It really feels like anyone coming down at the extreme of either side of this (the French government and Snowden included) is greatly simplifying a very complex issue.
Even Nassim Taleb[1] seems to think Macron is in the wrong, not to mention Snowden. You also had Macron saying that he envisioned shutting down Social media in the event of riots. That is no way is a commitment to freedom of expression. Imagine shutting down Facebook or X during BLM riots, or any other mass riot? That's so antithetical to the US first amendment right to free expression.
That said, it's no surprise that anyone who doesn't identify with a riot wants to suppress freedom of expression on an unrelated platform and those who agree with a movement or riot, will want to ensure freedom of expression on a given platform even if they previously and into the future might want to shutdown the same medium for allowing expression they disagree with.
They actually did just do that: France legally cut off social media in the overseas territory of New Caledonia (in the wake of mass protests or riots over a voting rights law).
- "The French government hasn’t formally specified why it singled out TikTok for a block."
- "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
You know, this is sad. It's also sad when legality is invoked. Venezuela, Cuba do lots of things "legally" --things that in some parts of the world the use of the term would seem suspect.
Just because it's legal does not mean they did the right thing to do.
There has been no audit of that. The servers live in a country with questionable legal standing for digital citizens.
What the French say they are arresting him for, and what they actually know might not be the same. Given telegrams position the cyber criminal world, and its place in Russia and eastern Europe I would not be surprised if there is a litany of reasons we aren't hearing about.
The whole encryption issue seems like a total sideshow to me. I've been on Telegram for years and only exchanged a few DMs in that time. There are tons of public channels which require no approval or exchange of information to join.
Yes. We're dealing with French law on French soil in respect of a dual national.
We literally have zero official documents from the arrest. (EDIT: We got one!) This could be an elaborate scheme to route out an FSB plot. Or it could be as simple as he has a bunch of drugs on his jet.
In summary, it's a fundamentally complicated situation into which we have imperfect information. Coming to a strong conclusion, at this point, is an expression of faith. Not reason.
Thank you. Echoing the original comment about "anyone coming down at the extreme of either side of this... greatly simplifying a very complex issue," (a) very few people with strong feelings about this case had this document when they came to a conclusion and (b) this document is not enough to make an informed decision about what's going on.
It's a press release, not a document that substantively lays out the factual allegations. Compare that to something like the indictment here in the US: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258..., where it is pretty explicitly laid out what the alleged acts were that led to each of the counts.
So it's still manifestly unclear why he was arrested (although I note that the press release says he wasn't arrested, merely held for questioning until Wednesday).
Yes, and, people like devman0 making this top-rated comment in the last thread:
>A lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less.
When they have absolutely no idea what's going on. The number one terrible take is this very quoted comment.
Commenters and their supporters on this site love to make unequivocal statements like this as if they possessed the mind of god themselves.
But devman0 and people who upvoted their comment: you are responsible for this misinformation. Think before you shout to the heavens on a topic you know absolutely nothing about. That's on all of you.
Anyone else reading this comment thread: discuss with restraint based on the knowledge you have. Unless you are directly involved in this case, you don't have even the faintest clue of what you're talking about.
SO they snatched him over something that is in effect "administrative"?
Nothing complicated. He got snatched because someone somewhere wants something from him and this is the "public" reason. If he's out, telegram is compromised, if he stays in we can't even assume that it isn't.
You're mentioning two (largely orthogonal) threats to messaging privacy, and arguing that because we can't really do much about one, we should also just ignore the other?
