Telegram Founder Arrested in France For Not Pushing Censorship

[jmdrake]

https://x.com/jatony57/status/1828142733980246491

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the George Orwell 2024 meme.

 

[Valli6]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry and the George Orwell 2024 meme.

Yeah, it's pretty funny... except for the sad reality part.

 

[unknown]

 

[TheTexan]

There's only one way to actually beat this and that is to use communications platforms that are as decentralized as Bitcoin.

Examples:

https://hive.io/

https://joinmastodon.org/

https://solidproject.org/

But breaking the mentality of wanting to be where everybody else is already at is hard to do.

All of those can be taken down, or effectively neutered, by a motivated government.

 

[ClaytonB]

All of those can be taken down, or effectively neutered, by a motivated government.

Maybe, maybe not. The US Government with its infinity-illion dollars, aircraft carriers and nukes... tried with all its might to take down Bitcoin (globally) and it couldn't. Not saying that Bitcoin is fail-proof, but it's the closest thing out there to fail-proof. You can use the rubber-hose attack to decrypt something when you know who to hit with the rubber-hose. When you don't know who to hit, as with Bitcoin, all the rubber-hose in the world will do you no good. So, better start building that cluster...

 

[TheTexan]

Maybe, maybe not. The US Government with its infinity-illion dollars, aircraft carriers and nukes... tried with all its might to take down Bitcoin (globally) and it couldn't. Not saying that Bitcoin is fail-proof, but it's the closest thing out there to fail-proof. You can use the rubber-hose attack to decrypt something when you know who to hit with the rubber-hose. When you don't know who to hit, as with Bitcoin, all the rubber-hose in the world will do you no good. So, better start building that cluster...

"tried with all its might" seems like a bit of a stretch. They didn't even make it illegal

 

[jmdrake]

All of those can be taken down, or effectively neutered, by a motivated government.

Not really because they aren't platforms, they're protocols. It's like the difference between GMail and email. A government could easily ban Gmail because it's one company that controls it. (Google). But no one company controls email. I remember what the internet was like when everyone was using USENET before people decided to go to centralized servers. Centralization is the main problem. Using your example, the guy with the wrench is able to take down one user. Maybe he gets that one user's contact list. But he doesn't get to shut down email in general by going after users 1 or even 10 at a time.

 

[TheTexan]

Not really because they aren't platforms, they're protocols. It's like the difference between GMail and email. A government could easily ban Gmail because it's one company that controls it. (Google). But no one company controls email. I remember what the internet was like when everyone was using USENET before people decided to go to centralized servers. Centralization is the main problem. Using your example, the guy with the wrench is able to take down one user. Maybe he gets that one user's contact list. But he doesn't get to shut down email in general by going after users 1 or even 10 at a time.

I think you're overestimating how difficult it would be to shut down protocols. Even just making it illegal would eliminate 90-99.9% of the national userbase depending on the harshness of the penalties. The remaining users can be identified through traffic patterns and communications between known hosts/nodes/users. Or even easier, "regulate" end-to-end encryption in such a way that all backbone traffic is unencrypted.

No matter how "decentralized" a protocol is, the internet itself is extremely centralized with everything being routed through known commercial entities that the government effectively controls. International traffic is even easier to control with everything going through a handful of routes.

None of this stuff is even theoretical. It's stuff they have been doing for decades, and they've gotten pretty damn good at it.

At the end of the day, firearms are the only tool that can be relied on to protect free speech. Until we are prepared to use that tool, our freedoms will constantly be further eroded. "Blockchain" will not save us from that fate.

 

[Anti Globalist]

Seems more like he was abducted than arrested.

 

[ClaytonB]

"tried with all its might" seems like a bit of a stretch. They didn't even make it illegal

The key is "globally". The US government has really made it a major PITA to use Bitcoin. I have a small amount from back in the day (less than the value of a laptop, truly small), and I don't even touch it because I'm afraid those 87,000 IRS agents are snooping on my ISP and I'm going to get a random tax-bill for whatever they deem my "undeclared overseas account" (or whatever) is taxable for. Which could be literally any number, because they're the IRS and that's how taxes work in Amerika. Up to me to hire the tax lawyer to prove them wrong. Which will cost a lot more than a laptop's worth of value. So yeah, they've succeeded in that regard. But they did not succeed in shutting down the core of Bitcoin. They didn't go at it as hard as drugs but, then again, I don't think popular opinion would have supported that kind of an assault because most people just regard it like Minecraft tokens or Pokemons, but for super-nerds. Mobilizing entire-DEA-department-scale resources against that would not have sold, politically. But they really tried, including by trying to swamp the mempool (equivalent of DDoS against the entire Bitcoin network, I watched it in real-time) for months, trying to drive up transaction fees to the stratosphere while trying to switch everybody over to Bitcoin-Cash-Trash, and many more attacks. We're talking sustained attacks involving billions of dollars in-flight. The final bill on those attacks would not have been in the billions, but the amount of liquid cash was in the billions or tens of billions, by my reckoning. They absolutely hammered the network. But it kept chugging along. So, again, not absolutely failproof (nothing is), but more failproof than any other alternative out there, by a country mile.

 

[ClaytonB]

I think you're overestimating how difficult it would be to shut down protocols. Even just making it illegal would eliminate 90-99.9% of the national userbase depending on the harshness of the penalties. The remaining users can be identified through traffic patterns and communications between known hosts/nodes/users. Or even easier, "regulate" end-to-end encryption in such a way that all backbone traffic is unencrypted.

No matter how "decentralized" a protocol is, the internet itself is extremely centralized with everything being routed through known commercial entities that the government effectively controls. International traffic is even easier to control with everything going through a handful of routes.

None of this stuff is even theoretical. It's stuff they have been doing for decades, and they've gotten pretty damn good at it.

Naw, this is all the wrong way to think about it.

The Internet is a giant sewer pipe. Not only is it a sewer-pipe, but it has scanners built in to ensure that nothing but crap flows through it. The point is how do you build a network that can send something other than crap through this giant sewer pipe? Even when the people running the sewer-pipe will resort to rubber-hose methods or Assange you, or Epstein you, etc. if you try to go around their strictly-crap-only policies? The answer is that you build a protocol that will work as long as any crap is flowing through the pipe at all, so that literally the only way to "put a stop" to the unwanted non-crap is to block the entire pipe. That this is possible is part of the reason that Obama built the Internet Kill-Switch! The DoD/etc. know this is possible! If it wasn't possible, they wouldn't need an IKS. But the IKS doesn't really work against Bitcoin because nobody will seriously believe you need to kill the entire Internet just to stop some weirdo Pokemon traders (or whatever) from sending their digital bits back and forth. That's why the FBI/etc. have pivoted to trying to stage big "Bitcoin seizures" like they do their big staged drug/cash busts in order to make cash seem really evil. Only crooks would want to handle physical cash. What are you, a bank-robber or something?! So, they're trying to build a track-record against Bitcoin so they can paint it in that light, and of course, the propaganda media is already gleefully playing along with this, and "cryptocurrency" is almost always shown with a criminal-hacker-looking black-profile-hoodie to indicate that only "Dark Web" crooks would use something like that! None of this would be necessary if Bitcoin could be selectively censored as you mistakenly believe it can be. It cannot be selectively censored that way. Bitcoin is designed so that the sewer-pipe operators either let all crap flow (along with Bitcoin), or none of it flows. Literally all you need to mask a Bitcoin transaction is a non-snitch VPN with an endpoint in a digital-freedom-respecting country. Yes, there are still some out there, no I won't list them here (not going to tip off the glowies that are swarming the forum lately).

At the end of the day, firearms are the only tool that can be relied on to protect free speech. Until we are prepared to use that tool, our freedoms will constantly be further eroded. "Blockchain" will not save us from that fate.

This is just a false-dichotomy. Nobody is going to use a USB stick where you need a Glock. And, vice-versa, using a Glock when you need to trade for necessities might "work" in Mad Max world, but that's certainly not the world I'm working for and I hope you're not, either. You can absolutely have both a Glock and a USB stick with some Bitcoin on it. Absolutely nothing preventing those two from going together. Gold, guns and Bitcoin. These are not competitive entities, they are additive...

 

[ClaytonB]

Seems more like he was abducted than arrested.

Is there a difference?

 

[jmdrake]

I think you're overestimating how difficult it would be to shut down protocols. Even just making it illegal would eliminate 90-99.9% of the national userbase depending on the harshness of the penalties. The remaining users can be identified through traffic patterns and communications between known hosts/nodes/users. Or even easier, "regulate" end-to-end encryption in such a way that all backbone traffic is unencrypted.

No matter how "decentralized" a protocol is, the internet itself is extremely centralized with everything being routed through known commercial entities that the government effectively controls. International traffic is even easier to control with everything going through a handful of routes.

None of this stuff is even theoretical. It's stuff they have been doing for decades, and they've gotten pretty damn good at it.

At the end of the day, firearms are the only tool that can be relied on to protect free speech. Until we are prepared to use that tool, our freedoms will constantly be further eroded. "Blockchain" will not save us from that fate.

Have they shut down email yet? Nope. Why not? People share things over email all the time that the government doesn't like? Because the amount of legitimate uses that the government is okay with far outweigh what they don't like. China is one of the most technologically advanced and authoritarian countries in the world. Decades ago the Chinese installed their "great firewall" and tried, among other things, to shut down porn. Not only did they fail to shut down porn, but they found that the technological holes the porn addicts punched through their great firewall was letting political dissidents their their messages through too. So the Chinese essentially gave up.

See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/web-porn-seeps-through-chinas-great-firewall/

Moral of the story? Governments aren't all powerful. Part of the reason they have so much power is that people believe they have so much power. It's like Joe Biden talking about the 2nd amendment being irrelevant because the average person doesn't have an F-16. Well the Taliban survived without F-16s thank you very much. Decentralized communications protocols are like AR-15s or AK-47. Or even like 3D printed firearms. Much harder to defeat than one would think.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure the same information that the head of Telegram was arrested for was already shared on decentralized platforms. But there's no billionaire to make an example out of and scare the rest of the population into submission. Has the government shut down the hactivist grup anonymous yet? Rhetorical question.

 

[TheTexan]

The key is "globally".

If the US really wanted to it could bring bitcoin to a crawl, even globally. Just look at the global war on drugs, which was almost entirely driven by US influence.

But yes, bitcoin will always have some value that the US government can't completely shut down, because of its "global" nature.

With communication protocols such as telegram however, the US does not need to shut it down globally. It only needs to shut it down where it wants it shut down. Which is far more practical than trying to shut it down globally.

 

[TheTexan]

Have they shut down email yet? Nope. Why not? People share things over email all the time that the government doesn't like? Because the amount of legitimate uses that the government is okay with far outweigh what they don't like.

Correct, and how many legitimate uses do the blockchain/decentralized communication protocols have that the government is okay with? Zero....

China is one of the most technologically advanced and authoritarian countries in the world. Decades ago the Chinese installed their "great firewall" and tried, among other things, to shut down porn. Not only did they fail to shut down porn, but they found that the technological holes the porn addicts punched through their great firewall was letting political dissidents their their messages through too. So the Chinese essentially gave up.

See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/web-porn-seeps-through-chinas-great-firewall/

Shutting down access to data is less about restricting access to data and more about using it as a tool of selective enforcement against their dissidents.

They don't need 100% or even 90% success for it to be useful in that regard.

Moral of the story? Governments aren't all powerful. Part of the reason they have so much power is that people believe they have so much power. It's like Joe Biden talking about the 2nd amendment being irrelevant because the average person doesn't have an F-16. Well the Taliban survived without F-16s thank you very much. Decentralized communications protocols are like AR-15s or AK-47. Or even like 3D printed firearms. Much harder to defeat than one would think.

Guns are only useful if people are willing to use them. If people aren't willing to use them, then yes, governments absolutely are all powerful. Which is basically where we're headed.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure the same information that the head of Telegram was arrested for was already shared on decentralized platforms. But there's no billionaire to make an example out of and scare the rest of the population into submission. Has the government shut down the hactivist grup anonymous yet? Rhetorical question.

The exact same laws that are being used against Pavel Durov could be used against anyone using these decentralized platforms. Money laundering, drug trafficking, or any numerous laws could all be applied. The government just has to choose to do it. They wouldn't even need to make new laws. With a centralized service such as telegram, end users are exactly that: end users. With decentralized services however they are active participants.

If they take down Telegram, X, and Rumble, do you really think they are gonna start being shy about taking down people who think they can hide behind "protocols"?

 

[TheTexan]

Naw, this is all the wrong way to think about it.

The Internet is a giant sewer pipe. Not only is it a sewer-pipe, but it has scanners built in to ensure that nothing but crap flows through it. The point is how do you build a network that can send something other than crap through this giant sewer pipe? Even when the people running the sewer-pipe will resort to rubber-hose methods or Assange you, or Epstein you, etc. if you try to go around their strictly-crap-only policies? The answer is that you build a protocol that will work as long as any crap is flowing through the pipe at all, so that literally the only way to "put a stop" to the unwanted non-crap is to block the entire pipe. That this is possible is part of the reason that Obama built the Internet Kill-Switch! The DoD/etc. know this is possible! If it wasn't possible, they wouldn't need an IKS. But the IKS doesn't really work against Bitcoin because nobody will seriously believe you need to kill the entire Internet just to stop some weirdo Pokemon traders (or whatever) from sending their digital bits back and forth. That's why the FBI/etc. have pivoted to trying to stage big "Bitcoin seizures" like they do their big staged drug/cash busts in order to make cash seem really evil. Only crooks would want to handle physical cash. What are you, a bank-robber or something?! So, they're trying to build a track-record against Bitcoin so they can paint it in that light, and of course, the propaganda media is already gleefully playing along with this, and "cryptocurrency" is almost always shown with a criminal-hacker-looking black-profile-hoodie to indicate that only "Dark Web" crooks would use something like that! None of this would be necessary if Bitcoin could be selectively censored as you mistakenly believe it can be. It cannot be selectively censored that way. Bitcoin is designed so that the sewer-pipe operators either let all crap flow (along with Bitcoin), or none of it flows. Literally all you need to mask a Bitcoin transaction is a non-snitch VPN with an endpoint in a digital-freedom-respecting country. Yes, there are still some out there, no I won't list them here (not going to tip off the glowies that are swarming the forum lately).



This is just a false-dichotomy. Nobody is going to use a USB stick where you need a Glock. And, vice-versa, using a Glock when you need to trade for necessities might "work" in Mad Max world, but that's certainly not the world I'm working for and I hope you're not, either. You can absolutely have both a Glock and a USB stick with some Bitcoin on it. Absolutely nothing preventing those two from going together. Gold, guns and Bitcoin. These are not competitive entities, they are additive...

There is not any protocol in use currently that is in general use that is a big enough crap pipe in your analogy that it can't be shut down. The only thing that comes close to that description is https and the government could -- with significant but achievable effort -- mandate that all certificates go through a centralized government source.

Protocols such as bitcoin, ethereum, or whatever, it doesn't matter if there is "legitimate" traffic flowing on that protocol. If there is sufficient crap on it that the government doesn't like, they can and they will shut it down within the jurisdictions they control. The "legitimate" traffic won't save it.

Even if they do allow the protocol to stay active, there is simply too much metadata available in both the ISP backbones and the services themselves to maintain reliable anonymity. The FBI probably fuckin loves bitcoin because its so easy for them to trace the connections, and people who use mixers become easy targets because who uses mixers? People with something to hide.

The moment bitcoin or any other protocol becomes strong enough to actually protect its users, in such a way that it threats governments interests, that protocol will not be allowed to exist.

 

[ClaytonB]

There is not any protocol in use currently that is in general use that is a big enough crap pipe in your analogy that it can't be shut down. The only thing that comes close to that description is https and the government could -- with significant but achievable effort -- mandate that all certificates go through a centralized government source.

Protocols such as bitcoin, ethereum, or whatever, it doesn't matter if there is "legitimate" traffic flowing on that protocol. If there is sufficient crap on it that the government doesn't like, they can and they will shut it down within the jurisdictions they control. The "legitimate" traffic won't save it.

Nonsense. The government allows all kinds of stuff to go on that they don't like. The question is what level of disruption. COVID lockdowns? That wasn't greenlighted merely for a chuckle, that was probably supposed to have killed 95+% of the global population or, failing that, to have instituted 100.0% global NWO tyranny, which it did not succeed in doing. So, what the government "can" and "can't" do isn't really a question of logistics, it's a question of game-theory, in which logistics is just one consideration. The government "can" do a lot of things that it really... can't do. Shutting down corporate VPNs with an IKS event is going to require a massive PSYOP cover-story. Not saying it's past them, in fact, there's lots of credible speculation they have exactly this kind of op in the pipeline. As I have grown older, I have been taken by surprise by the "can", but it's a two-way street. The "can't" extends a lot further into their turf than they can ever admit to themselves. Pretending to be literally-God must be so psychologically complicated, lol.

Even if they do allow the protocol to stay active, there is simply too much metadata available in both the ISP backbones and the services themselves to maintain reliable anonymity.

"Anonymity" is not a binary, it's a sliding scale. Lots of people were "anonymous" until they weren't anymore.

The FBI probably $#@!in loves bitcoin because its so easy for them to trace the connections, and people who use mixers become easy targets because who uses mixers? People with something to hide.

Sure, no doubt, they love that part. One of the largely unspoken aspects of Bitcoin is that its single largest customer-base is probably national intelligence agencies, for fairly obvious reasons. That doesn't mean that they don't also simultaneously want to shut it down. I mean, the DEA/CIA really are trying to shut down the drug-traffickers even if they simultaneously do some of the trafficking themselves (documented! That's not a dart!)

The moment bitcoin or any other protocol becomes strong enough to actually protect its users, in such a way that it threats governments interests, that protocol will not be allowed to exist.

The big idea of Bitcoin is to make sure it's Too Late when that day comes. It practically already is. After a USD hyper-inflationary collapse, with what funny-munny will the Federal government fund its grand Bitcoin takedown? LOL.

 

[TheTexan]

Nonsense. The government allows all kinds of stuff to go on that they don't like. The question is what level of disruption. COVID lockdowns? That wasn't greenlighted merely for a chuckle, that was probably supposed to have killed 95+% of the global population or, failing that, to have instituted 100.0% global NWO tyranny, which it did not succeed in doing. So, what the government "can" and "can't" do isn't really a question of logistics, it's a question of game-theory, in which logistics is just one consideration. The government "can" do a lot of things that it really... can't do. Shutting down corporate VPNs with an IKS event is going to require a massive PSYOP cover-story. Not saying it's past them, in fact, there's lots of credible speculation they have exactly this kind of op in the pipeline. As I have grown older, I have been taken by surprise by the "can", but it's a two-way street. The "can't" extends a lot further into their turf than they can ever admit to themselves. Pretending to be literally-God must be so psychologically complicated, lol.

The list of things that government "can" do grows with each passing year. COVID lockdowns is an obvious example.

So yes, banning VPN's is not politically possible today, but I can't say with certainty even two weeks from now that it won't fall into the "can" category.

 

[acptulsa]

 

[acptulsa]

The exact same laws that are being used against Pavel Durov could be used against anyone using these decentralized platforms. Money laundering, drug trafficking, or any numerous laws could all be applied. The government just has to choose to do it.