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'know, illegal.
I'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.
Why aren'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.
> I'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.
The usual metaphor is child pornography, but let's pick something less outrageous: espionage. If a spy uses your messaging platform to share their secrets without being detected & prevented, that's using the service to commit a crime. Now, if you're making a profit from said service, that doesn't necessarily make you a criminal, but if you start saying "if spies used this platform, they'd never be stopped or even detected", 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.
Gun manufacturers have repeatedly been charged with crimes (some are currently in court). I'd argue that messaging platforms have, historically, been less likely to be charged with crimes.
The second amendment gives weapon makers some extra protection in the US, but they do have to be very careful about what they do and do not do in order to avoid going to jail.
> 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.
Do you have the stats on that? I don't, but I'm curious. While I don't doubt the vast majority of people using Telegram aren't committing a crime, I know that the vast majority of people using guns also aren't committing a crime.
> I'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.
That's because you're assuming facts not in evidence and painting the broadest possible argument. Obviously we don't know the details yet, but it's not unlikely that this situation was a bit more specific.
Consider:
F: "We want you to give us the chat logs of this terrorist"
T: "OK!"
F: "Now we need you to give us the logs from this CSAM ring"
T: "No! That's a violation of their free speech rights!"
You can't put your own moral compass in place of the law, basically. That final statement is very reasonably interpreted as obstruction or conspiracy, where a blanket refusal would not be.
You are right; the arrest might be legal and even morally justifiable.
However, I still argue that wanting to provide secret communication (which Telegram actually doesn't do) is not abetting crime or helping it more than any other product.
In fact, in my humble opinion, it's the opposite: Private communications are a countermeasure against the natural tendency of governments to become tyrannical, and thus maintaining one is an act of heroism.
> Private communications are a countermeasure against the natural tendency of governments to become tyrannical, and thus maintaining one is an act of heroism.
That's an easy enough statement in the abstract, but again it doesn't speak to the case of "Durov knowingly hid child porn consumers from law enforcement", which seems likely to be the actual crime. If you want to be the hero in your story, you need to not insert yourself into the plot.
The answer to this charade is that to "prove" that you're not doing anything wrong you need to secretly provide all data from anyone that the government doesn't like. Otherwise you go to jail.
If his was really true for banks there would be a large number of bankers in jail. This number being close to zero, I guess the courts are very lax at charging bankers for crimes.
Banks are a terrible example for this thread's argument. Banking is essentially the end result of what happens when businesses kowtow to the invasive demands of the government, implement ever-more invasive content policing, becoming de facto arms of the bureaucratic state.
A bank will drop you if they even think you might be doing something (demonstrably on paper) illegal. When opening an account, some of the very first questions a bank asks you are "where did you get this money" and "what do you do for work" - proactively making you responsible for committing to some type of story. All of the illegality you're trying to reference is happening under a backdrop of reams of paperwork that make it look like above board activity to compliance departments. Without that paperwork when shit does hit the fan, people working at the bank do tend to go to jail. But with that paperwork it's "nobody's fault" unless they manage to find a few bank employees to pin it on.
Needless to say, this type of prior restraint regime being applied to free-form communication would be an abject catastrophe.
Banks do a massive amount of tracking and flagging. Even putting a joke “for drugs” in a Venmo field can cause issues. Plus reporting large transactions. There was a massive post on HN yesterday about how often banks close startup accounts due to false positives.
> the real criminals continue doing their business everyday
Any source for that? Media loves to blame banks for everything, but when you go into the details it always seems pretty marginal (e.g. the HSBC Mexico stuff).
It cannot be marginal because drug traffic, just as an example, moves billions of dollars every year. They certainly have schemes and someone in the banking system must be complying with these schemes. Every time the officials uncover one of these schemes, banks are miraculously not charged of anything and they don't even give back the profits of the illegal operation.
If you provide a service that is used for illegal behavior AND you know it’s being used that way AND you explicitly market your services to users behaving illegally AND the majority of your product is used for illegal deeds THEN you’re gonna have a bad time.
If one out of ten thousand people use your product for illegal deeds you’re fine. If it’s 9 out of 10 you probably aren’t.
> If one out of ten thousand people use your product for illegal deeds you’re fine.
This logic clearly makes the prison of someone like the owner of Telegram difficult to justify, since 99.999% of messages in telegram are completely legal.
If 10,000 people out of 10 million are doing illegal things and you know about it or you are going out of your way to turn a blind eye then you’re gonna have a bad time.
Keep in mind that as soon as you store user accounts you keep user data, which is perhaps a trivial form of eavesdropping, but clearly something law enforcement takes an interest in.
Try to deposit 10k to your bank account and then, when they call you and ask the obvious question, answer that you sold some meth or robbed someone. They will totally be fine with this answer, as they are just a platform for providing money services and well, you can always just pay for everything in cash.
And even then you don’t have to tell them it’s illegal. Just what you earned. Frankly they don’t care where it came from as long as you report and pay.
No, you have to specify where it came from. You don't have to say what crime you committed, but you'd list the income under "income from illegal activities".
Suppose you knit mittens and sell them for cash out of your garage. The IRS expects you to report and pay taxes on the income. How do they check that the sum you specified is correct?
Not sure how it works in the US. In Germany you are supposed to have a cash register or issue an invoice on each purchase, and sometimes (though really rarely given lack of personnel) they can randomly check of your reported numbers make sense together.
It's not clear how that sort of thing would even help, it seems like just a trap for the unwary. If you're an honest person selling your mittens and paying your taxes without knowing you're supposed to have a cash register, you could get unlucky and get in trouble for innocuous behavior. If you're a drug dealer then you get a cash register and ring up all your drug sales as mitten sales. Or, if someone wanted to report less income, they would have a cash register and then use it to ring up less than all of the sales. Whether or not you have the cash register can't distinguish these and is correspondingly pointless.
If you are directly aiding and abetting without any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your services then absolutely.
For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to the best of their ability and cooperate with law enforcement when it is brought to their attention.
And like I have mentioned a couple times before, Telegram was only allowed to exist because the UAE allowed them to, and both the UAE and Russia gained ownership stakes in Telegram by 2021. Also, messaging apps can only legally operate in the UAE if they provide decryption keys to the UAE govt because all instant messaging apps are treated as VoIP under their Telco regulation laws.
> For example, CP absolutely exists on platforms like FB or IG, but Meta will absolutely try to moderate it away to the best of their ability
Is this true? After decades now of a cat and mouse game, it could be argued that they are simply incapable. As such, the "best of their ability" would be using methods that don't suit their commercials - e.g verifying all users manually, requiring government ID, reviewing all posts and comments before they're posted, or shutting down completely.
I understand these methods are suicidal in capitalism, but they're much closer to the "best of their ability". Why do we accept some of the largest companies in the world shrugging their shoulders and saying "well we're trying in ways that don't impact our bottom line"?
If you are a criminal lawyer who is providing defense, that is acceptable because everyone is entitled to to a fair trial and defense.
If you are a criminal lawyer who is directly abetting in criminal behavior (eg. a Saul Goodman type) you absolutely will lose your Bar License and open yourself up to criminal penalties.
If you are a criminal lawyer who is in a situation where your client wants you to abet their criminal behavior, then you are expected to drop the client and potentially notify law enforcement.
> If you are a criminal lawyer who is directly abetting in criminal behavior
Not a lawyer myself but I believe this is not a correct representation of the issue.
A lawyer abetting in criminal behaviour is committing a crime, but the crime is not offering his services to criminals, which is completely legal.
When offering their services to criminals law firm or individual lawyers in most cases are not required to report crimes they have been made aware of under the attorney-client privilege and are not required to ask to minimize bad actors from using their services.
In short: unless they are committing crimes themselves, criminal lawyers are not required to stay clear from criminals, actually, usually the opposite is true.
Are you talking about Brian Steel? He was held in contempt because he refused to name his source that informed him of some misconduct by the judge (ex parte communication with a witness). That's hardly relevant here, the client wasn't involved at all as far as anyone knows.
any plausible attempt to minimize bad actors from using your service
I mentioned criminal lawyers because their job is literally to "offer their services to criminals or to people accused of being criminals" and they have no obligation whatsoever to minimize bad actors from using your service, in fact bad actors are usually their regular clientele and they are free to attract as many criminals as they like in any legal way they like.
Helping a criminal to commit a crime it's an entirely different thing and anyway it must be proved in a court, it's not something that can be assumed on the basis of allegations (their clients are criminal, so they must be criminal too).
That's why in that famous TV drama Jessy Pinkam says "You dont want a criminal lawyer, you want a Criminal. Lawyer.".
The premise of this story is that Telegram offers a service which is very similar to safe deposit boxes, the bank it's not supposed to know what you keep in there hence they are not held responsible if they are used for illegal activities.
In other words most of the times people do not know and are not required to know if they are dealing with criminals, but, even if they did, there are no legal reasons to avoid offering them your services other than to avoid problems and/or on moral grounds (which are perfectly understandable motives, but are still not a requirement to operate a business).
Take bars, diners, restaurants, gas stations or hospitals, are they supposed to deny their services?
And how would they exactly should take actions to minimize bad actors from using your service?
If someone goes to a restaurant and talks about committing a crime, is the owner abetting the crime?
I guess probably not, unless it is proven beyond any reasonable doubt that he actually is.
It doesn't matter if it's true or false it only matters what the justice system can prove.
> The premise of this story is that Telegram offers a service which is very similar to safe deposit boxes, the bank it's not supposed to know what you keep in there hence they are not held responsible if they are used for illegal activities.
This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or Hacker News.
Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content Moderation is expected from all internet platforms as part of Section 230 (USA), Directive 2000/31/EC (EU), Defamation Act 2023 (UK), etc.
As part of that content moderation, it is EXPECTED that you crack down on CP, Illicit Drug Transactions, Threats of Violence, and other felonies.
Also, that is NOT how bank deposit boxes work. All banks are expected to KYC if they wish to transact in every major currency (Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen, Yuan, Rupee, etc) and if they cannot, they are expected to close that account or be cut off from transacting in that country's currency.
> That's why in that famous TV drama Jessy Pinkam says "You dont want a criminal lawyer, you want a Criminal. Lawyer.".
First, it's Pinkman BIATCH not Pinkam.
And secondly, Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman) was previously suspended by the NM Bar Association barely 5 years before Breaking Bad, and was then disbarred AND held criminally liable when SHTF towards the finale.
At least in case of Section 230, distributirs that do not moderate do not need it because they do indeed have that kind of legal protection - see Cubby v. CompuServe for an example. Section 230 was created because a provider that did moderate tried to use this precedent in court and its applicability was rejected, and Congress decided that this state of affairs incentivized the wrong kind of behavior.
This is precisely why Republicans want to repeal it - if they succeed, it would effectively force Facebook etc to allow any content.
> This is the issue. Web platforms DO NOT have that kind of legal protection - be it Telegram, Instagram, or Hacker News.
e2e encryption cannot be broken though
> Safe Harbor from liability in return for Content Moderation is expected from all internet platforms as part of Section 230 (USA), Directive 2000/31/EC (EU), Defamation Act 2023 (UK), etc.
I have no sympathy for Durov and I don't care if they throw away the keys, but what about Mullvad then?
I guess that a service whose main feature is secrecy and anonymity should at least provide anonymity and secrecy.
> CP, Illicit Drug Transactions, Threats of Violence, and other felonies
you understand better than me that the request is absurd all of this is in theory, in practice nobody can actually do it for real, the vast majority of illicit clear text content are honeypots created by agents of various agencies to threaten the platforms and force them to cooperate. nothing's new here, but let's not pretend that this is to prevent crimes.
also: the allegations against Telegram are that they do not cooperate, but we don't actually know if they really crack down on CP or other illegal activities or not, because if they don't, the reasonable thing to do would be to shut down the platform, what does arresting the CEO accomplish? (rhetorical question: they - I don't want to throw names, but i think that the usual suspects are involved - want access to and control of the content, closing the platform would only deny them access and would create uproar among the population - remember when Russia blocked Telegram?)
also 2: AFAIK Telegram requires a phone number to create an account, it's the responsibility of the provider to KYC when selling a phone number, not Telegram's.
also 3: safe deposit boxes are not necessarily linked to bank accounts. I pay for a safety deposit box in Switzerland but have no Swiss bank account.
So my guess is EU wants in some way control the narrative in Telegram channels where the vast majority of the news regarding the war in Ukraine spread from the war front to the continent.
> First, it's Pinkman BIATCH not Pinkam.
Sorry. I'm dyslexic and English is not my mother tongue, but the 4th language I've learned, when I was already a teenager.
> was previously suspended by the NM Bar Association
that was the point. TV dramas need good characters and a criminal lawyer who's also a criminal is more interesting than a criminal lawyer who's just a plain boring lawyer that indulges in no criminal activity whatsoever.
