<story><title>Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn</title><url>https://decripto.org/en/arrest-of-pavel-durov-charges-of-terrorism-fraud-and-child-pornography-he-did-not-cooperate-with-the-authorities-he-risks-20-years-in-prison/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nomdep</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime.&lt;p&gt;Why aren&amp;#x27;t all gun manufacturers in jail then? They must know a percentage of their products are going to be used to commit crimes. A much larger percentage than those using Telegram to commit one.</text></item><item><author>ajross</author><text>If you know your services are going to be used to commit a crime, then yes, that makes you an accessory and basically all jurisdictions (I know basically nothing about French criminal law) can prosecute you for that.  Crime is, y&amp;#x27;know, illegal.</text></item><item><author>kyleee</author><text>Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables and&amp;#x2F;or criminals?</text></item><item><author>Aurornis</author><text>This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is in a completely different category than a company that makes the fact that they’ll look the other way one of their core selling points.&lt;p&gt;Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job of making James Bond style hidden compartments that perfectly blended into the interior. He was later arrested because drug dealers used his hidden compartment business to help their drug trade.&lt;p&gt;There was an uproar about the fact that he wasn’t doing the drug crimes himself. He was only making hidden compartments which could be used for anything. How was he supposed to know that the hidden compartments were being used for illegal activities rather than keeping people’s valuables safe during a break-in?&lt;p&gt;Yet when the details of the case came out, IIRC, it was clear that he was leaning into the illegal trades and marketing his services to those people. He lost his plausible deniability after even a cursory look at how he was operating.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know what, if any, parts of that case apply to Pavel Durov. I do like to share it as an example of how intent matters and how one can become complicit in other crimes by operating in a manner where one of your selling points is that you’ll help anyone out even when their intent is to break the law. It’s also why smart &lt;i&gt;corporate&lt;/i&gt; criminals will shut down and walk away when it becomes too obvious that they’re losing plausible deniability in a criminal enterprise.</text></item><item><author>marcinzm</author><text>Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?</text></item><item><author>mazambazz</author><text>This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.&lt;p&gt;Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, &lt;i&gt;these&lt;/i&gt; service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all  contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don&amp;#x27;t see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything.&lt;p&gt;Hell, then there&amp;#x27;s the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery slope with no defined boundaries where the government can just arbitrary use to pin the blame on the people they don&amp;#x27;t like. Because ultimately, almost every platform with user-provided content will have some quantity of illegal material.&lt;p&gt;But maybe I&amp;#x27;m just being naive?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cbsmith</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;m appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime.&lt;p&gt;The usual metaphor is child pornography, but let&amp;#x27;s pick something less outrageous: espionage. If a spy uses your messaging platform to share their secrets without being detected &amp;amp; prevented, that&amp;#x27;s using the service to commit a crime. Now, if you&amp;#x27;re making a profit from said service, that doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily make you a criminal, but if you start saying &amp;quot;if spies used this platform, they&amp;#x27;d never be stopped or even detected&amp;quot;, that could get you in to some serious trouble. If you send a sales team to the KGB to encourage them to use the platform, even more so.</text></comment>
<story><title>Arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram CEO, charges of terrorism, fraud, child porn</title><url>https://decripto.org/en/arrest-of-pavel-durov-charges-of-terrorism-fraud-and-child-pornography-he-did-not-cooperate-with-the-authorities-he-risks-20-years-in-prison/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nomdep</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m appalled that you would argue in good faith that a tool for communicating in secret can be reasonably described as a service used to commit a crime.&lt;p&gt;Why aren&amp;#x27;t all gun manufacturers in jail then? They must know a percentage of their products are going to be used to commit crimes. A much larger percentage than those using Telegram to commit one.</text></item><item><author>ajross</author><text>If you know your services are going to be used to commit a crime, then yes, that makes you an accessory and basically all jurisdictions (I know basically nothing about French criminal law) can prosecute you for that.  Crime is, y&amp;#x27;know, illegal.</text></item><item><author>kyleee</author><text>Is it illegal to offer legal services to undesirables and&amp;#x2F;or criminals?</text></item><item><author>Aurornis</author><text>This distinction gets lost in these discussions all of the time. A company that makes an effort to comply with laws is in a completely different category than a company that makes the fact that they’ll look the other way one of their core selling points.&lt;p&gt;Years ago there was a case where someone built a business out of making hidden compartments in cars. He did an amazing job of making James Bond style hidden compartments that perfectly blended into the interior. He was later arrested because drug dealers used his hidden compartment business to help their drug trade.&lt;p&gt;There was an uproar about the fact that he wasn’t doing the drug crimes himself. He was only making hidden compartments which could be used for anything. How was he supposed to know that the hidden compartments were being used for illegal activities rather than keeping people’s valuables safe during a break-in?&lt;p&gt;Yet when the details of the case came out, IIRC, it was clear that he was leaning into the illegal trades and marketing his services to those people. He lost his plausible deniability after even a cursory look at how he was operating.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know what, if any, parts of that case apply to Pavel Durov. I do like to share it as an example of how intent matters and how one can become complicit in other crimes by operating in a manner where one of your selling points is that you’ll help anyone out even when their intent is to break the law. It’s also why smart &lt;i&gt;corporate&lt;/i&gt; criminals will shut down and walk away when it becomes too obvious that they’re losing plausible deniability in a criminal enterprise.</text></item><item><author>marcinzm</author><text>Because those providers cooperate with authorities and moderate their content to a fairly large degree?</text></item><item><author>mazambazz</author><text>This seems like the Kim Dotcom situation again.&lt;p&gt;Why are these service providers being punished for what their users do? Specifically, &lt;i&gt;these&lt;/i&gt; service providers? Because Google, Discord, Reddit, etc. all  contain some amount of CSAM (and other illegal content), yet I don&amp;#x27;t see Pichai, Citron, or Huffman getting indicted for anything.&lt;p&gt;Hell, then there&amp;#x27;s the actual infrastructure providers too. This seems like a slippery slope with no defined boundaries where the government can just arbitrary use to pin the blame on the people they don&amp;#x27;t like. Because ultimately, almost every platform with user-provided content will have some quantity of illegal material.&lt;p&gt;But maybe I&amp;#x27;m just being naive?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amanaplanacanal</author><text>The difference is knowing some percentage will be used to commit crimes, and knowing a specific individual is going to use it to commit a crime.</text></comment>