Morgan Meaker – WIRED Aug 28, 2024
Pavel Durov (right) interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Click to enlarge
Among the leaders of the world’s biggest social media sites, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has always been an outsider. Unlike Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, he has never appeared on Capitol Hill to apologize for past mistakes. Unlike TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, he’s never signed up for a five-hour grilling by Congress about whether his app is spying on Americans. And unlike X’s Elon Musk, he’s never taken part in an awkward photo opps where he says how much new regulation is “aligned with my thinking.”
Instead, Durov has spent years cultivating Telegram’s image as a proudly anti-authority platform. In practice, that has meant ignoring various governments’ requests to either take down content or hand over the identities of Telegram users suspected of serious crimes. “To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments,” the company still says on its website.
Now, the 39-year-old is facing the consequences of that strategy. On Wednesday evening a Paris prosecutor announced Durov had been indicted on charges including complicity in enabling a range of crimes as well as refusal to communicate information or documents with French authorities.
There was an “almost total lack of response from Telegram to legal requests,” Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in a statement shared with WIRED on Wednesday evening. Durov is facing a wide range of charges, including complicity for allegedly enabling an illicit transaction, drug trafficking, and the spread of sexual images of children on his platform—but Beccuau’s statement focused on Telegram’s unwillingness to work with authorities in both France and Belgium.
“This is what led JUNALCO [the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime] to open an investigation,” she said. Durov has been forbidden from leaving the country and must report to a police station twice a week.
The hashtag #FreePavel has rippled across social media since Saturday, when he was first arrested. Russian state media shared pictures of demonstrators placing paper planes (Telegram’s logo) outside the French embassy in Moscow. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform,” said Telegram, when charges were first released. Durov’s lawyer did not reply to WIRED’s request to comment on his indictment.
Durov is the first high-profile victim of a shift in mindset from officials, who are losing patience with the platforms they consider to be roiling domestic politics or fueling crime. “Durov’s arrest comes at a particularly volatile time for online platforms and their users,” Evelyn Austin, director of Dutch digital rights foundation Bits of Freedom, said in a statement.
This is bigger than Telegram. European fines for Big Tech infractions now reach into the billions of dollars. Negotiations continue over new laws that critics say threaten encryption. And the idea that social media platforms are responsible for their users’ criminal actions is growing. A poll in the UK this summer found that two-thirds of respondents agree that companies should be held responsible for hosting content that incites riots, with the same number of respondents feeling the sites are regulated too little. Calls by politicians and judges to suspend access to a range of social media sites after periods of disorder have become almost commonplace: in France last year, amid rioting in response to police violence; in the midst of riots in the French-Pacific territory of New Caledonia; and today in Brazil, where the government threatened to block X as part of a dispute over misinformation.
“[Elon] Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability,” said Bruce Daisley, a former executive at Twitter who worked at the company’s British office, days after British protesters tried to set fire to a hotel for asylum seekers.
But Telegram has provoked politicians more than any other platform. What could be called the company’s uncollaborative approach has put the platform—part messaging app, part social media network—on a collision course with governments around the world.
The case in France is far from the first time Telegram has been reprimanded by authorities for its refusal to cooperate. Telegram has been temporarily suspended twice in Brazil, in 2022 and 2023, both times after being accused of failing to cooperate with legal orders.
In 2022, similar events unfolded in Germany when the country’s interior minister also threatened to ban the app after letters, suggestions of fines, and even a Telegram-dedicated task force all went unanswered, according to the authorities, who were concerned about anti-lockdown groups using the app to discuss political assassinations. Multiple German newspapers, including the tabloid Bild, sent journalists to the office that Telegram states as its headquarters in Dubai and found it deserted, its doors locked.
Earlier in 2024, Spain briefly blocked Telegram after broadcasters claimed copyrighted material was circulating on the app. Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s National High Court said his decision to ban was based on Telegram’s lack of cooperation with the case.
The accusations in France are very specific to Telegram’s way of working, says Arne Möhle, cofounder of encrypted email service Tuta. “Of course it’s important to be independent, but at the same time, it’s also important to comply with authority requests if they are valid,” he says. “It’s important to show [criminal activities are] something you don’t want to support with your privacy-oriented service.”
France’s decision to charge Durov is a rare move to link a tech executive to crimes taking place on their platform, but it is not without precedent. Durov joins the ranks of the founders of The Pirate Bay, who were sentenced by Swedish authorities to a year in prison in 2009, and the German-born founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, who finally lost a 12-year battle to be extradited to the US from his home in New Zealand in August. He plans to appeal.
Yet Durov is the first of his generation of founders behind major social media platforms to face such severe consequences. What happens next will carry lessons for them all.
Bastien Le Querrec, legal officer at French digital freedom group La Quadrature du Net, does not defend Telegram’s lack of moderation. But he is concerned that the case against Durov reflects the huge pressure both social media and messaging apps are under right now to collaborate with law enforcement.
“[The prosecutor] refers to a provision in French law that requires platforms to disclose any useful document that could allow law enforcement to do interception of communication,” he says. “To our knowledge, it’s the first time that a platform, whatever its size, would be prosecuted [in France] because it refused to disclose such documents. It’s a very worrying precedent.”
WHO WAS PETUNIA WINEGUM ?
This was the pet name for the actor Peter Wyngarde
whose real name was Cyril Goldbert.
He was sexually abused as a boy and tried many times unsuccessfully to love women
But after several arrests in public lavatories admitted he was a homosexual
He was close to Peter Arne a well known actor, Peter Arne used to take food to the homeless boys in the local park in exchange for sex,
Peter Arne, British character actor who specialized in villains, appeared in over 50 films was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment in the Knightsbridge section of London in 1983 What both these men had in common was the 1983 United Kingdom general election held on Thursday 9 June 1983. which gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats. Peter Arne was a socialist he had been supplying boys to several big figures close to Margaret Thatcher, so who killed him and why ? A special Branch policeman told me there were some perverts who were untouchable, Sir Anthony Blunt Jimmy Saville and Greville Janner were all suppliers of children for Mossad blackmail. It was Greville Janner who gave Peter Wyngarde and Peter Arne their bodyguards, and of course also spied on them. Janner was close to Jeffrey Epstein who often prostituted out Gislane Maxwell. The special Branch guy said they were told they were told catch who they can but not any of the big fish, they effectively tied our hands he said
This is kikes just playing both sides. Durov is itself a jew and anyone trusting any jew owned operation is a fool.
It’s the Nazi way, or the highway to jail. Just about every foundation stone that built the West, has been removed.
Private property used to be sacrosanct, no more, the media should be unbiased, and and air all arguments. No more. Once upon a time, you could carryout lawful business around the world, such as expressing your opinions on foreign fake news channels, no more. You once had the right to reject medical interventions, no more!
While Nazi NATO is at war with Russia, and on the brink of war with China and Iran, they don’t have the bollox to declare these wars as official, because NATO Nazis would become instant targets in their own bankrupt fiefdoms.
Ritter doesn’t want the Russians to win, he wants structured arms limitation controls, and the space is filled with sheeple who basically want similar things, like freedom, trade, and peace, and the Nazis don’t want any of this.
My best guess at the moment, is that Nazi US is holding off deep strikes into Russia, because the Russians have stated they will hit targets relevant to the Nazis war in Ukraine, and that probably means US ficilities in Amerika, & we know where this leads.
We really are at the point when a small cabal of Nazis go on a hunch. Na, the Russians would never do it, would they.
It’s the same in Russia. Putin is very close to being removed.
There seems to be a contradiction if governments now try to rein in billionaires when for years they’ve empowered them to the point they can control the policy of those same governments, and in the case of eugenicist Bill Gates they helped him to kill millions and they’re now busy covering it all up.
The best idea surely would have been to tackle their growing power before they became like demi-gods? Hitler wanted to arrest and put in a labour camp the toolmaker Robert Bosch, who didn’t like the Nazis and often made that clear. Hitler was advised not to arrest Bosch, because they needed the industrialists for their war effort, and the only way they might save themselves if they started picking them off would be to band together to withdraw their support after which the war effort would collapse.
Today’s billionaire are far richer than earlier industrialists, and if they stick together to prop each other up–even those who don’t like each other–what they could do to financial markets could shock us all.
The internet versus the Scum, but the Scum do not win this one
“including the tabloid Bild, sent journalists to the office that Telegram states as its headquarters in Dubai and found it deserted, its doors locked.” ,then where are the offices and servers?
A front,and a frontman(woman?).i never believed a russian could pull this of,considering the decrepit state of rossiya and the russkies.telegram probably runs on the servers of an undisclosed party. ,in europe there were companies offering encrypted,safe and secure telecommunications.it turned out these providers were set up by intel.they could read along for years.but they did not take action until enough crimes had been committed.then they revealed all intel and started rounding up everybody who had been using these crypto-phones for assassinations, international narco trade and other crimes.
Wired?the magazine for information technology worshippers.so called techies, nerds.dimwits that have no clue of the real world.they do not even know what it is to be a human,they are avatars in cyberspace.their worshipful masters are dimwit elon,plagarist einstein and the cast of the ‘big bang theory ‘.ai is their god .they are woke too.
Problem is Durov is a Yid like Zuckerberg, Musk, Chew. Attach a goatee on Durov & you have Leon Trotsky looking at you. Its all an agitprop skit to convince people that all these social media sites aren’t actually controlled by the same global Jew cabal. All these major social media sites: X, telegram, instagram, whatsapp, chinktok etc are all owned/managed by Yids. Remember, they’re all in on it.
Children’s hospital launches urgent review over concerns about injuries caused by former surgeon
Story by George Lithgow
Great Ormond Street Hospital has begun an urgent review of 721 cases of children seen by one of its former consultant orthopaedic surgeons after concerns were raised about his practice, according to reports.
The hospital trust said the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) was asked to review its paediatric orthopaedic service following accusations about Yaser Jabbar. Citing a leaked report, The Sunday Times said that of the 37 cases already reviewed, 22 children have been found to have come to some degree of harm, 13 of them classed as “severe harm” – that is, likely to include lifelong injuries.
The findings so far have been shocking to read and have been very upsetting for our clients
Caroline Murgatroyd, Hudgell Solicitors
In one case a child underwent an amputation which, according to the RCS review panel, could possibly have been avoided with a different route of treatment. Citing a leaked report
The findings so far have been shocking to read and have been very upsetting for our clients
Some children suffered leg length discrepancies following operations, which will require years of further treatment.
Mr Jabbar, who no longer works at the London hospital, is reported to be an expert in limb reconstruction but has not had a licence to practise medicine in the UK since January 8, according to the General Medical Council’s website.
There are many doctors here with fake foreign medical degrees
Earlier this year, Great Ormond Street Hospital wrote to the families of all children treated by Mr Jabbar, and apologised for any “worry and uncertainty” the letters about the care provided by him may have caused.
Dr Paul Clark said certificates to practice medicine can be bought online for 100 pounds
Durov = Yid
Creating and running a platform for free speech still has obligations to society, mainly to not promote Satanism and all its forms. This is Telegram’s problem, by not restricting its use towards these groups, they encourage them. Sooner or later, one must choose sides, either stay here in the darkness or find the light. Otherwise, the school term will end, but you will have to repeat the grade.
“‘Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability,’ said Bruce Daisley, a former executive at Twitter” … What criminal liability? It’s like trying to drag the Postmaster into court because people sent inflammatory letters to like-minded people or invitations to a Klan rally or a bag of weed through the mail system. Sounds like Daisley needs his teeth kicked in.
“In 2022, similar events unfolded in Germany when the country’s interior minister also threatened to ban the app after letters, suggestions of fines….all went unanswered, according to the authorities, who were concerned about anti-lockdown groups using the app to discuss political assassinations.” … Ah, and there it is, the “authorities”, the same ones who overtly treated you like total shit, not to mention tried to destroy and murder you and yours, during their vicious assaults in the convid-1984 war and have aided in the invasions of our cuntries by hordes of Orcs are trying to save their own treasonous skins.