Pavel Durov’s arrest is Julian Assange 2.0

Right, so the targeting of any social media platform should be a cause for great concern to everyone regardless of your political persuasion, regardless of whether you are even into politics, it’s very easy for this story to be approached from a purely political perspective, it’s frankly for anyone who uses social media, who chooses to use a given platform over another for whatever purpose, be it politics, to sharing your day and what you’re having for tea or putting out those holiday snaps to make the rest of us green with envy, whatever floats your boat, whatever social media means to you.
There’s no getting away from the fact though, that like everything in life, it is political to a point and for those of us who immerse ourselves in politics, opine upon it, write about it, rant about it should you be so inclined, it is the platform by which you voice gets heard. No more do we just accept what newspapers owned by billionaires tell us, we can respond to that. No more do we accept appalling conduct in tv interviews by either presenter or guest without having the ability to pass comment on that.
But there comes a point when establishment interests try to shut down those speaking out on issues they don’t like people talking about. The prime example of that is Julian Assange, locked up for the crime of being a journalist, now thankfully free and living his life once again, There’s the recent treatment of Richard Medhurst, another journalist treated like a terrorist for doing his job. But now it’s a social media platform under attack for allowing the conveyance of information the powers that be don’t like and if successful, where do you think that ends?
Right, so of course we’re talking about the goings on at Telegram here and the arrest of it’s boss Pavel Durov in France and really we do have to look at the charges first and foremost to pull this story apart, because it needs to be absolutely shredded if social media is to survive with all the freedoms of expression we are entitled to use within the rules and regs of course, of the platform we might choose.
There are 12 charges levelled at Durov following his arrest in Paris last Saturday by the French Prosecutor:
‘This judicial investigation was opened against person unnamed, on charges of:
- Complicity – web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,
- Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law,
- Complicity – possessing [indecent] images of minors,
- Complicity - distributing, offering or making available [indecent] images of minors, in organized group,
- Complicity - acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering or selling narcotic substances,
- Complicity - offering, selling or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs or data designed for or adapted to get access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system,
- Complicity – organized fraud,
- Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment,
- Laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes,
- Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without 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.’
What we have here in this list is a case of shooting the messenger. Holding a CEO of a social media platform responsible for what is being posted on it, rather than those doing the posting. It’s like blaming the postman for delivering a bill to your door. It’s like blaming the makers of a word processing software package responsible for someone using it to write threatening correspondence. It’s like someone writing an encryption program being blamed for what those he sells it to do with it and all social media has some form of encryption after all to protect our identities and confidential information. Where do you draw a line here? Is it not enough to just blame Telegram, should we blame the internet providers too? Should we blame those who control our telecommunication network, their cables transported the offensive articles did they not?
What makes this different? Why go after this guy Durov and his platform in particular.
Well his platform Telegram is arguably more secure than most others and the reason for that, is he has never allowed the likes of the US security services as just one example, to access his platform via the back door. In fact he gave an example when he was interviewed not all that long ago, by right wing politico Tucker Carlso,n a man who’s expression seems fixed in a permanent display of the lights are on but nobody’s in. But Durov told Carlson:
‘Last time I was in the US, I brought an engineer that was working for Telegram and there was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by cyber security officers, or agents…that was my understanding that was what he told me…They were curious to learn which open source libraries I integrated into the Telegram App, on the clients side and they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegram’s code, that in my understanding would serve as back doors.’
Vested interests want to spy on Telegrams clients and they can’t because Telegram won’t let them. That can’t be said of other social media platforms which happily work with security agencies. Telegram has this reputation for being more secure as a result, but too secure for those who wish to be able to exert some control over it. It’s encryption systems are unique and this is why it has become a more and ore popular platform not for criminality, that occurs on all platforms of course and there are measures to deal with that and of course social platforms should be held to account as to how successful they are on that, but that should be done on an equal basis, not giving some platforms spreading hate a free pass and picking on others that the FBI or whoever can’t crack!
Telegram has been very useful, especially because of it’s large video sharing capacity, to get imagery and video evidence out of Gaza as to what has been happening in the Middle East. So much of the content you see on social media, whatever platform, may have got there originally via Telegram and pro Israeli interests can’t stop it. The same can be said of Ukraine a situation that is anything but black and white, much of the information coming out that the West doesn’t want people knowing about again came out via Telegram, because NATO cannot stop it.
Telegram is hugely popular in Africa, have done a lot of damage to the reputation of France in particular in areas they occupy, where African resistance has been organised on Telegram and we wonder why it was France that arrested Pavel Durov?
It’s not even the West alone that Durov opposes. You might think being Russian born as Durov is, his platform might be used for all manner of Putin puppetry, but he famously gave Putin the middle finger after Russia allegedly requested he cancel the accounts of anti Putin officials on Telegram. Of course he refused that. After the 2014 coup in Ukraine, he again refused Russian government requests to provide them with information on those involved in that coup, then leaving Russia and adopting joint French and UAE citizenship. In 2017 Russia tried their luck again, the Federal Security Bureau of Russia demanding encryption keys to Telegram, under a federal law introduced the previous year, so Durov sent a letter enclosing said keys and if this isn’t one of the best examples of trolling the authorities you’ve ever seen I don’t know what is. But now he’s been arrested by the French.
Like Julian Assange, Pavel Durov has enabled the exchange and sharing of information, on matters that vested interests do not like and where he has refused to stop and refused to acquiesce to their overt or covert demands for backdoor access to his platform, he has now been arrested, for effectively providing information certain people, certain organisations, do not wish us to have. He has been arrested for upholding freedom of speech and expression and his arrest has got to be seen as an assault on that, just as the arrest of Julian Assange was. He has persistently refused to hand over data because he is an advocate for free speech, independence and privacy and if you think that is wrong, well you don’t have to use his platform. If you prefer to be able to be spied on by whoever, use someone else. But if you value that, then defend it, because there will be plenty of mainstream media willing to put the boot into Durov, a particularly dross filled article by the so-called liberal Guardian, who can always be relied upon to let the side down and then complain about free speech being impacted upon a month or two later, titled ‘Arresting Telegram’s Pavel Durov could be a smart move. Tech bosses care more about themselves than you.’ Was a particularly odious read, not to mention absolute drivel. Durov’s ethos has always been about protecting his 950m monthly users, and their right to privacy and talks of his arrest, met with glee are tempered by the fact the article author considers the likes of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk as fish that are too big to fry, so this article isn’t even an advocation of even handedness. If Durov ends up behind bars, it’ll be just like Julian Assange all over again. I guarantee if he all of a sudden were to relent and allow backdoor access to his platform though, he’ll walk away a free man, because this is more about being able to spy on users than online disinformation, which has frankly gone on for years and not been clamped down on meaningfully before now and still won’t be if Telegram are the only platform in the dock.
But consider this, imagine if this was the reality, that you end up getting a state mouthpiece speaking on behalf of, for example Israel, and believing every word they say, because you are no longer informed any differently? Watch this video recommendation next of how emphatically an Israeli spokesperson recently got ripped apart and imagine if none of the facts they were verbally dismantled over were actually known, because that is what is at stake here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.