The detention of Pavel Durov is being portrayed as a result of the EU Digital Services Act. But having spent my day reading the EU Services Act (a task I would not wish upon my worst enemy), it does not appear to me to say what it is being portrayed as saying.
EU Acts are horribly dense and complex, and are published as “Regulations” and “Articles”. Both cover precisely the same ground, but for purposes of enforcement the more detailed “Regulations” are the more important, and those are referred to below. The “Articles” are entirely consistent with this.
So, for example, Regulation 20 makes the “intermediary service”, in this case Telegram, only responsible for illegal activity using its service if it has deliberately collaborated in the illegal activity.
Providing encryption or anonymity specifically does not qualify as deliberate collaboration in illegal activity.
(20) Where a provider of intermediary services deliberately collaborates with a recipient of the services in order to undertake illegal activities, the services should not be deemed to have been provided neutrally and the provider should therefore not be able to benefit from the exemptions from liability provided for in this Regulation. This should be the case, for instance, where the provider offers its service with the main purpose of facilitating illegal activities, for example by making explicit that its purpose is to facilitate illegal activities or that its services are suited for that purpose. The fact alone that a service offers encrypted transmissions or any other system that makes the identification of the user impossible should not in itself qualify as facilitating illegal activities.
And at para 30, there is specifically no general monitoring obligation on the service provider to police the content. In fact it is very strong that Telegram is under no obligation to take proactive measures.
(30) Providers of intermediary services should not be, neither de jure, nor de facto, subject to a monitoring obligation with respect to obligations of a general nature. This does not concern monitoring obligations in a specific case and, in particular, does not affect orders by national authorities in accordance with national legislation, in compliance with Union law, as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the European Union, and in accordance with the conditions established in this Regulation. Nothing in this Regulation should be construed as an imposition of a general monitoring obligation or a general active fact-finding obligation, or as a general obligation for providers to take proactive measures in relation to illegal content.
However, Telegram is obliged to act against specified accounts in relation to an individual order from a national authority concerning specific content. So while it has no general tracking or censorship obligation, it does have to act at the instigation of national authorities over individual content.
(31) Depending on the legal system of each Member State and the field of law at issue, national judicial or administrative authorities, including law enforcement authorities, may order providers of intermediary services to act against one or more specific items of illegal content or to provide certain specific information. The national laws on the basis of which such orders are issued differ considerably and the orders are increasingly addressed in cross-border situations. In order to ensure that those orders can be complied with in an effective and efficient manner, in particular in a cross-border context, so that the public authorities concerned can carry out their tasks and the providers are not subject to any disproportionate burdens, without unduly affecting the rights and legitimate interests of any third parties, it is necessary to set certain conditions that those orders should meet and certain complementary requirements relating to the processing of those orders. Consequently, this Regulation should harmonise only certain specific minimum conditions that such orders should fulfil in order to give rise to the obligation of providers of intermediary services to inform the relevant authorities about the effect given to those orders. Therefore, this Regulation does not provide the legal basis for the issuing of such orders, nor does it regulate their territorial scope or cross-border enforcement.
The national authorities can demand content is removed, but only for “specific items”:
51) Having regard to the need to take due account of the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Charter of all parties concerned, any action taken by a provider of hosting services pursuant to receiving a notice should be strictly targeted, in the sense that it should serve to remove or disable access to the specific items of information considered to constitute illegal content, without unduly affecting the freedom of expression and of information of recipients of the service. Notices should therefore, as a general rule, be directed to the providers of hosting services that can reasonably be expected to have the technical and operational ability to act against such specific items. The providers of hosting services who receive a notice for which they cannot, for technical or operational reasons, remove the specific item of information should inform the person or entity who submitted the notice.
There are extra obligations for Very Large Online Platforms, which have over 45 million users within the EU. These are not extra monitoring obligations on content, but rather extra obligations to ensure safeguards in the design of their systems:
(79) Very large online platforms and very large online search engines can be used in a way that strongly influences safety online, the shaping of public opinion and discourse, as well as online trade. The way they design their services is generally optimised to benefit their often advertising-driven business models and can cause societal concerns. Effective regulation and enforcement is necessary in order to effectively identify and mitigate the risks and the societal and economic harm that may arise. Under this Regulation, providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines should therefore assess the systemic risks stemming from the design, functioning and use of their services, as well as from potential misuses by the recipients of the service, and should take appropriate mitigating measures in observance of fundamental rights. In determining the significance of potential negative effects and impacts, providers should consider the severity of the potential impact and the probability of all such systemic risks. For example, they could assess whether the potential negative impact can affect a large number of persons, its potential irreversibility, or how difficult it is to remedy and restore the situation prevailing prior to the potential impact.
(80) Four categories of systemic risks should be assessed in-depth by the providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines. A first category concerns the risks associated with the dissemination of illegal content, such as the dissemination of child sexual abuse material or illegal hate speech or other types of misuse of their services for criminal offences, and the conduct of illegal activities, such as the sale of products or services prohibited by Union or national law, including dangerous or counterfeit products, or illegally-traded animals. For example, such dissemination or activities may constitute a significant systemic risk where access to illegal content may spread rapidly and widely through accounts with a particularly wide reach or other means of amplification. Providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines should assess the risk of dissemination of illegal content irrespective of whether or not the information is also incompatible with their terms and conditions. This assessment is without prejudice to the personal responsibility of the recipient of the service of very large online platforms or of the owners of websites indexed by very large online search engines for possible illegality of their activity under the applicable law.
(81) A second category concerns the actual or foreseeable impact of the service on the exercise of fundamental rights, as protected by the Charter, including but not limited to human dignity, freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, the right to private life, data protection, the right to non-discrimination, the rights of the child and consumer protection. Such risks may arise, for example, in relation to the design of the algorithmic systems used by the very large online platform or by the very large online search engine or the misuse of their service through the submission of abusive notices or other methods for silencing speech or hampering competition. When assessing risks to the rights of the child, providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines should consider for example how easy it is for minors to understand the design and functioning of the service, as well as how minors can be exposed through their service to content that may impair minors’ health, physical, mental and moral development. Such risks may arise, for example, in relation to the design of online interfaces which intentionally or unintentionally exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors or which may cause addictive behaviour.
(82) A third category of risks concerns the actual or foreseeable negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, as well as public security.
(83) A fourth category of risks stems from similar concerns relating to the design, functioning or use, including through manipulation, of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines with an actual or foreseeable negative effect on the protection of public health, minors and serious negative consequences to a person’s physical and mental well-being, or on gender-based violence. Such risks may also stem from coordinated disinformation campaigns related to public health, or from online interface design that may stimulate behavioural addictions of recipients of the service.
(84) When assessing such systemic risks, providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines should focus on the systems or other elements that may contribute to the risks, including all the algorithmic systems that may be relevant…
This is very interesting. I would argue that under Article 81 and 84, for example, the blatant use of both algorithms limiting reach and plain blocking by Twitter and Facebook, to promote a pro-Israeli narrative and to limit pro-Palestinian content, was very plainly a breach of the EU Digital Services Directive by deliberate interference with “freedom of expression and information, including media freedom and pluralism”.
The legislation is very plainly drafted with the specific intent of outlawing the use of algorithms to interfere with freedom of speech and public discourse in this way.
But it is of course a great truth that the honesty and neutrality of prosecution services is much more important to what actually happens in any “justice” system than the actual provisions of legislation.
Only a fool would be surprised that the EU Digital Services Act is being shoehorned into use against Durov, apparently for lack of cooperation with Western intelligence services and being a bit Russian, and is not being used against Musk or Zuckerberg for limiting the reach of pro-Palestinian content.
It is also worth noting that Telegram is not considered to be a very large online platform by the EU Commission who have to date accepted Telegram’s contention that it has less than 45 million users in the EU, so these extra obligations do not apply.
If we look at the charges against Durov in France, I therefore cannot see how they are in fact compatible with the EU Digital Services Act.
Unless he refused to remove or act over specific individual content specified by the French authorities, or unless he set up Telegram with the specific intent of facilitating organised crime, I do not see how Durov is not protected under Articles 20 and 30 and other safeguards found in the Digital Services Act.
The French charges appear however to be extremely general and not to relate to particular specified communications. This is an abuse.
What the Digital Services Act does not contain is a general obligation to hand over unspecified content or encryption keys to police forces or security agencies. It is also remarkably reticent on “misinformation”.
Regulations 82 or 83 above obviously provide some basis for “misinformation” policing, but the Act in general relies on the rather welcome assertion that regulations governing what speech and discourse is legal should be the same offline as online.
So in short, the arrest of Pavel Durov appears to be pretty blatant abuse and only very tenuously connected to the legal basis given as justification. This is simply a part of the current rising wave of authoritarianism in western “democracies”.
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According to the New York Times, the European Commission said that Mr. Durov’s arrest in France was unrelated to the Digital Services act, and that he was arrested under French law. The prosecutor’s statement doesn’t mention the DSA. So no point swotting over it. It is domestic French law that will take its course!
Never dared stressing this point, since this is not a blog for legal experts. But the NYT is only stating the very obvious.
Very clearly, our host, and author of this post, made just a very slight mistake. Regulations established in the DSA have no enforcement value unless they are incorporated in national laws. And only address CIVIL responsibility, and not PENAL (criminal) justice.
Wish I had graduated from law school…
PS same trick in the UK. Remember the Assange procedures where lawyers were discussing what was or wasn’t incorporated into British domestic law!
Are Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists or freedom fighters, were the indigenous native Americans [you know the “savages”] freedom fighters or terrorists? Similarly many colonial situations embarked upon by the UK and other European imperial powers in Africa and Asia resulted in the relinquishing of their power sometimes after long armed struggles by the occupying state, witness Algeria and Kenya to name but two. If the colonists are strong they can stay, even if they have conducted ethnic cleansing and genocide as the Pioneers did over two centuries ago in the US, then they called it ‘manifest destiny’ [the will of God] and because they were stronger than the “savages” they could stay.
Israel is one of the last remaining settler colonial enterprises, approx 7 million Israelis are facing approx 400 million Muslims who are proving to be stronger, the Muslims will inevitably prevail, just as the pied noir lost in Algeria. There have been many people arrested or questioned over section 12 [Terrorism Act] including our host, but as yet none have been put in front of a Jury, why? Could it be the powers that be are afraid a Jury would take note of the UN resolution which states that all colonized and oppressed people have the right to armed resistance and that governments who deny that right should be condemned, or that a people facing genocide have a legal and moral duty to defend their lives. Section 12 is a stupid law, just as the similar legislation in the US had to be changed to allow Nelson Mandela to visit the US when he became the leader of South Africa.
The ‘anti-terror’ United Kingdom is arming the raping, baby killer occupiers. Knowing very well that they are rapists and baby killers.
Israeli soldier boasts and laughs because he killed a 12 year Palestinian girl….
‘We are looking for babies, but there are no babies left. I killed a girl that was 12, but we’re looking for babies…’
https://x.com/Kahlissee/status/1829160564259729924
That is the ‘anti-terror’ UK…
“one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. The law is irrelevant because it’s the law of the regime.
TPTB define who the good guys and the bad guys are, if you are unsure maybe give No 10 a call and ask them.
OTOH if the morally corrupt are supporting a particular group you can safely assume those are the bad guys.
Thank you Sir, and have checked to see account is verified. (I have receipt) Be well.
Brussels is now investigating under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Apparently if an app passes a 45 million users threshold it comes under a different tranche of EU legislation, legislation supposedly aimed at limiting ‘influence’. Telegram said in February it had 41 million users in the EU. For reference, Apple says iMessage has 41 million users, wonder if they’ll face a probe too? These numbers could be accurate, as the large population of the UK isn’t included, as we aren’t in the EU.
The fact the EU commission’s Orwellian sounding Joint Research Centre is conducting a technical investigation to determine Telegram’s number of EU users, makes this look like a long planned assault on the platform. According to reports, Telegram doesn’t even have offices in the EU and is based in Dubai, surely then, the appropriate step would’ve been to simply ban the app? But, I’d guess the EU and France knew that imposing such a diktat would reek of authoritarian overreach and make them even more unpopular than they already are.
Wonder how they’ll define ‘users’ – it’s a free app. Differentiate between concurrent active users, or those with it installed but hardly ever used?
The largely undemocratic EU is trying to become the net nanny no one asked for. The problem I’ve always had with censorship, is it’s carried out by those who assume they’re better qualified to judge for us. In other words, it’s done by arrogant, patronising types, who want to infantilise adults in any given population. The BBFC made the UK a laughing stock with its cuts to 18 rated horror films, that are now available ‘uncut’ and seen as classics of the genre.
Largely undemocratic? Not that old chestnut again… Have you learned nothing from the Brexit psyop?
The Commission, who are leading this probe, are unelected. They are imposed by national govts and then MEPs are given a crude ‘accept the lot ,or else there’ll be chaos’ approval vote. Far from direct, representative democracy.
If this is an attempt at charge stacking, it would be very much in line with von der Leyen’s, Borrell’s and Thierry Breton’s current thinking on Russia and social media.
I don’t dislike the EU as a concept per se; but in its current form and with its current leadership, I wouldn’t vote to rejoin.
Durov is out on a $5.5 million dollars bail bond; his lawyers said on the radio that the charges against him are ridiculous. Durov has been told not to leave France – he holds a few passports, including a French one.
“Anti-censorship activists have described Durov’s arrest as part of a wider campaign against free speech waged by Western governments, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden accusing France of taking the entrepreneur “hostage” in order to access private communications on Telegram.”
Or force them to sell it to someone more pliable, or shut it down.
This is common in the West too, with tech company bosses who pushback against govt demands to make products(HW and SW) less secure. UK ISPs took the govt to court over plans to basically MiTM all ISP UK traffic. This practice, by secret order, that companies are forbidden from talking about, is profoundly undemocratic. The US starts anti-trust proceedings or threatens to conduct a financial audit of companies that won’t comply. The way the spy agencies and politicians operate – as if joined at the hip, isn’t healthy in a democracy. It’s why there should be a Digital Bill of Rights, limiting govt overreach and enshrining a right to privacy for all citizens. There is too much secrecy and undermining of privacy and, as stated, that is undemocratic.
Tech entrepreneurs are typically libertarians when it comes to civil liberties. You may remember encrypted email provider Lavabit – the guy folded his business rather than hand over the private SSL keys to his service, a move which would have affected all Lavabit users.
Goose.
Yeah – didn’t Washington call for Tik-Tok to be shutdown or sold – because it was popular in America, of course the official narrative was that it – could pose a security threat to Americans.
I think we are witnessing the collapse of International Law – and even the collapse of USA’s Rules Based Order – to be replaced with, whatever the US and its minions see fit to use at the time – against whomever – or whatever nation – their crosshairs are aimed at.
We have the EU and Washington about to steal frozen Russian assets (most of them held in Belgium) to be given to Ukraine. We have Venezuelan gold held illegally in the Bank of England, whilst the US wants to give (illegally held) Afghani gold to those families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attack – even though nearly all the perpetrators held Saudi passports.
They call it full-spectrum dominance and they’re obsessed with the idea we are permanently at war and they increasingly see the information space as a part of that contested spectrum – a ‘grey zone’. Senior military have said as much. Thus, they see anyone departing from an official narrative online, as somehow ‘working for the enemy’. We’re being subjected to ‘not up for debate’ military rules nobody would ever vote for freely.
They’ve seemingly forgotten we are meant to be democracies; in which debate is not only permitted, but welcomed. What we are witnessing is what happens when the security state, including military, become overly powerful to the extent they can dictate who leads; decide the the laws, and boss the politicians they put in place around without pushback.
RoS
It’s widely reported Starmer is lobbying the US heavily, to allow Ukraine to fire Storm Shadow cruise missiles deep into Russian territory (those given have a range of 190 miles). The US, who provide the missile’s EMI resistant guidance capabilities, are said to be hesitant because they fear even Russia have a ‘nuclear response’ tipping point. Got to ask : Why the hell is Starmer being so reckless and potentially imperilling the UK? Is this why Corbyn had to go and the establishment put Starmer there – to play fast and loose, risking starting WW3?
Does anyone believe Labour voters went to polls in the expectation Starmer would be more hawkish than Johnson and Sunak. Or take the positions they have over genocide in Gaza? At a minimum, we appear to be headed for a crisis in democracy, because of Starmer, that is, if we avoid starting a nuclear war before then.
Starmer’s government are currently trying to tie-up the lose ends, of an even deeper trade deal – with Israel, whilst it commits genocide in Gaza – and begins murdering Palestinian on larger scale in the West Bank.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-laser-focused-on-israel-trade-deal-amid-ongoing-genocide/
Starmer – will hear no outcry about the above from his new MP’s – they’ve already been wined and dined on an all expenses paid junket to Israel – with some of them, visiting Israel during the genocide.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-15-new-mps-before-election/
I’ve read that – there’s a plan to strike Moscow with a missile, and blame the strike on the Neo-Nazi regime running Ukraine. On Starmer – like Nicola Sturgeon he’s a member of the secretive Trilateral Commission – you can’t join the TC – they need to invite you to join.
You can imagine it being the sick fantasy of some to have the Kremlin in flames. But Kyiv would be bye-bye and where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.
I don’t understand why Ukraine is such an obsession for the UK? On the face of it and culturally, we share little in common with this Slavic nation, not even our alphabets. The MOD also has this reductive historical revisionist view; one that paints a fantasy picture of a happy, united Ukraine, merrily going about its business until big bad Russia chose, ‘completely unprovoked’ to invade. That’s complete BS. Ukraine was bitterly divided by a violent coup in western facing Kyiv and the MOD and EU are basically siding with one side in what was a civil war.
I think the US is correct in restraining Starmer, if the reports in our press are accurate and that’s what is happening? For some keep saying Putin and, more prominently Medvedev, are bluffing about a nuclear response.
But imagine the White House being leveled after being struck by say Chinese guided cruise missiles fired from Mexico or Cuba. How would the US respond? By simply shrugging it off? It’d become a matter of honour and If Putin didn’t respond with nuclear strikes on Kyiv, he’d lose the Russian people and the army. It’d be seen as his obligation. It’s sick therefore, that the UK and France are prepared to roll the dice on this.
This is just my view, I may be wrong, but you don’t have to study history or foreign policy to see the risks. Don’t underestimate the fury and likely response such an attack would provoke. And Britain is ill-defended should all hell break loose.
“For some keep saying Putin and, more prominently Medvedev, are bluffing about a nuclear response.
But imagine the White House being leveled after being struck by say Chinese guided cruise missiles fired from Mexico or Cuba.”
Goose.
You need to read this – Pine Gap is having new Radomes installed to thwart that very thing – they will monitor Russian and Chinese missiles on launch – or even just before launch.
Australia will be a first strike country – if war breaks out, especially at Pine Gap.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/21/pine-gap-readies-for-us-nuclear-war/
Goose
If Mexico had been invaded by the USA then indeed Chinese assistance for its defence would be justified.
And indeed counterattacks by Mexico against the USA with or without Chinese arms would also be justified.
Do you not see this?
Goose.
And so – the theft begins – and EU bigwigs, think its a good thing – however EU bigwigs would never do this to Israel – no – instead Israel is allowed to compete in the Euro’s footballing tournament, in the Eurovision Song Contest, and in the Olympics – even though its clearly committing genocide in Gaza.
International Law – only applies to what the Western Establishment says it applies to.
“The EU has made its first transfer of interest earned on Russia’s frozen central bank assets to Ukraine and other states aiding Kiev, the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, announced on Thursday. A total of €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) was transferred, he said.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting with EU foreign ministers, Borrell called the development “good news” and said that the funds would be used for Kiev’s military needs and to finance Ukrainian industry.”
Jk redux
The Mexico scenario seems improbable, because there are no territorial disputes
Cuba provides a more suitable parallel re. Crimea, especially during the 1960s-70s when tensions were high.
If Cuba had tried to force the US out of the Guantanamo Bay Naval base and a wider conflict erupted. Then suppose Cuba fired Russian supplied guided missiles, hitting important buildings eg. Pentagon, Senate in Washington killing politicians or even the President. What do you reckon would’ve happen to Havana?
I think we can safely guess the likely US response. If not nuclear, it’d have been the equivalent. Look what they did in Japan in WW2 and to Cambodia.
Yes, this is the ‘end of days’ scenario alluded to in a previous post. The crazies are pushing Russia, China, North Korea all towards a nuclear retaliation – in the, false, belief that they could actually survive such a scenario. An illustration of their supreme ignorance and stupidity, if needed.
And, who is pushing this craziness ? Religious fundamentalists: Christian and Jewish in the USA and Israel aided by their acolytes like Starmer.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-nuclear-doctrine-attack-everyone/5866531
https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/24/patrick-lawrence-the-end-of-days/
“Does anyone believe Labour voters went to polls in the expectation Starmer would be more hawkish than Johnson and Sunak. Or take the positions they have over genocide in Gaza?”
If they didn’t then they should have been paying more attention. Perhaps enough of them were to account for the fact that Labour got less votes than it did under Corbyn in either of his elections.
RoS
You say that Russian assets are being stolen for Ukraine.
I think that you’ll find that the Putin regime is stealing assets in the form of towns, cities and entire oblasts from Ukraine.
Not to mention human lives.
So it is difficult to be upset by billionaire kleptocrats having their “assets” taken.
Sauce for goose is sauce for gander…
In other news, presidential hopeful Donald Trump threatens to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail ‘for the rest of his life’
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-threatens-jail-mark-zuckerberg-meta-election-book-1235090792/
Who can we trust nowadays?
The more Trump speaks, the less likely his victory looks. Kamala Harris is eminently beatable, but every interview Trump gives seems to raise more questions about his clearly waning faculties. Before he announced J.D. Vance as his running mate, I stated here, he’d be wise to opt for Vivek Ramaswamy and everything I’ve seen since makes me even more convinced in that view. Ramaswamy has told him to cut out the pathetic playground insults and taunts and concentrate on policy.
I pity the US having to pick between these two very weak presidential candidates tbh. If Harris wins, she’ll likely be deeply unpopular. If Trump wins, I fear for Palestinians. Americans need to look at the state of their political system and realise no one envies that : no one could. And they need to stop blaming other countries for the mess they’ve created.
“If Trump wins, I fear for the Palestinians”
they need their empathetic friend and ally, Holocaust Harris.
Trump is a convicted felon. I will be happy to see American justice take its course with him. But I would also like to see the Democratic Party decisively win both Houses of Congress, as well the White House.
M.J.
My view is that the only attractive thing about Trump, is the fact he’s an outsider in a political system that for a long time has offered only the facade of choice. The US talks about defending democracy around the world, but the two-party duopoly is about as far removed from the free and open ideals and concepts of democracy as one can get. Lobbyists, big money and vested interests have stole democracy away from the American people. Trump’s very much an aberration, in the fact he’s not a controlled party puppet, but sadly, he’s not the kind of aberration that was needed.
Al-Jazeera has a piece on telegram and Durov’s arrest and formal investigation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/8/28/drug-dealers-to-putin-critics-behind-pavel-durovs-rare-telegram-audience
“Once upon a time, buying drugs in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, involved consorting with criminal elements. Now, anyone with a smartphone can place an order for amphetamines, hashish and other illicit substances, and be instantly directed to a dead drop hidden somewhere in the city.
The app at the heart of it all? Telegram.
“Absolutely everything is done through Telegram: all the shops, platforms and chats are based on there,” explained Dina*, a young courier in her early twenties. “It’s convenient and confidential.”
It has channels for everything from job vacancies to cryptocurrency exchanges, she said. Dina started out as a courier when she was 19 and “wanted to earn some easy money”.
“In a few days, they gave me the location of the master treasure [wholesale consignment]. You go and collect 10 packets, already packed, then you distribute it around where they tell you, in which area, you take photos [of the hiding spot] and every two weeks you receive a payment in your crypto wallet.”
“Durov is accused of facilitating cybercrime including fraud, drug dealing and child porn by not scrubbing them from his platform and failing to cooperate with regulators on the issue.”
I don’t know how true any of this is but if it is and if authorities alerted telegram to it and asked for co-operation to shut it down etc and that co-operation was refused then perhaps they have a case. We won’t find out until the court hearings I guess.
The political situation arouses suspicion as to his arrest and formal investigation but that doesn’t mean those suspicions will ultimately turn out to be substantiated. Meanwhile, telegram still operates.
Also, he was arrested, questioned and now is being formally investigated under French law not the EU digital services act. I am aware they are looking into declarations of telegram user numbers.
Good article, gives a fairly balanced report of the stakes involved.
You are right in stressing that Durov is NOT being investigated in relation to EU regulations, but strictly under French criminal law, which applies to him since he is a national, whether or not the alleged crimes were committed on French territory.
For the record, the DSA is only one part of EU regulations on the digital media. Even more interesting for the place given to the main players is the DMA (Digital Markets Act). It is worth noting that Telegram failed, unlike its competitors, to be designated in it as a “Gatekeeper”. This may explain a lot.
There’s a very apt analogy in that article:
“You cannot blame the service for the fact someone will use it for criminal activity. A knife can be used to cut vegetables or to kill, but we do not prohibit the distribution of household knives.”
Right, but if someone were intentionally distributing knives to gang members before a confrontation, they could surely be considered complicit in the ensuing acts of violence. It depends on the context, what the distributor knew of the intended use, and what power the distributor had to distinguish between fair and criminal use.
I watched Tucker Carlson’s interview with Durov, where Pavel says that he removes criminal content.
https://youtu.be/1Ut6RouSs0w
I think it’s necessary to clarify what kind of cooperation with the police against criminals in Telegram they mean.
One option is that the police contact the owner of the messenger with a request to block certain users based on a police investigation or a court order.(Or, the police can probably ask not to block clearly criminal content, since this will disrupt the current police operation.) Easy and legal thing to do.
But it is another matter if, as Pavel mentions, people come up to him and demand that he provide a back door. This is a completely different matter. It means passing the control to a certain political force.
There is no doubt that control will be extended not only to criminals, but also to political opponents, and public opinion will be influenced, as we saw in Zuckerberg’s letter.
Pavel also described a rather funny situation regarding the protests at the Capitol on January 6: he received a letter from Democratic congressmen demanding that he provide data on the protesters, otherwise he would violate the US Constitution. He later received a letter from Republican congressmen demanding that he not disclose this information, as this would also violate the US Constitution.
I believe that the optimal way out of the situation for Pavel is to change the policy on criminal content, and announce it publicly, so that criminals know about it and leave Telegram. In this way, the messenger will be cleared of criminals, but will remain uncontrolled by political forces.
I think Durov is dissembling. The issue of back doors into encrypted communications is contentious and affects all apps that use end to end encryption, signal, whatsapp, apple etc not just telegram. The UK is currently considering legislation to enforce back doors into apps for the security services which will undermine encryption globally, not just the UK.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/uk-government-very-close-eroding-encryption-worldwide
The tech companies are fighting this.
That is not the same as law enforcement communicating to Telegram that they have found channels where they have identified significant evidence of criminal behaviour and want Telegram to assist with their enquiries. That is what my understanding of the investigation is so far, that upon request, telegram refused to provide information or sufficiently assist. Hence the formal investigation led by a judge which may or may not lead to a trial.
The ridiculous requests from US senators about Jan 6 Capitol events is distraction.
Durov’s error, was in not making his app fully encrypted – any data Telegram can decrypt is a legal and compliance liability.
Worth trying to understand there is ‘point-to-point’ encryption, for e.g., the https connection to this very server – standard point to point doesn’t protect data at rest, your data may be decrypted and re-encrypted numerous times depending on network topology: load balancers; storage policies and how things are configured serverside. And then there is end-to-end encryption – this means encrypting the data at the point of creation and only decrypting it at the point of use.
Signal, WhatsApp (chat) and Proton email use end-to-end encryption. The data’s owner has cryptograhic control of the data at all times.
Proton Mail reads your e-mails. I created an account to help in recovering a hacked eBay account and after telling eBay to send me a link to reset my password, Proton Mail told me that it looks like I’m using their e-mail system for temporary use in signing up to third party websites and banned me.
Adrian et al.
“Proton Mail reads your e-mails.”
Not just that: They cooperate with law enforcement. Be it French or US, e.g.
Adrian
That doesn’t mean they read the content of your email, they probably identified sender via the incoming ebay IP address and you triggered some possible ‘fraudulent activity’ automated lockout. Lots of people probably set up free accounts to carry out fraud etc. Proton state they have no way of accessing content, and that is likely true for legal disclosure purposes etc.
That said, personally, I wouldn’t completely trust any provider. I myself use a few gmail accounts with yubikey 2FA. If I had reason to be paranoid, like say an investigative journalist would, I’d probably set up my own email server – far easier than it used to be btw.
If you want to encrypt emails I would suggest you do it yourself using something like GPG. That way the plaintext message is only ever present on your system and the recipient’s system – everywhere else just sees encrypted data. Of course the police could still beat the information out of you or the recipient with a rubber hose, but that applies to any system.
ET
re “want Telegram to assist with their enquiries”. The most important in this is – if they expresssed their desire in any legally meaningful way, like a court order, or whatever is the procedure in their legislation.
Durov lived in UAE and haven’t visited France for long, so I assume France should have forwarded some paper to him, because, IMO, a desire to be assisted, if expressed in a private conversation via phone, may easily be ignored.
I hope journalists will crarify this.
Another thing on which I so far haven’rt found any detail is the ‘unnamed person’, in whose crimes Durov is accused of complicity. It would be good to make sure that this is not a political oppositionist, and that the accusations of child porn are not based on the testimony of the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter.
Tatyana
They do cooperate with legal authorities, just not consistently and/or promptly enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_censorship_of_Telegram
The German govt claims email communications requesting metadata are simply discarded ….> /dev/null
Adding to the intrigue, it’s reported Durov has personally dined with Macron on two occasions. Maybe Durov rejected giving the French access to their servers or something?
Goose, in our news I saw people saying that Macron asked Durov to move Telegram headquarters into Paris.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/27/paris-court-explains-why-they-arrested-telegrams-pavel-durov/
The court press release specifically states formal requests were made for information and/or documents. T
He press release is linked in the above piece though it’s in french.
Also this:
“In all, 12 charges have been filed against “a person unnamed” — a classic French judicial term to imply whoever is in charge of Telegram right now.”
Until more information comes to light it’s impossible to say if they have a case or it’s political, legitimate or both.
Tatyana
As I said earlier, I don’t use Telegram and I don’t know how they manage their server infrastructure, if any, across the EU, or how they’ve implemented their one-on-one E2E option; the end-to-end encryption i.e. via server side session setups or clients’ devices? I read that you have to give them a phone number when setting up the app?
To cooperate they could’ve set up secure channels to deal with properly legally authorised requests. I read that they cooperated with the Russian govt against ‘extremists,’ hence why they were unbanned.
If they dislike the obligations, the best approach, would’ve been a ‘no knowledge’ approach in terms of hosted group content by keeping it all encrypted ‘at rest,’ as unencrypted content on their servers opens them up to legal and compliance liability, that France are using as a basis for this case. Maybe that isolated approach via containers wasn’t possible back when they established Telegram? But it is now. And it’s not like they can’t afford the infrastructure.
I think they can charge him under French law simply with complicity in whatever crimes they think took place on his platform – child pornography, hate speech, drug dealing, whatever. If they can show he knew what was going on and still provided the means to commit those crimes, even profit from them.
That’s nothing to do with any EU Digital Services Act, just complicity in regular crimes under French law.
That’s not to say the whole thing isn’t selective prosecution, or politically motivated, or aimed at forcing cooperation with western intelligence services on other matters. It’s just that they don’t need justification specifically under any digital services law in order to do it.
As often seems to be the case these days, if they want to get you they can find a law to do it. In itself evidence of poorly written, unclear, law. Or perhaps cleverly and intentionally unclear law to achieve just that purpose…
More abuses of the law …
Another attempted color revolution is underway in Serbia. The usual American and international (NGO) suspects are attempting to undermine a european government that has the audacity to have good relations with Russia and China.
“… foreigners that finance these organizations … the biggest US funders – the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, the Open Society Foundations, the NED, and Edge Funders Alliance.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/lithium-protests-serbia/5866405
I wonder how many of these NGOs operate in France?
The following is from katlyn johnston’s latest post:
Something similar is happening in Australia, where high-profile journalist Mary Kostakidis faces charges of violating the Racial Discrimination Act for two retweets about Israel and Hezbollah which offended the Zionist Federation of Australia. This move came shortly after the Australian government appointed its first “anti-semitism envoy”, a move many feared would lead to crackdowns on speech that is critical of Israel.
PS my first voice comment!
Apparently Jillian Segal: “The Jewish woman Anthony Albanese appointed to combat rising anti-Semitism has had a long career in law, philanthropy and corporate Australia and is driven by idealism.”
And, Mr Henry Roth’s child has done well:
“Property magnate John Roth and his wife Jillian Segal have bought their waterfront neighbour, Edgewater, in Darling Point for $30,263,400.”
At least we know the policing of anti-semitism in australia is in good hands.
New York University has now declared “Zionism” to be a protected characteristic in its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, equal to black, Hispanic, and LGBT status.
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/27/zionist-nyu-gaza-campus-protests/
According to NYU, supporting a colonial settler ethnostate and genocide is the same as being born black.
OTOH as the website says, “if a professor teaching a class on international politics references or criticizes the government of Israel’s treatment of non-Jewish people, the nation of Saudi Arabia’s response to religious extremism, or the government of India’s promotion of Hinduism, so long as such comments do not target Israeli, Jewish, Saudi, Arab, or India students based on race, color, or national origin, that would not likely implicate Title VI.”
I interpret this to mean that condemning Israeli apartheid is fine, provided that Jewish or Israeli _people_ aren’t targeted in a hostile way.
M.J.
So you think this move isn’t intended to stymie debate and discussion?
You know how litigious the US is, and the well-funded pro-Israel lobby are far more organised and proactive on that front, than all those other groups combined. Such measures, whether unintentionally, or, more likely, by design, are going make the subject impossible for academics to navigate without career-threatening accusations of bias, arising. And they can’t look to politicians to defend them, because they’re in the pockets of the same lobbyists.
Perhaps people at NYU should test the matter by having public discussions following lectures by people like Ilan Pappé, or screenings of films like Israelism, or films made by Palestinians like 5 Broken Cameras, and see what happens.
What’s noteworthy is that NYU has deemed Zionism a protected trait and the term Zionist a “code word” which constitutes hate speech against genocide supporters. That is why the Intercept published an article.
NYU says that “conduct that otherwise triggers our non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy cannot be shielded by using ‘Zionist’ as a substitute or codeword for Jew or Israeli. Excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, is not allowed.”
As I understand, NYU doesn’t outlaw the condemnation of Zionism, merely its use as a code word. Thus denouncing Zionism as racism, or the State of Israel as a tyranny or an apartheid state, or calling for BDS to effect a move from apartheid to full democracy between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, should all be fine!
Unlikely. It’s a campus where last spring students and faculty were beaten, arrested and forced to undergo re-education for daring to protest a livestreamed genocide.
Details of NYU’s re-education program for genocide protesters here.
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/nyu-reeducation-university-palestine-protests
Reza.
Zionism – is a form of Fascism.
This is a must read.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/28/hiding-an-ugly-truth-about-israel/
Thanks RoS, yes good piece. That dishonest biography of an intense critic of Zionism was penned by Jonathan Freedland, director-in-chief of Zionist propaganda at the Guardian.
Hey, don’t forget our host’s book: “zionism is bullshit”.
thank you for linking this article.
Another arrest took place yesterday:
“Human Rights Activist Sarah Wilkinson Arrested by UK Police”
https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/30/human-rights-activist-sarah-wilkinson-arrested-by-uk-police/
““The police came to her house just before 7.30am. [Twelve] of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter-terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for ‘content that she has posted online.’”
It looks like activists need to count to 10 before mentioning the name of any banned organisation or known member, or talking about their acts in general. Freedom of speech in the UK doesn’t cover statements that could be construed as support for them.
Clearly.
But to be free to talk about organisations only that are accepted by the government is not freedom of speech. It´s the opposite.
They like to call it authoritarianism.
p.s. On France and the change of tune there regarding their attitude to “surveillance”, a pointed reminder by Matt Taibbi (blast from the past):
“(…)
On Monday, October 21, 2013, the U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry in Paris on urgent business. Le Monde published excerpts of revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden showing that across thirty days, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted “70.3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data,” revealing surveillance on a “massive scale.”
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault demanded “clear answers” and insisted the U.S. work with France in “creating the conditions of transparency so these practices can be put to an end.” Secretary of State John Kerry happened to be in Paris when the Le Monde story broke. Ahead of a meeting with “Monsieur Kerry,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius seethed the surveillance was “totally unacceptable” and “we have to make sure, very quickly, that this no longer happens.” A week later, Kerry admitted U.S. spying “reached too far.”
(…)”
AG.
I’m pretty sure – that Snowden also revealed that Japan, is utterly hacked on all levels – down to it power supplies, and even the traffic lights can be controlled by American forces.
Snowden – pointed out that the US Prism Programme – was collecting mass data – not just on intelligence targets – but everyone’s online data, in a total take, as it was known.
https://www.cloudwards.net/prism-snowden-and-government-surveillance/
Japan and Germany were beaten and invaded during WW2. Although the Russians withdrew, the USA never left either country and now, as you state, control every aspect of life in these countries: government, military, security services, economy, law. Like a case of the clap you can’t get rid of the yanks.
Thanks!
Appears to be a practical source. Also suitable to send parents with kids and little time.
If you think of it: 2013!!! For me that´s like yesterday. But for so many who probably matter most now, those might have not even been aware of Snowden at all when it all happened…sigh I´m gettin´ old. (And Assange is even 20 years ago, wow)
Stevie Boy
re: Germany – keep in mind many wanted it. They were afraid of the Russians way more than of the US, because they had a really bad conscience. The US didn´t sacrifice too many in Europe. With Russians (aka Soviet, but in Germany they were the same) it was different. Add to that the countless Social Democrats and Communists betrayed and killed by fellow Germans and those who had survived and would return from Russia. So it was a quid pro quo and both sides knew it. And Germany fared best among all European nations.
East Germany was constantly compared to the FRG. Never GB, never Italy, or France, or Belgium. And as long as everybody pats you on the shoulder for being an obedient German democrat and you are rich and liked and way more powerful than would be adequate for the size of your people of 60 mn. Who is against that?
Same with Japan. 6-10 mn. killed (conservative estimate, mostly Chinese)? + the time before 1937.
Doesn´t matter in today´s public discourse.
” Japan and Germany were beaten and invaded during WW2. Although the Russians withdrew.. ”
Russia occupied East Germany up until 1988 when the occupants decided they’d suffered enough and kicked them out. Russia’s continuing occupation of the four southernmost of the Kuril Islands is the source of a long running dispute between Russia and Japan.
Correction
The Soviet Union occupied East Germany, Pears. You are either ignorant of this or attempting to start some of conspiracy theory. I might have to contact an anti-disinformation boondoggle and report you
As I recall there was no such country of Russia seated at the UN, until the early nineties
Therefore it would present a seemingly insoluble problem for Russia to have occupied anywhere in 1988 because it didn’t exist
Those 2013 revelations led to major changes.
The widespread adoption of perfect-forward-secrecy and end-to-end encryption. They can still sniff and collect all traffic, but they can’t mass decrypt it anymore – by simply obtaining (demanding) a server’s private key. And as far as I know, data on these tech companies’ intranets and data at rest is now better segmented and encrypted.
It’s still annoying that our govts spend so much effort basically privately authorising that which they publicly deny doing. There is too little transparency, and they are supposed to be our representatives. Mobile phone security is still broken though. Your phone’s IMEI is broadcast not only from your phone to the nearest tower, but from that tower to other towers. All of this happens in the clear – the data isn’t encrypted. IMEI cloning is still an issue and hasn’t been fixed, I’d guess, for ‘national security’ reasons.
Goose
What is so disturbing is the fact that MPs are doing this all over Europe.
I am aware of the homogenity of MPs in Germany´s Bundestag and probably elsewhere too.
But people, have some decency!
And don´t tell me that those who are lawyers or business people or teachers or doctors who are sitting there have had so little contact to the rabble?
To not knowing what is common sense?
They wouldn´t lose their income for showing some integrity and vote accordingly.
Some things don´t add up. And there was a time when Snowden was genuinely part of public discourse among those very same academics who do parliamentary politics.
East Germany was part of the Soviet Union but to distinguish between the Soviet Union and Russia is a bit like trying to separate the British Empire from Britain. None of the constituent parts of either had any real control over their own affairs, they took their orders from Moscow or London (see Hungary, 1956 and Czechoslovakia, 1967).
Pears one has feelings, then there are facts
I sympathise with your feelings but trying to distinguish between “this” and “that” is a crucial exercise though I accept not as glamorous or exciting as feeling “things”
As I recall, when the loyal apparatchiks at the periphery contacted Moscow for instructions concerning the crisis and their dues to the Union and the question of “Sovereignty”, the various ministries famously responded “Sovereignty? Take as much of that as you can swallow”
Interestingly, the history curriculum in English schools has been changed recently, contravening your words concerning the British Empire. Now all the rape robbery and genocide was done by “the men on the spot” not the centre, as you suggest
Imagine London telling Edinburgh, Cardiff, or Belfast, to take “as much Sovereignty as you can swallow”
Do you feel me?
AG
The bizarre political homogeneity we’re witnessing is likely the result of energetic US interference in European countries’ politics over the last two decades. They’ve shaped a Europe that’s politically in their image, through NATO and the EU’s bureaucracy. Our leaders aren’t ‘our’ leaders anymore; they’re the US’s handpicked choices – chosen for their subservience to the US and its worldview – the products of US indoctrination. Look into their backgrounds on Wiki for links to the US and US NGOs, Baerbock being a classic example.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have to rely on US tech executives to fight to preserve basic civil liberties from Western politicians who won’t defend them.
AG
Politicians lack knowledge, many don’t even use the internet much. And thus they have fallen for the false claims made by the anti-disinfo brigade, that asserts Europeans are being inundated with Russian/ Chinese misinformation and disinformation. This claim is plainly, demonstrably bullshit – as you’d be hard pressed to find any Russian disinfo on the major social media platforms – go look for it. But the belief among politicians stubbornly persists. Hence why we face losing our privacy. We are losing our rights because politicians are being given a false picture by those entrusted to report objectively.
Republic of Scotland
They say ” Politics has no father.”
Not exactly meaning that politics is a bastard, but that in the game of power, ideological differences are ignored.
Thank you for the link to Jonathon Cook’s insight into WW2 deals between Nazis and Zionists. You could say that Nazism saw a power opportunity from zionism just as much as zionists saw a power opportunity from Nazism.
And what we have today, the squeezing out of the Left in politics and the brutal squeezing out of the Palestinians in Israel , is the fruit of those WW2 dirty deals.
We lose our freedom.of speech and Palestinians lose their security and their lives.
And what faces us now is how to square up our regaining our freedom of speech and Palestinians regaining their safety and security.
Both of us are losers, in different degrees obviously, and we can also see that new political manoeuvres between the Far Right and religious minorities are ongoing. The alliance between USUKIS and Islamists, for example.
This is the time-old way of Colonialism , to reach out to minor tribes or interests on the ladder system used by Lawrence ( of Dorset ) in order to attack their more numerous opponents.
Help the minor Zionists against the millions of ordinary Jews.
Personally , I am disgusted, ( as of Tunbridge Wells ) that it is being reported by USUKIS hacks that the majority of Jews in Israel now support the Zionist Nazis like Netanyahu et al, giving some illicit , democratic legitimacy to the USUKIS genocide in Palestine.
These are just faked up opinion polls to legitimise the unlawful onslaught of death, torture, rape, famine and disease.
The least we can do is to mentally resist every lie that is spouted by the shills supporting this genocide.
And not to do the least we could do, viz to openly oppose the lies of the Nazi Zionists amongst our own communities, is in effect to support the genocide.
And we will be held accountable.
Every country that became part of the Soviet sphere of influence supplied troops to attack the USSR. These willing fascists amounted to just short of 1 million soldiers on the ground. So therefore the USSR had the right to exterminate that vermin at source, which it effectively did, notably in the DDR. Russia is now attempting to repeat that cleansing exercise starting with Ukraine, much to the horror of the fascist enablers in Europe such as Starmer, Scholz and Macron.
The East Germans never kicked out the USSR. The Soviets were ordered to withdraw by the gullible Gorbachev who seemed to believe that the west might fall in love with Russia, despite a catalogue of European history that suggested otherwise. He is widely regarded in present day Russia as either a poltroon or a self-serving grubby capitalist. Both can’t be right: but one of them must be.
“The East Germans never kicked out the USSR. ”
Thanks, I didn´t want to say it.
But that´s why Germany´s unification was called peaceful revolution.
“either a poltroon or a self-serving grubby capitalist. Both can’t be right: but one of them must be.”
Why can’t a person be a poltroon and a self-serving grubby capitalist at the same time?
Each one of those countries also contributed to the Red Army. There were 8 million soldiers from Ukraine alone, 2.5 million of whom died. Rather dwarfs the Nazi element which is even more insignificant today.
Gorbachev realised the Cold War was bankrupting the Soviet Union but I suppose those East Germans we watched demolishing the Berlin Wall were doing so because they wanted to replace it with something higher.
On the subject of the abuse of power, Jonathan Cook’s latest: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-08-30/starmer-jailing-palestine-supporters/
Dystopian stuff.
As pointed out elsewhere, look at the difference in the way criminal behaviour was dealt with at the Notting Hill ‘carnival’ and how protesters were dealt with following the Southport ‘riots’.
Herr Starmerenfuhrer, two tier Keir, knows how to divide and conquer the plebs. We are the enemy and must be destroyed to ensure the smooth gestation of the multicultural, multisexual, net-zero, zionist nirvana.
1984, animal farm, brave new world or just hell on earth ?
The Metropolitan police’s close relationship with the Community Security Trust (CST) seems highly unusual and possibly unethical. Why should self-appointed representatives of one religion have such a hold over supposedly independent police decision making, if that’s the case?
I’m not claiming there is a ‘hit list’ targeting prominent outspoken critics of Israel on the Gaza situation. But the police must be seen to be operating free of interference, and there seems to be a growing list of people arrested, where it’s very difficult to understand what exactly they’re supposed to have done wrong.
cont,,
I’d guess they’d like to go after even higher-profile, influential critics, like Owen Jones, with his 1.1 million X followers and Lowkey, who also has a big following. But targeting people like that may bring unwelcome press interest to this obnoxious practice of using extraordinary powers, powers supposedly only put in place to catch the most serious,’ imminent threat’ terrorists, that are now being used to intimidate non-violent online dissenters and bloggers.
If we had a functioning, representative political system, there’d be outrage expressed in parliament about this Kafkaesque practice.
Think battery chicken or even assault and battery chicken which is then battered Stevie Boy
Plump, tasty and delicious – I feel like chicken tonite
ps Apparently some chickens can survive if you cut their heads off and feed them with a tube. Fifty year ago I remember the Guinness Book of Records (the internet before the internet for you younger readers) said the longevity record of a beheaded chicken living on minus it’s head was fifty odd days, how odd it didn’t say. I would imagine that today things will be significantly odder in the beheaded chicken department,
In Eastern European ugly jokes they were abusing chickens with and without head…ahem…
There was Mike the Headless Chicken, born on Hitler’s birthday.
Ewan, if that Wikidped article describes a real phenomenon and not CIA disinformation (Headless chickens became a bone of contention in the Cold War, like everything else – the Soviets claimed their headless chickens were “better” because they were Marxist-Leninist!) that would mean he was an Aries born on the cusp of Taurus. These individuals often lead troubled but interesting lives as your other example, Adolf Hitler, attests to
According to the article Mike often appeared in public with a two-headed baby, though whether Mike was ok with that sort of thing the article neglects to mention. This stage of his career very much reminds me of Elvis in Vegas – the same exploitation, though of course without the glitz and glamour of “the Strip”.
I couldn’t find the exact hour of Mike’s birth, which is needed to identify his rising sign and would give an indication of how well he might have coped with his experiences, emotionally.
If, like Elvis, he could have met a Southern Colonel before he lost his head, who knows where he might have ended up – instead of a tragic death in a seedy motel in Phoenix, he could have been the main event at the KFC in Vegas.
‘seedy hotel’ – perfect! He died in 1947, which is the year the CIA was formed, on St. Patrick’s Day. Acc. to the internet:
“There is a hard edge to a Pisces born on March 17th, even though he or she is sensitive. They are often talented, yet they can transcend their greatness and see the practical side of life.” So perhaps he understood the practicality of the two-headed baby alongside a headless chicken.
I wonder if – as there are so many politicians doing the headless chicken – there are any that were born with two heads.
Sometimes I sing ‘Mike the Headless Chicken’ to the tune of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’
Headless chicken? Is this a private joke referencing Soviet and CIA sockpuppets, or something?
I’m familiar with the term ‘headless’ in a computing context.
It’s just that it’s the sort of thing someone associated with Craig’s ridiculous, delusional opponents would say about these blog comments.
“ Sometimes I sing ‘Mike the Headless Chicken etc”
There is nothing wrong, Ewan, with having heroes, at least you demonstrate the humility of genuine aspiration. If you wish to become a bigger star than Mike, remember Mike didn’t choose his lot but instead made good after a run of bad luck.
Alterations to your physical form may generate clicks but surely you can see there is more to life than “popping off”, however spectacularly, on Tik Tok. The removal of various appendages in todays world. of hi tech prosthetics may seem like a marketable opportunity, which indeed it is but your discovery of Mike’s career and the nature of his final artistic sacrifice gives me cause for concern.
Mike was lucky. The fact he retained a rich mental life after the removal of his head suggests the presence of an all-knowing and beneficient deity but I would not count on this. A closer look at Mike’s story told by those who knew him best reveals as a starker truth, more darkly graven.
Stevie Boy
Where else is it being “pointed out” that Starmer is an anti-racist lefty?
Starmer is pursuing and smearing critics of genocide the same way he did leftwingers in Labour. He knows their persecution will have the same full support from the British media and his Tory “opponents”.
Starmer was an untested politician, only entering politics in 2015, maybe after being urged to by his friend, the former head of MI5, Jonathan Evans? There was no guarantee Starmer was going to be any good at it. He lied his way to the leadership and appears to have no conscience and zero charisma.
Ed Miliband was leading Labour in 2015, and the security services hated the way he U-turned on the parliamentary Syrian intervention vote in late 2013. They were furious with him, remember. Given the GrayZone’s revelations about Dearlove’s plotting and the crazy levels of official secrecy in the UK; it seems perfectly possible that Starmer was imposed by the arrogant, democracy-usurping establishment.
“It’s 8 weeks and Starmer already feels like a remote, authoritarian-minded bureaucrat. ”
— Tweeted by Aaron Bastani
Er, that’s because that’s what he is. He looks to all intents like someone ‘hired’ to play the role of PM until the Tories recover; someone put there to change nothing and look miserable carrying out that duty. The only people happy with Starmer are sitting and ex- Tory MPs, and the security establishment.
I didn’t even vote in the recent general election, because I live in a ‘safe’ Labour constituency and I don’t believe in the crappy FPTP system. I hoped public apathy would result in a turnout below 50%, creating a crisis of legitimacy. FPTP and the way it locks out different views, is at the root of most of the stuff that’s discussed here.
Ditto.
I cannot believe how some people really seemed to think Starmer was the coming of the messiah to save them from all the Tory clowns. There was absolutely no choice, zero, in the last election. All parties were singing from the same hymn sheet. IMO, The only viable and morally acceptable thing to do was not to vote. To vote was to be complicit and give legitimacy to the continuing shitshow.
All these whingers are either stupid or liars or both.
Goose
It’s difficult to understand how, when Starmer is wholly owned by Globalist Zionists, he somehow has any agency of his own. If he has any opinions of his own left, I’d probably agree with them.
But if he is completely scrubbed clean and entirely owned by spooks, Russia has made it clear it will retaliate against his owners, not the Mme Tussauds waxwork sitting in No. 10., or Kyiv.
Something changed in him though; he wasn’t always a reactionary right-winger. He once favoured abolishing the monarchy.
How does one succumb to become servant of seurocrat cabals who hide behind layers of official secrecy to usurp democracy, as Oliver Eagleton argues he is, in The Starmer Project : A Journey to the Right.
Snowden may offer clue, in the story he revealed, about how he was party to a CIA station operation in Geneva – where he was posted. The operation involved getting a Swiss banker drunk; then seeing to it he was arrested driving home – followed by an offer to wipe the slate clean in return for cooperation on banking information.
Starmer is well known to like a drink or two; a few years ago, he sped off after collision with a cyclist.
No need to look further than Mrs Starmztrooper.
He was a local lad that liked footy till he got spooky.
Don’t forget who appointed him as DPP – drunkard mossy and Maxwells bruiser thug Campbell, Mandy and TB…
Brazil’s Supreme Court just banned X and announced an $8,900/day penalty for those who use a VPN to evade it.
Draconian stuff.
Brazil is becoming a lot like China and Iran; in those countries the national firewall blocks VPN connections altogether. Citizens reportedly have to wrap their VPN traffic inside a TLS tunnel to prevent it being blocked. There’s always a way.
According to Glenn Greenwald, the judge, Moraes, tried to initially ban all VPNs, only to retreat; probably after corporations, banks – who rely on them – told him that was impossible. Now, he’s only banning using VPNs to access X – how will they know what someone accessed? Clearly the judge doesn’t understand the technical aspects of this, and is just behaving like some mad autocrat issuing edicts.
Truly the age of stupid officialdom. And these people wonder why we have so little respect for them.
They can, I suppose, view Xitter in private. But it would be unwise to post anything on it or share anything from it. Oh dear. “Journalists” will have to step outside to get their stories.
Steve Hayes
Those Brazilians with a large following on X, could simply give others their account login details and have them post comments (sent via email) on their behalf.
I don’t see how Brazil can police it, or why it’d be worthwhile, in terms of dedicated resources required, to even try. Most VPNs allow connection to servers outside Brazil and most have a ‘no logging’ policy.
If they take the extreme step of banning VPNs altogether (overreach) people can set up a virtual private server (VPS) then configure IP masquerading in the server firewall, so that the server becomes a virtual router for clients. Point being, the internet is very difficult to contain to national boundaries, China can’t manage it, and they’re more advanced on the censorship front than Brazil.
Eh? My point was that having a post in your name pop up (no doubt the plod are allowed to look, just as with CSAM) or saying “I saw this on X” is immediate evidence of law-breaking. Telling the court that it wasn’t you that actually touched the keyboard might not get you very far.
Steve Hayes
Maybe some group, like Privacy International, or Brazil’s equivalent, will test the limits of the law as it stands? I believe Elon Musk announced X/twitter have vacated Brazil altogether, as power-crazed Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest all the staff.
This judge, isn’t infallible, and he needs to be reined in. It’s sad that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, btw, previously imprisoned himself in a highly politicised case – is being so myopic; in that he can’t see how this precedent is dangerous if the far-right Bolsonaro gang get back in.
The far-right and left seem to have developed an unhealthy habit of jailing political opponents in Brazil.
Some are asking Greenwald if TOR is a way around the ban.
TOR uses hidden service directories HSDirs – these are the DNS servers of the dark web, and they can be quite expensive to run and also potentially cause legal problems for their administrators. Ask yourself : who has the money and legal confidence to run such a thing?
Goose, yes someone can challenge the law on one aspect or another. Might or might not work. But meanwhile most Brazilians are likely to keep their heads down and give Xitter a wide berth. Much as many people in the UK might in response to the arrests that our host writes about.
Goose @12.47am.
Yes – Moraes, apparently doesn’t like what some X accounts have to say about him – now this is a person, who cannot handle criticism.
“Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the operations of X (formerly Twitter) to be “immediately suspended” and threatened draconian fines against anyone trying to sidestep the ban.
De Moraes demanded that X censor several accounts that “spread disinformation” by criticizing him, but the platform’s owner Elon Musk refused.
On Friday, the judge ordered the platform banned in Brazil, giving Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. He also threatened a fine of around 50,000 Brazilian real (approximately $8,874) a day for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the ban.”
https://www.rt.com/news/603328-brazil-ban-x-musk-censorship/
Republicofscotland
Elon Musk seems to be enjoying poking fun at these authoritarian clowns. First Thierry Breton, then Starmer, now ‘His Magnificence’ Alexandre de Moraes.
I think Musk was unwise to endorse and get personally involved with Trump, but you’ve got to admire his unwillingness to bend the knee to these pompous, overreaching authoritarians. Having taken control of the MSM, including newspapers, the tech execs and their social media platforms, are becoming the final piece of the puzzle for the forces of authoritarianism in their never ending struggle, to gain total control of the narrative.
Goose
Trump *is* a pompous overbearing authoritarian..
JK redux
He is.
But no one takes his bluster seriously: Trump’s bark is worse than his bite. And the US constitution severely constrains the harm he could do.
Some of the others have real power to act on their authoritarian instincts. For instance, I don’t imagine many Labour MPs will rebel when Starmer amends the Online Safety Act to criminalise the ill-defined ‘legal but harmful’ speech.
wtf?
You know where you stand with China and Iran. The real danger is in the west where we are governed by unwritten rules.
Why not move from the West to Iran, if it’s so great? I’ll tell you why: you wouldn’t want to get thrown into the minus-five star Evin hotel LOL. Not for nothing did HM (when he was HRH) say to a group of new UK citizens, ‘Being British is something of a blessing and a privilege for us all.’
Remind us of anything his majesty has said about Britain doing this —
https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1829395104928604388
M.J.
Why do you lazily assume critics of the West admire the way those other countries operate? I think Stevie Boy, has a valid point, when he says, they are overtly authoritarian and thus, at least they are up front and citizens have clear rules. One of the principles of English Natural justice – the basis of our laws – is that the law should be clear. With recent arrests, on the face of it (prima facie – using the Latin legal term), it’s far from clear.
On disloyalty. Idiots used to similarly bash WikiLeaks, believing they were making a clever point, by asking, why WikiLeaks didn’t concentrate on leaking Russian and Chinese official secrets? But why should they? When that information wouldn’t be seen in Russia and China and such info about unknown officials and members of the CCP would be irrelevant to their largely Western audience. An audience concerned with what hypocrisy and criminality our govts are up to because of a failing, incurious MSM.
You make a valid point about laziness, and so does Steve Boy about the danger of unwritten and unclear rules.
My apologies to you both – I got a bit carried away.
But if we think about protecting democracy in the UK (eg addressing excessive power in the executive), let’s also think about how to help those who would encourage democracy in other places, and ask why someone wouldn’t bother trying to do so in Iran and China. Could it be that the UK and the West have a greater potential for self-correction and improvement, and that this is part of the blessing that HRH spoke of?
M.J.
But what do you mean by democracy? Because there is a concept of democracy – which is fantastic btw, if implemented properly and respected by benign leaders. Then there is the corrupted Anglo version of democracy; in which there is the illusion of choice. And an awful elite who have given us something that has more in common with oligarchy.
Maybe I’ve just grown too cynical? But I don’t think the UK and US want to export democracy to China, Russia and Iran et al at all. They want to shape those countries and dominate them. They want their fellow like-minded elites in Iran, Russia and China to grab power and then be incorporated into their elite power structures; accept the inequalities of their capitalist systems i.e. assimilate them like the Borg with a ‘our rules’ or face being destroyed mentality, if they refuse.
Democracy need not be the Western version. The South African version may be as good in theory. But it depends on humans: it is always vulnerable to populism when things get tough, and so people who cherish it need to bear that in mind.
The British and American versions are likely as good or bad as any other version. Building civil society and values may be the crucial thing. The advent of Kamala Harris to me is not only a hopeful sign but necessary to prevent the danger of degeneration into fascism that I think a Trump victory would bring.
Democracies have the singular advantage of being amenable to change. Dictatorships the opposite. Which is why democracies have always been more respectable in the West, even racially exclusive (and hence false) ones like apartheid South Africa and Israel.
Do you have a definition for populism MJ – what, exactly, do you mean?
will: populism in the internet dictionary is defined as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”
In the case of Hitler the scapegoated “elite” would have been the Jewish community, in the case of Lenin and Stalin relatively well-off peasants called “kulaks”, in the case of Trump the political classes educated in the top colleges such as the Ivy League. But IMO the scapegoat can be larger or even less well defined groups. It might be a good classroom exercise to work out them out in the case of Turkey, Iran and India.
“Why not move from the West to Iran, if it’s so great?”
Are you fluent in Persian? No? Neither am I, nor do I speak Russian or Korean or any form of Chinese. That’s why I won’t be emigrating to any of those countries soon. It’s not because the UK isn’t a shithole.
Bayard
People who say things like, “move to country X then” typically hold the view the UK has achieved some democratic and constitutional perfection. For the most part, these people know sweet FA about how other Western countries do things, and why the class-riddled aristocrat worshipping, two-party, overcentralised stitch-up Anglo way of doing politics, produces bad outcomes for the majority.
I just wish Scotland would stop complaining and instead lead by example; regaining its stolen independence, and showing the ignorant English i.e. us, that the Westminster way is broken.
” Are you fluent in Persian? ”
Learn. It’s not impossible. Millions of people move to foreign countries and have to learn a new language.
It’s also the case that those who recommend this course to their fellow citizens are unlikely to have been in sympathy with our forebears who had to fight and campaign to establish our demoncratic rights. These were earned and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This vigilance honours the sacrifices our forebears made. Telling those people who seek to defend our civil rights and liberties that they should leave the country is tendentious and authoritarian.
Actually I wouldn’t mind moving to Iran. It was pretty nice when we went in 2019. Even the wearing of headscarves is being abandoned, in Tehran at least, according to a lot of videos on Youtube. And the rest is exaggerated; people get executed for drug-dealing, not so much else. You won’t get the truth out of the media; the exile lobby has a tight hold on it.
There used to be a TV programme called (as I remember) “Do They Mean Us”. It showed foreign reports on the UK in a humorous way. One that stuck in my mind was Iranian. It showed the Albert Memorial in grainy black and white as an ominous voice told of how grim and awful life in the UK was. I often think of it when similarly framed reports about foreign places appear on the BBC or competing outlets.
Laguerre
It would not be you, if you are as I think a man, wearing a headscarf.
It is wrong for men in Europe to wave away the opression of women in Iran.
Our only role should be to support our Iranian sisters in whatever way we can.
We should of course not in any way threaten or harass the ruling priest class in Iran. /s
So arbitrary arrest, torture, oppression and state sanctioned murder are all OK providing the rules are all written down….
I sense you getting desperate.
Pears Morgaine
Do you think the UK hasn’t got a history of doing those things? I’m guessing you’re too young to know anything about how the UK behaved in N.Ireland?
Careful you don’t mention that Britain has been actively facilitating a genocide for 11 months, Goose.
And let us remember that Northern Ireland is part of the UK, so the gulag of Long Kesh was not hidden away on some remote colonial island. It was all in plain sight.
Reza
On that subject, Lowkey keeps posting legit sourced flight data evidence, which seems to suggest British military planes(from the Cyprus base) are regularly carrying out reconnaissance flights over Gaza. If the UK is helping the Israelis with target acquisition that’s a disgrace. And could leave them open to charges of being complicit in war crimes. In recent weeks, non-combatant well-known bloggers from Gaza have been eliminated in air strikes, as if being systematically picked off.
The fact no one in parliament can be bothered to demand answers, just shows how broken the system is.
Yes.
arbitrary arrest – Assange, and we’ve seen that just this week.
torture – iraq, NI, Africa.
oppression – Covid, Palestine.
state sanctioned murder – Gibraltar, Iraq, Drones.
Looks like a full house for the UK, all covered by the unwritten rules.
It’s not the country or the people, it’s the c*It’s in charge.
Goose
There is no “if “ or mere “suggestion” that Britain “might be” sending bombs and other military supplies to aid the genocide. That is openly acknowledged by everyone from Starmer and Lammy and their client journalists to their lowliest online apologists. Can you really be unaware of it? If so, how? In fact, throughout 2024 the UK has rushed through dozens of new arms contracts with Israel, knowing very well that the war crimes being committed could not be any more extreme. Pears Morgaine and M.J. certainly know it, yet somehow still feel confident to post the old smug chauvinistic crap we see above.
Another one killed : https://apnews.com/article/gaza-tiktok-medo-halimy-killed-israel-war-d2cc44f1434486f1ff0d0d92aa7f25b4
The Israelis are silencing Gaza non-combatants – likely by using gathered mobile phone data to then conduct drone strikes. It’s to be hoped the UK isn’t assisting.
This while Angela Rayner dances the night away.
” I’m guessing you’re too young to know anything about how the UK behaved in N.Ireland? ”
More than old enough and it was deplorable and ultimately self-defeating. Why then it is acceptable for the likes of Iran and China because you think they’ve codified it in law? Iran executed 853 people last year, China is so ashamed of the practice that the numbers are a state secret but reckoned to be somewhere between 2,500 and 8,000.
The UK did not suspend arms sales to Israel during the past Tory government. But Zarah Sultana (Lab) tabled a Private Members Bill in December 2023 calling for it. The dissolution of parliament meant that it made no progress, but hopefully we will see progress this time.
I have written to my MP. I hope anyone who reads this will do likewise.
How depraved would Britain need to be acting right now to give you even a little pause in thinking it is an example to the world?
One example of an event giving such pause is excessive power in the hands of the executive to strip British citizens of their citizenship, as Sajid Javid did in the case of Shamima Begum. It is a reason to exert our influence for constitutional improvement, so that politicians do not have such power, only judges.
Excessive power in the hands of the executive strengthens the case for a written Constitution.
Not that any system works better than the people who implement it. A written Constitution is not a panacea.
Imagine believing that is more depraved than what Britain is currently engaged in in Gaza….
These were children, M.J. —
https://x.com/s_m_marandi/status/1829917930114478471
I don’t think the UK should be supplying the means to Israel to carry out genocide in Gaza (though I think Germany and the US are bigger offenders). I think that hostages should have been exchanged for Palestinian detainees long ago, but in the longer term BDS will be needed to end the whole system of Israeli apartheid.
Evidently Pears Morgaine doesn’t actually know anything about what goes on in Iran.
The stuff that went on in Northern Ireland was as bad as that conducted by today’s thuggish regimes.
And how does the govt of today respond? by an attempted coverup that seems to contravene the GFA: “Britain’s reputation will be severely damaged by the Northern Ireland “legacy” act, an international panel of human rights experts has warned.”
It was because we were fighting the ruthless IRA, they say.
Iran are fighting various US-backed insurgency groups;, like the violent MEK, And they’ve got Israeli-sponsored bombings and assassinations to worry about. Not that that justifies their conduct, but it’s the same context they’re facing, that led the UK down a dark path.
It’s interesting that the SS had infiltrated the IRA and the UDA and were explicitly involved in murders and bombings, so it would appear everything we were told about ‘the troubles’ was a government manufactured pile of BS.
I wonder how many NGOs in the UK are currently infiltrated by the UK SS ?
It also appears that all the democracy loving, freedom fighting NGOs that constantly harp on about human rights in China, Iran, Russia, etc. are all involved with the SS in one way or another.
Everything they tell us is a lie.
Enlighten me.
Just because British forces may have done bad things in NI is not justification or excuse.
“So arbitrary arrest, torture, oppression and state sanctioned murder are all OK providing the rules are all written down….”
A country that does these things with clearly stated rules might be better than a country that does these things without clearly stated rules whilst pretending not to do them at all.
Exactly
If it says freedom of speech on the tin, then the politicians and officials should live and abide by that. However angry they get about people with different opinions to theirs, expressing them online.
If the people arrested were say, Egyptian, and had been arrested on return to Egypt after criticising el-Sisi, it’d be awful, but somewhat predictable.
The problem therefore with these recent arrests, is they represent a radical break from British traditions. When did we become Egypt?
If such things are allowed with ‘clearly stated rules’ it means they are state sanctioned and you, the victim, have no come back or rights to object. You don’t like being tortured? Tough, we are acting within the rules!
Pears Morgaine
Egypt currently has an est. 70,000 political prisoners – one of whom was a cartoonist who mocked el-Sisi; another was a popular TV presenter and comic. Yet military dictator, el-Sisi, is currently getting hundreds of millions of €uros from the EU with no ‘democracy’ obligations attached. Or any conditionality based on improving human rights in Egypt. Ursula von der Leyen and Borrell insist the money is not a bribe to buy his silence over Gaza. Hmm.
Just one example, of why many believe the hypocritical West has lost any claim to having ‘values’.
FAO Pears Morgaine
Britain backs most of the world’s repressive regimes, new analysis shows.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-03-11-britain-backs-most-of-the-worlds-repressive-regimes-new-analysis-shows/
A possible point of conflict – looks likely to arise here as the US offers to escort, Philippine resupply missions to outposts – in the South China Sea; a top Philippine military general said, that the country would consider the offer.
Surely the US, must know such a move would be considered an act of aggression towards China – its a bold move by the US, that could if needed by the Philippines, result in military clashes in the region. Maybe the mad-dogs at the Pentagon – are hoping that China will back down, when the time comes.
There have been many incidents between China and the Philippines. Just this week, for example:
“Chinese experts criticize Philippines for endangering ships and violating humanitarian principles after Philippine vessel deliberately collides with CCG ship at Xianbin Jiao”
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202408/1318992.shtml
If the Americans get involved in this then major conflict is inevitable.
Portugal – is supplying explosive to the Zionist regime, that’s committing genocide in Gaza.
“A United Nations human rights expert has warned that a Portuguese-flagged ship is carrying tons of explosives to Israel, reiterating calls for an immediate arms embargo against the occupying entity to prevent further genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip.
UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese sounded the alert in a post on X on Saturday, warning that based on the received information, “the vessel Kathrin, flying with Portuguese flag, is expected to deliver 8 containers of explosives to Israel.”
“These explosives are reportedly key components in the aircraft bombs and missiles that Israel is deploying against besieged Gaza and in its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. As Namibia has rightfully denied port access to Kathrin, upholding int’l law, my hope is that Angola will follow Namibia’s example and not consent to harbor the ship. This could be a serious breach of the Genocide Convention,” Albanese added.
According to Vesselfinder ship tracking data earlier this week, the cargo ship, the MV Kathrin, which is sailing under the flag of Madeira, is currently anchored off the coast of Namibia, as the country in southwest Africa has refused to allow it to enter any of its ports.
Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, is an archipelago comprising four islands off the northwest coast of Africa.
Albanese stressed that she is “extremely concerned by Portugal’s potential sponsorship of the ship and for facilitating Kathrin’s delivery.”
“This may be a breach of the Genocide Convention. Critical reminder: Any military transfer to Israel, which the ICJ determined may be plausibly committing genocide, amounts to a breach of the Genocide Convention and of the HRC resolution 55/L.30 mandating an arms embargo on Israel,” she emphasized, stressing, once again, that there is a need to enforce arms embargo against Israel.”
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/08/31/732405/Palestine-Israel-Portugal-MV-Kathrin-ship-explosives-UN
The country of Niger really is going to town on Western colonising forces: first it kicked-out the French, who had been asset stripping the country for years; it then all but kicked-out the American forces – which among other things, were using the country as a staging post to bomb the region; now Niamey has turned its gaze to the German forces in Niger, and has kicked out its troops as well.
RoS
Niger has two significant uranium mines providing about 5% of world mining output from Africa’s highest-grade uranium ores.
I’m sure this has nothing to do with the western interest in the country. /s
Similar story with the interest in Bolivia. Bolivia has the largest lithium reserves in the world. Lithium being a key component used in the manufacture of high-voltage EV batteries.
Picked up from a Telegram channel reporting on an article in French newspaper Libération. It does suggest that Durov’s arrest was not without shall we say antecedents.
‘When Durov was taken into custody — he, according to a source close to the investigation, showed a willingness to cooperate, handing over his mobile phone and even the access code (as if prepared for such a turn of events).
During interrogations, Pavel Durov pulled out his trump card and said that he had opened an official channel of communication with the French General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) in the fight against terrorism, with a hotline and a special email address. The exchange of information through this channel allegedly prevented several terrorist attacks. The billionaire added that France had begun to “unlawfully” send requests through this channel on topics not related to terrorism, which is why they went unanswered. According to a source close to the investigation, Durov also claims that DGSI agents visited him in Dubai. But he refused to disclose the nature of the visit because it could be a state secret”.
Make of it what you will.
Interesting
I have some sympathy with rejecting requests on matters not pertaining to terrorism on a global platform. I’d imagine requests for information, quickly morph into areas likely to cause embarrassment to officials and govt ministers.
Lots of historical evidence from the UK, of surveillance powers being misused against: investigative journalists, activists, human rights organisations and lawyers who were bugged and spied on e.g. Assange. Dealing with requests is probably much harder than those who think govt officials only make legitimate requests realise. Some govts have very thin skins when it comes to satire and criticism, like Modi’s govt in India. It’s rumoured Telegram may be banned there soon, despite it being the most popular app, with 220million downloads.
…
As I understand things, all social media platforms have the discretion turn down requests that they view as either inappropriate and/or frivolous. Compliance, in countries in which the company isn’t HQ’ed is discretionary.
Well worth studying: https://transparency.meta.com/reports/government-data-requests/
Between Jul-Dec 2023 : of 528,232 government requests for data, Meta complied with 301,553 or 77.60%
And notice how the numbers of requests are rising exponentially. Govts hate citizens having anonymity and privacy, especially overreaching authoritarian ones.
And Zuckerberg has been mocked on X, by Musk, for being overly cooperative with the Biden administration.
Durov appears to have been singled out for unusual treatment, as arresting any of Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk would result in France being embroiled in a major diplomatic spat.
As far as we can tell, if Pavel Durov has been ‘singled out’, it’s only on suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. As has been mentioned earlier, it’s nothing to do with EU regulations, or the ability of media platforms to limit ‘surveillance powers’. In plain English, Mr Durov is being investigated for allegedly willfully allowing child porn, drug dealing, arms trafficking, crypto scam schemes to be conducted on Telegram. A little different.
Whether these allegations are justified or not, i don’t know. And neither do you. Time will tell. French bashing left aside, judiciary powers are fairly independent in that country, to the extent that most magistrates are actually deemed to be bent against the government.
Speaking of diplomatic spat, as far as we can remember, the last major one France was embroiled in was 20 years ago, when it refused to send troops to fight an illegal war in Iraq. Had every country done the same, things would have been different.
And of course, people may like or dislike Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, but so far none of them has been accused of criminal behavior. It’s good to see you take their defense, even though they’re nonetheless ‘evil Americans’, ie the bad guys as Mr Murray would say. I understand Mr Durov at one point was planning to settle in the US, but failed in doing so.
Takes all kinds.
Wilshire, correct me if I am wrong but I thought FB definitely – but I think X as well – have faced grave allegations concerning illegal images and the distribution of drugs?
In my current role I meet a lot of troubled young people often with dependency problems. It has taken me some time to adjust to the fact that a considerable proportion of these youngsters use FB to score drugs, quite openly.
I asked one young man to explain how it worked. He opened a FB page on his phone that contained an extensive list of drugs accompanied by price lists, quantity available and even some photographs. He would make contact, arrange a purchase and go and meet the courier – though some couriers were bold enough to bring the drugs to him wherever he was, within a limit of several miles square. It rarely took longer than ten minutes, he added.
How come you didn’t report this to authorities?
Wilshire
I’ve never seen a piece by Craig, or seen anyone here in the comments, label all Americans as evil. That’s a preposterous assertion. The US’s hypocritical foreign policies, and their meddling in other countries political systems, including our own through various initiatives – which btw, make the unsubstantiated alleged Russian interference look amateurish by way of contrast – maybe you’ll see that stuff described as ‘evil’ here.
I don’t know if you’ve read Carole Cadwalladr’s take on Durov’s arrest in the guardian. But I think we are at the crossroads she describes, albeit, I take the opposite position on privacy and freedom of speech, as authoritarian elements, like Cadwalladr, campaign to end both. The degree of responsibility you assign to CEOs really depends on where you stand on the ‘platform vs publishers’ debate, and I believe they are platforms with limited obligations. Cadwalladr falsely argues we’re being deluged with ‘targeted’ Russian disinformation; therefore, we need govt to step in to protect us and act as the arbiter of all truth. But her piece provides not a single example, across any social media platform, of this disinformation we’re supposedly all neck deep in. Is that not the definition of peddling disinformation, about disinformation?
Academia have been given extensive research grants to investigate online misinformation and disinformation in recent years. And in my opinion, authorities have incentivized exaggerating the threat to keep the gravy train rolling. We could end up with new legislation based on bogus research.
I don’t think freedom of speech is the matter with Durov’s investigation. Especially since most of us would be hard-pressed to quote him on any given subject. He currently belongs to the happy few rich in billions but poor in personal statements.
I take it for granted that you can speak for Craig, and for the community on this blog, and I’m glad to hear that not all Americans are evil. Just kidding.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem that easy to express any contrasting opinion here without facing a league of well-thinkers.
As I said, time will tell. Don’t make Paul du Rove a hero before you know who he really is.
Instead of spending our time discussing this suspicious character, we should rather focus on the vaccine campaign in Gaza, and its predicaments.
Wilshire you are deflecting.
What I did or didn’t do is obviously beyond your ken. I never mentioned this
FB and X are no different to Telegram and I would imagine the rest of these platforms
Please Mark or Elon or Pavel can you help distribute hard drugs in my neighbourhood? It would really help improve the quality of life of everyone who lives here, not just those who consume this stuff
So the destruction of British communities is fine but don’t you say anything about Israel or Zionism never mind the genocide of a entire people
Moon, you win. It sounds like a waste of time exchanging with you, especially since you can’t resist the temptation of accusing people who question your opinions of being complicit with genocide enablers. Freud would have been interested.
So you’re the advocate of free speech, but only for people who agree with you. Excellent. Where there’s a will…
So you have no answer to why I should see Telegram any different to FB or X?
Unlike most here I take hard line on “billionaires” and social media.
As for free speech, you are free to present your arguments here or you can take you ball home as you have. If you are unable to address basic questions without sneering “why didn’t you report it” this is probably the most favourable outcome, amongst an admittedly, crappy cluster of possibilities
Whinging after insulting someone who asks a fair question is often the sign of “a bad faith actor”. Surely it would be easier for you just to say why Musk or Zuck are not as “bad” as Durov, no?
Whinging? You’re losing control.
YOU , YOU are insulting people if they don’t bend over to please your whims. The question you asked, I already answered according to my personal opinion.
In the future, please try and be more respectful of peaceful comments.
Free speech cannot be limited to abstract entities or global networks. It has to start here and now. Accept to read on this blog comments that you disagree with. That’s the first step in supporting free speech.
Defend your utterances – if you believe them lol!
Why do think Telegram is any different to the other two? It’s a simple question yet it seems to have triggered you? Or was it the anecdote about youngsters using Facebook to score drugs?
If you are an adult you are supposed to have foundations for your opinions. You should be able to express your opinion regarding my question with ease. What’s the problem? Instead of you responding to or ignoring me, you gave a crass answer worthy of any twelve year old
If you wish to be treated like an adult by other adults? – act like one
The problem for an honest broker is that he is honest. And like lady justice ‘blind’.
Which is an anathema to the Rules-Based Kings of the World.
We are just witnessing another phase of the ongoing World War we are on the losing and wrong side of.
The ziofascists who own the World, or the Collective West at least, as the pinnacle upon which they sit over humanity, have collected, patented, and deployed secretly, innovation and technology for about two centuries now – including the various mediums of communications, i.e. establishing cultural hegemony.
Silicon Valley wasn’t just some hotbed of super genius children that arrived like Midwich Cuckoos from outer space! They were the long-term ziofascist shapeshifters’ plans for domination of all humankind – culminating in the agenda 2030 target.
Dressed and sold to the world as the individual superheroes (boys mostly), genius Big Bang Yankee Doodle kids – a saccharin poison chalice for the whole world to fall in love with. Mostly Gammon-skinned ‘Friends’ and authorised zio-worshipping sensibilities like humour, via the controlling mediums of film. TV, radio, music, and social media!
Well, Pavel and others who invented their own platforms (which sit upon the DARPA Internet) are considered as poachers. They are allowed, if they toe the line – which means allowing certain Law Breakers to get away with literal murder, child abuse, paedophilia and human trafficking and blackmail, whilst also complying with stopping other such individuals and genuine freedom fighters and justice seekers.
Manny Macaroon is nothing but a ziofascist Banker tool and he has been tasked to deliver what Biden/Obama/Clinton/ and Republicans can’t – a lame duck.
He is as fascist as the now-unelected Shelenski and arch-Nazio shapeshifters Nutyy and his gang of ravenous ghouls.
And it seems that Trump must be sitting it out too, otherwise the US would have got their hands on Pavel already.
Don’t blame death
He’s just the messenger
Telling you it’s time to
Speak your lines
Behind him are the authors
Working at the behest of
The Publisher
Judge them
By their verses
A group of Swiss experts have called for Switzerland to be more aligned with Nato and the E.U. Apparently Switzerland has been neutral in one form or another since 1515 – but is Switzerland really a neutral country?
https://www.eda.admin.ch/countries/ukraine/en/home/news/news.html/content/europa/en/meta/news/2024/1/15/99696.
https://www.worldradio.ch/news/bitesize-news/90m-in-aid-to-the-middle-east/
They operated a curious form of neutrality in WW2, sucking in all manner of exotic “investments”
New post from Craig!
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/09/the-end-of-western-pluralist-democracy/
Helmer has a piece on Durov’s arrest. I’ve no real idea on the veracity of what he says but if especially the financial stuff is close to true it may shed some light on the fraud aspect.
https://johnhelmer.net/pavel-durov-paul-du-rove-freedom-of-speech-to-play-fool-stock-speculator-fraudster/#more-90299