The US probably didn't dare to arrest him because it would cause a free speech riot. So they let France do it, who will happily pass the ransom (all user data in exchange for release from prison) on to them. nostr:note1qh6jhve9ajj78gufwu2lq27syhjww7vjynzdcxtk3lv0xhhgczdswar6xk
Discussion
Putin refused to meet him when visiting Baku, so he probably had the option to fall out of an open window or take his private yet to a western country..
Probably Klaus idea
I would imagine a lot of influential people are scurrying to make contingency plans after seeing the censorship escalate
I don’t get it. Telegram is plaintext by default. I don’t know a single person who even uses it encrypted. What’s Durov’s point with the story of injecting malicious open source libs into the client?
The connection to Telegram servers is encrypted. A backdoor could cc the FBI. Also the FBI might want to listen to the handful of chats that _are_ encrypted.
To me it seems to be more in line with previous behavior. Zooko’s thread is worth reading https://x.com/zooko/status/1827780640668062152
Don’t get me wrong… Durov’s arrest is certainly worrisome. But to me TG is grouped public billboard system and I assume messages are already CC’ed to govts worldwide.
My guess is the reason for kidnapping was so that France (and its NATO friends) are added to the CC moving forward.
I'm fully aware Telegram group chats are not e2e encrypted and their off-by-default DM encryption is dodgy.
But there's still SSL and even if the French government had a backdoor for that, it's a lot of work to monitor the Russian internet that way. It's easier when Telegram forwards the chats to them.
Ehhh I doubt there would ever be a free speech riot in the US. Only the left riots, and they hate free speech.
If any American would riot for free speech, it would have happened years ago for Assange. Same kind of talk than for gun rights, and Covid tyranny happened anyway.