Pavel Durov is one of the most interesting men in the world. He has a net worth of $15 billion, yet owns no assets. He's fathered over 100 kids, yet never had relations with the mothers.
He created VK in Russia and trolled government officials, and even his hairline unreceded out of respect. But his greatest achievement is the creation of Telegram, a social platform with over 1 billion users that doesn't run ads, has only 30 employees, and is engineered to be extremely annoying to anyone who glows in the dark. He once said, to be truly free, you should be ready to risk everything for freedom.
Well, yesterday, that risk was realized when he was arrested in France and is now facing up to 20 years in prison, with potential charges for money laundering, fraud, sanctions evadement, for doing terrorisms, and the list goes on. But there's a lot more to this story, so today we'll find out how Telegram actually works, compare it to other encrypted messaging apps like Signal, to find out if Telegram is good or evil. It is August 25th, 2024, and you're watching The Code Report. Pavel Durov is Russian-born, but he's also a citizen of the UAE in France. I don't know what his play was with becoming a French citizen, but it gave France the justification to arrest, imprison, and potentially guillotine him.
But what did he actually do that was so bad? Well, according to the French, they're mad because of a, quote, lack of moderation and cooperation with law enforcement. In addition, Telegram's use of disposable phone numbers facilitates cryptocurrency transfers that cannot be monitored by authorities. And Telegram even has its own token that's been tanking after the arrest. It sounds a lot like the Silk Road, which got its founder Ross Ulbricht two life sentences without parole.
But I've been a Telegram user for many years, and have never personally seen any illegal activity take place there. It's just the only social platform you can get unfiltered, uncensored information, like the truth about wars and the shape of the planet, without the mainstream narrative and infantile warning labels. But Telegram is not totally uncensored. If you download it from the Apple or Google app stores, they're required to censor a large amount of content.
That's why you should only ever download it from Telegram.org, and many of their applications are open-sourced as well. But how do the authorities even know about all this illegal stuff if everything on Telegram is encrypted? Well, actually, most things that happen on Telegram are not encrypted.
Well, encrypted, just not end-to-end encrypted. The most secure way to pass messages privately is to use end-to-end encryption, where the encryption and decryption happens on the user's device, as opposed to a centralized server not owned by the user. Even if the messages are stored in a centralized database, only the person with the key can read those messages, not the company hosting the database and not the authorities.
The only way to read someone's messages is to physically hold them at gunpoint and make them open up their phone. This is how apps like Signal work. which has its own open source protocol, and itself was recently banned in Russia.
Now, Telegram does do end-to-end encryption for private chats, but everything else is public and encrypted on the server. And Telegram's protocol has received a fair amount of criticism from security researchers in the past. The reason the feds hate Telegram, though, is because its infrastructure is intentionally distributed across multiple countries. That means if an agent wants your data, They'll need to coordinate with multiple different legal systems, and even if they bust down the door and take the hard drive in Iowa, the data will be encrypted with the key stored in some other random country like Durkodurkistan.
And the Durkodurkistanis might not be too keen to help us out because we've been bombing their country for the last 30 years. The authorities hate encryption so much that in the EU, they're trying to make end-to-end encryption illegal. Ilva Johansson, aka Big Sister, is one of the figures behind this push, but so far it's been unsuccessful.
Encryption is their kryptonite. Things like hate speech have already been criminalized in many parts of Europe and the UK, but if a big platform like Telegram doesn't cooperate, it becomes nearly impossible to enforce those laws. Well, one idea is to cut the head off the snake by arresting the CEO when he lands in his private jet, and make him an offer he can't refuse.
Either spend the next 20 years locked in a cage, or let us in the back door, then get back on your private jet and continue living your life as a prolific sperm donator. I don't know how things work in France, but the reality is that once the United States government goes after you, the chance of winning in court is less than 1%. That's why almost everyone in federal court pleads guilty.
Even if you do win a case against the feds, like billionaire Mike Lynch did a few weeks ago, they'll just turn on HAARP to summon a freak Sharknado to take you out while you celebrate on your yacht. Either that, or it was just a crazy coincidence. At this point, nobody knows what's going to happen to Pavel Durov, but we'll soon find out if he's ready to risk everything to become truly free. This has been The Code Report.
Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.