. Obviously, it was about Toncoin, Telegram’s own cryptocurrency. Needless to say, Toncoin’s value took a dive after Durov’s arrest.
There’s too much that we don’t know, and that we might never know for sure regarding this case. There seems to be a huge smokescreen hiding under the pretense of justice. It always touches people when you mention pedophilia, child pornography, or human trafficking.
What dumb people are meant to think
Obviously, people are supposed to believe that this is strictly a criminal investigation. They’re supposed to get angry at the fact that the French government hates encryption (don’t all governments do that with things that they cannot control?) and wants it banned. And this doesn’t even need to be false.
But even if this were true, there’s a topic for a public debate that never took place. How much privacy is too much privacy?
Consider this. Landline telephony was the dominant form of long-distance communication for roughly a century. If law enforcement hadn’t been able to lawfully intercept such communication, how many cases of murder, rape, robbery, and terrorism had been left unsolved, and how many more victims we have had because of that?
But now, with the so many means of encrypted communication, the criminal investigations are hindered. You might enjoy the enhanced privacy, but how about these aspects?
- CCTV is reviled when it comes to mass surveillance in China, or even the ubiquity of such CCTV cameras in London. But their presence has helped enormously in solving many cases, and not only in England. What is wrong with having such surveillance cameras in public spaces? I fail to understand. Many more criminal cases would have been solved in Germany, should CCTV be allowed (they’re rarely authorized in Germany, and I have a theory that the police willingly lets the criminality arise in an area, as a means to force the Land’s government to approve such cameras).
- DNA analysis has greatly helped to solve many cases, and it has also exonerated many wrongfully convicted people, especially in the States. Why doesn’t anyone favor the creation of national DNA databases, so that the police could easily eliminate suspects and avoid chasing red herrings? People refuse to understand how much this would help solve criminal cases. But there are people who believe that even a national ID card would be a form of totalitarianism. Yeah, sure, as if a driver’s license weren’t also issued by a public authority and stored in a database. But people who don’t own a driver’s license, perhaps for medical reasons, have difficulties identifying themselves, and even more so when “two photo IDs” are required. Why are people so stupid?
The secrecy of correspondence is a constitutional right everywhere on Earth (well, not in the DPRK, but that’s not a country). But exceptions, for legitimate reasons and under judiciary control, have existed since forever. The digital society we’re living in has created the following paradox: Whether they liked it or not, people accept that Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other megacorporations know too much about their habits, preferences, and actions; at the same time, they refuse every single interference from their Governments. This cannot work well in the long run. Google can read your emails, but you want every other single shit to be encrypted. Every stupid thing you say on WhatsApp or Telegram must be sacred.
But of course, you’re free to consider Pavel Durov a martyr on the altar of preserving privacy in electronic communications. I hope you also invested in Toncoin.
Look, I am pro-anarchy in many aspects regarding our society. I don’t want the Government to tell me what to think, say, or do. I don’t want the Government to collect immoral taxes and excises. I don’t want the Government to force me to pay insurance that doesn’t protect me but others, such as car liability insurance (the system should be designed the other way around: an insurance should exclusively protect me from damage made by third parties, and it shouldn’t be mandatory). Why isn’t there any compulsory insurance for the case where I rape someone? I do have a dick and hard-ons too. (Come to think of it, the insurance system is the most socialist concept ever invented by capitalism. On the one hand, it helps you avoid paying millions in damages, medical bills, etc. On the other hand, most people pay most of the time for nothing, making the insurers rich! This should be a state monopoly, methinks.) I don’t want the Government to force me to use banks; I want this to be a personal decision. Just like with insurers, they have to deserve to have me as a customer. I also want simpler laws and simpler tax codes: I don’t want the Government to force me to use accountants and lawyers. Etc. But such an ideal world will never exist.
Once these freedom-related aspects are acknowledged as being impossible, I become more rational and sensible. This is why I believe that there should be an international debate, and maybe an international legal framework, regarding the drawbacks of non-interceptable, encrypted electronic communication in the 21st century. Specifically, the risks it presents to public safety and the obstruction to investigating legitimate criminal cases.
Many thoughts here… Where do you get the time?!! I am with you that is more on getting those keys for Ukraine than anything else… well, my wife says that a certain country who apparently we should not name right now is even more likely.
Regarding the benefits of surveillance…. well, Phone calls tapping, even after half a century, still need a judge to authorize them. While YouTube and Company just plugs a fire hose to anything with a badge or a check. But, let’s imagine we could establish a respected check-and-balance system of surveillance on the social media (looking at the business models, pretty impossible if you ask me); then it reminds me of the Police situation here in the US (and increasingly in Europe), its militarization. Giving police just much more weapons to carry and less restrictions to use it is understandably, but makes criminals adapt and use their weapons first so. Then, the Police will have to increase their powers again to shoot first to cope with the increasing danger it now became to patrol.
The argument for extensive surveillance ignores first, that criminals will adapt, and then, the increasing percentage of civilians that will get caught in the middle by one and the other. No thanks. There are ways to detect crime still, social media, like before letters, phone calls, travel or reunions don’t need to be put under surveillance.
This was not an “argument for extensive surveillance”; it was one to make encrypted conversations possible to be “tapped” the same way regular phone calls are. Usually authorized by a judge.
But in French movies of the 1950s and 1960s, the police were often intercepting phone calls without a judge’s authorization. That was a reality, with wiretapping lacking judicial oversight. I don’t say I approve of such methods, but this didn’t make France a dictatorship.
So you feel your privacy was violated if someone intercepted a call to your wife in which you asked her what you should buy from Costco. At the same time, your Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and Yahoo e-mails are automatically parsed by some software, and, should certain combinations of words trigger something, your e-mails might be forwarded to certain 3-letter agencies. And yet, you don’t object to that.
The police militarization in the US is a completely different issue altogether.
I forgot to mention another moral conundrum. The “Dirty Harry” screenshot is there for a reason, but I forgot about it. It has to do with the strict observance of the rules, procedures, regulations, and acts.
Suppose your daughter was kidnapped, and the kidnapper, once apprehended, doesn’t deny the fact, but he refuses to reveal the location. What do you do? Is it morally acceptable to torture this guy?
Going beyond the “Dirty Harry” universe: unlawful interceptions.
Obviously, there is a reason why evidence obtained by unlawful means is not admissible in court. The police would constantly abuse their power and collect evidence by whatever means. “He’s guilty, so why does it matter? There is evidence that will nail him, so why should we waste our time with such technicalities?”
This being said, the US, as usual, lacked consistency. The 1914 Weeks v. United States (232 U.S. 383) SCOTUS decision prohibited the use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but only in federal courts. It was only the 1961 Mapp v. Ohio (367 U.S. 643) case that extended the rule to state criminal proceedings! I have to admit that I strongly oppose distinct legislation throughout a nation. Each US state has its own criminal code, distinct from the federal one. In Germany, the Länder use a unique federal criminal code, the Strafgesetzbuch (StGB). For the proceedings, the rules vary widely across the US states. Not so in Germany, where the rules of criminal procedure are uniform across the country, as outlined in the Strafprozessordnung (StPO). Other federal countries, even those with linguistic divisions, are using unified legislation (except for Canada): Belgium has a single criminal code, the Code Pénal or Strafwetboek, which applies to the entire country; rules of criminal procedure are also unified, found in the Code d’Instruction Criminelle or Wetboek van Strafvordering. Switzerland is a special case: it has a federal criminal code, the Schweizerisches Strafgesetzbuch (StGB), which applies to the entire country, but the 26 cantons have some autonomy in legislating on certain criminal matters, most likely “lesser” ones, say misdemeanors. Similarly, the rules of criminal procedure are largely unified under the Schweizerische Strafprozessordnung (StPO), but cantons may enact their own provisions on certain aspects. Why is the US such a nightmare from a legal standpoint? Why is it legal in State X to do something, but it’s illegal in State Y? Do people have different moral codes 40 miles south than those 40 miles north? I’d understand to have different penalties, such as theft or rape being more severely punished in a State compared to another State, but absolutely everything is different, down to each State’s Constitution, which should be useless as long as there’s a Federal Constitution! Duplication only adds to the costs incurred by a society. “Oh, look, there are 51 ways of saying that you shouldn’t do that.” (Not to mention that, with 3,142 counties and county-equivalents in the US, there might be 3,142 ways of filling out a certain administrative paper. Unification is bad, it contradicts the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mantra.)
But let’s consider the following case. Sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, a drug dealer was caught with a bag full of cocaine on a Belgian train. He was a French speaker, and the law said that the indictment had to be written in a language understood by the defendant. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, only a Dutch-speaking judge could be found, hence there was no French version of the document. As a result, because of this procedural fault, the drug dealer had to be let go the next day. This is not an anecdote, I heard the news on Radio France Internationale, but I forgot the details.
Does anyone normal-minded consider that the procedure is so much more important than the TRUTH, that dangerous criminals must be freed if some stupid procedure is not met? Rapists, murderers, drug dealers—who cares about what they did, as long as their constitutional rights weren’t 110% respected? We’re living in times when a victim’s rights are less important than a perpetrator’s rights!
Give a fine to that stupid judge, prosecutor, or police officer, but don’t let go a drug dealer caught with a bag full of cocaine!
I’m afraid that in the US, the truth never matters, only procedure matters. In all films made in the US, the attorneys always say, “We won the case!”, regardless of where the truth stands. And this goes for the prosecutors too. It’s a matter of pride and vainglory, to win a case. But even the defense attorneys don’t care whether their clients are guilty or not. They only care to annihilate the evidence against them. Not to get a lighter sentence, but to exonerate their clients. They genuinely don’t care. They have no morals.
To which I’ll bend my moral compass once again, and I’ll say that I’m happy that, in so many instances, law enforcement doesn’t care about unlawful interceptions. They know they wouldn’t be able to use such evidence in courts, but the respective infringement on the Fourth Amendment (although this takes place everywhere else too) is needed to catch some criminals.
Hypothetical case. The judge didn’t want to authorize the wiretapping, or there was no time for that, but the police, the FBI, the DEA, or some other agency needs to intercept a call between two suspected drug dealers. And they just do it. This is not meant to be used as evidence (“X said to Y that they’ll meet in place Z to get the dope”), but as a means to move forward the investigation. Once they gather the information, they can physically get to “place Z” and catch “X and Y” in the act of exchanging large amounts of illicit drugs!
In many such cases, strict observance of the legal framework would have let many criminals go uncaptured, not apprehended. Just think about it.
In practice, it’s difficult to assume that law enforcement acts in good faith in most cases. But the bureaucratic red tape is responsible for many non-actions that have affected public safety.
As far as technological advancements are concerned, especially digitally encrypted communication, I stand to be corrected, but I believe that we’re not fully aware of the challenges posed by them, and that we’re not acting appropriately.
No, not the Patriot Act, nor its European equivalents, such as:
– In the UK: Terrorism Act 2000; Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001; Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005; Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015; Investigatory Powers Act 2016 aka Snoopers’ Charter.
– In France: Loi n°2001-1062 du 15 novembre 2001 relative à la sécurité quotidienne; Loi n°2003-239 du 18 mars 2003 pour la sécurité intérieure aka Loi Sarkozy II; Loi n°2006-64 du 23 janvier 2006 relative à la lutte contre le terrorisme; Loi n°2017-1510 du 30 octobre 2017 renforçant la sécurité intérieure et la lutte contre le terrorisme.
I hear you. I read somewhere that judges in the US virtually always sign the warrants, but even that still acts as a deterrent for abuse. The “no time for warrant” scenario is almost no existent in reality. That is why, the letter soup organizations, goes extra mile to remove even further the restrictions and demands fire hoses connected to databases.
You cover too much Beranger; I am not match for you man!
Pavel Durov, le patron de Telegram, mis en examen et remis en liberté sous contrôle judiciaire:
La théorie qu’il se soit mis à l’abri du long bras du Kremlin en se faisant arrêter (et emprisonner) en France semble tomber.
Kyiv Post: Durov’s Arrest Is About Telegram as Russian Weapon, Not Free Speech (opinion by Ivana Stradner and Jason Jay Smart).
Politico: France’s hunt for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov: The inside story. What a huge BS! As Pavel Durov just said, “If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.” In other words, it’s a political case.
Telegram will now hand over IP addresses, phone numbers of suspects to cops:
OTOH, while I knew that group chats are NOT encrypted on Telegram, it might be even worse, as per some claims: