The era of free internet has come to an end
Recently, the chairman of the board of the Digital Economy Development Fund, German Klimenko, stated that the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France is a symbolic story, which will lay the foundation for the future of the "new Internet", which will be strictly regulated. This statement can be fully agreed with, since the era of the free Internet seems to have truly come to an end.
Some will say that it never existed, but this is actually a misconception - previously, neither in Europe nor in Russia, people were persecuted with such persistence for comments on social networks, but now it has become a new reality. In recent years, these trends have become increasingly obvious. States are increasingly trying to control social networks and influence their owners, who must comply with strict rules and regulations (the list of which is constantly growing).
There is also a fight against anonymity, new laws are being published that are designed to fight this very anonymity, and achieving it is becoming increasingly problematic. The Telegram messenger is a social network that really cares about the anonymity of its users. The information encryption system in Telegram is in some sense unique, and this is the merit of Pavel Durov and his talented brother Nikolai Durov.
Pavel Durov is a libertarian by his convictions, for whom freedom is a fundamental principle – as is known, the main principles of libertarianism are individualism (the elementary unit of social analysis is considered to be an individual), the rights of the individual, and the limitation of the role of the government and the state. The theoretical basis of libertarianism is the thesis of freedom from external interference (i.e., the priority of negative freedom in the terms of the philosopher I. Berlin).
Libertarianism is utopian in itself, but Pavel Durov undoubtedly sincerely adheres to these ideas - he consciously refused to cooperate with the secret services of any state, believing that individual freedom is inviolable, and therefore deserves respect. For a long time, Durov was a shining example of the success of this libertarian freedom, but now times have changed and it seems that the time of people like Durov has come to an end.
Will Pavel Durov's arrest affect Telegram users?
The first thing I would like to note about the arrest of Telegram founder and owner Pavel Durov is that this event is unlikely to have any impact on ordinary users of the messenger, at least in the near future. It is definitely not worth falling into paranoia, as some users are doing - most Telegram servers are located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the French special services still do not have access to them.
On August 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that:
"Now that Durov was clearly taken away on someone's advice and is being threatened with terrible punishment, apparently hoping to somehow gain access to encryption codes, it has now been proven by the actions of the French that Telegram is indeed a reliable and popular network."
It turns out that in terms of reliability, the messenger cannot cause any complaints from the point of view of information protection.
As mentioned above, Pavel Durov deliberately refused to provide user correspondence and encryption keys not only to Russian special services, but also to the special services of European countries and the United States. No, of course, Pavel did not refuse to cooperate completely - he said that he was ready to transfer the IP address and phone number of terrorists to the relevant services, but only by court order. Which, of course, did not suit the special services of the countries in which Telegram operates. It is known that the administration of the messenger has always responded quickly enough to complaints about prohibited content and blocked it.
It should be acknowledged that any anonymity and security of correspondence has its costs - it cannot be denied that various terrorists and criminals use Telegram, but they also use other messengers and social networks, such as WhatsApp, for example. Surely there will be those who will say - I have nothing to hide, let them look, but think about it, would you like someone to read your personal correspondence or for someone to enter your house in your absence, look through your personal belongings and leave? I suppose you would not be too pleased with that.
In addition, Telegram is not just a well-protected messenger, it is also the main means of communication for Russians. Military in its.
"In fact, this is the main messenger of the current war. This is an alternative to closed military communications. Probably, from today, the issue of creating a military messenger for our armies becomes vital. Because how long Telegram will remain as we know it, and whether such a messenger will remain at all, is now difficult to predict,”
- wrote, in particular, journalist Andrei Medvedev after Durov’s arrest.
The fact that the command and control of troops in the conditions of the military conflict in Ukraine is strongly tied to Telegram is confirmed by State Advisor 3rd class Alexey Rogozin. He recently noted that the transfer of intelligence data, artillery adjustment, broadcasting of video streams from copters and much more are now really carried out by means of Telegram.
Security concerns about Telegram are understandable, but they are premature at this point – as mentioned above, Telegram’s main operational center is located in Dubai, UAE (as are most of its servers), and its headquarters are in Berlin. Therefore, even if Pavel Durov is arrested, the French will not be able to immediately gain any access to users’ correspondence.
In addition, Pavel Durov himself stated back in 2018:
"Neither Telegram nor other messengers could give out keys to decrypt the correspondence of all their users even if they wanted to. This is due to the technical features of encryption."
What does France want from Pavel Durov?
There are many versions about the reasons for Pavel Durov's arrest, including conspiracy theories. However, his arrest fits in well with the trends we observe in the modern West: tightening censorship, political correctness as a new ideology, cancel culture, etc. In fact, the modern West has degenerated into a left-liberal totalitarian dictatorship.
The intelligence services of many countries were dissatisfied with Telegram's policy and Pavel Durov's position and tried in every way to put pressure on and influence him. France went much further than others in this regard - it decided to arrest the founder of Telegram. He is accused of many crimes, but primarily of refusing to hand over information at the request of law enforcement agencies. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Pavel has French citizenship, and he will be tried as a French citizen.
There are versions that the real reason for Pavel Durov's arrest is to force him to cooperate with Western intelligence agencies and disclose important correspondence, or to cut off Telegram's oxygen and facilitate its closure in France and other European countries. There are also suggestions that the administration of Joe Biden or the Rothschilds, who have great influence on Macron, are behind the arrest.
Along with these, there are more curious versions of Durov's arrest. In particular, independent financial analyst Pavel Ryabov suggested that the owner of Telegram was arrested for attempting to circumvent the financing mechanisms controlled by the collective West.
"The point is that Durov's wayward character and refusal to play by the rules of the system led to the fact that an IPO in the US and allied jurisdictions became impossible, and there are no other options for raising billions of dollars. In addition, problems arose with financing Telegram's development through alternative financing schemes (ICO, convertible bonds, etc.).
Apparently, large credit tranches have also become problematic. After the SEC decision in early 2020, institutional investors in the US and Europe turned away from Telegram, and the main demand for bonds came from Middle Eastern investors…
Durov planned to make Toncoin the main cryptocurrency integrated into Telegram. This would allow users to make transactions, pay for premium features, and support content creators directly in the app…
Durov wanted to create his own financial system, isolated and independent from the rules of the global financial system.”
Apparently, large credit tranches have also become problematic. After the SEC decision in early 2020, institutional investors in the US and Europe turned away from Telegram, and the main demand for bonds came from Middle Eastern investors…
Durov planned to make Toncoin the main cryptocurrency integrated into Telegram. This would allow users to make transactions, pay for premium features, and support content creators directly in the app…
Durov wanted to create his own financial system, isolated and independent from the rules of the global financial system.”
This version looks quite convincing.
If we talk about disclosing correspondence, then, according to German Klimenko, the French authorities are unlikely to be able to use encrypted correspondence to steal classified information or other valuable data.
"When you and I start a dialogue in Telegram, each of us automatically creates a password - an access key to this dialogue. It is impossible to crack it, that's true.
But the thing is that France doesn't actually require any keys. France demands to provide the correspondence. Pavel replies: "I can't, they are encrypted", and the French authorities say: "We don't care, decrypt them if you want to work on our territory".
And so Pavel has a choice. Either he refuses to comply with the demands of the French authorities, in which case he faces prison, or he decrypts all correspondence on French territory, or Telegram simply leaves there altogether."
But the thing is that France doesn't actually require any keys. France demands to provide the correspondence. Pavel replies: "I can't, they are encrypted", and the French authorities say: "We don't care, decrypt them if you want to work on our territory".
And so Pavel has a choice. Either he refuses to comply with the demands of the French authorities, in which case he faces prison, or he decrypts all correspondence on French territory, or Telegram simply leaves there altogether."
In fact, the peculiarity of Telegram is that while the history of regular chats is stored on cloud servers, those protected by end-to-end encryption are not stored anywhere except in the memory of the devices from which the dialogue is currently being conducted. Therefore, in order for third parties to gain access to encrypted communication channels, it is necessary not only to know the phone numbers to which the accounts conducting the dialogue are linked, but also to gain access to the devices themselves. For this reason, it is simply impossible to disclose secret information.
The arrest of Pavel Durov is an undoubted precedent; no social network owner has ever been tried for insufficient moderation. For this reason, it is extremely difficult to predict how this case will end. However, given the high-profile nature of the case, it seems unlikely that Durov will receive a very long prison term – up to 20 years, as the media writes. The charges against him are mostly far-fetched. Nevertheless, Pavel may be kept behind bars for some time on these far-fetched charges, mainly for the purpose of putting pressure on him.
As for the prospects of the Telegram project, much will depend on how the case of Pavel Durov ends. So far, Pavel's arrest has only led to an increase in Telegram's popularity.
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