Billionaire Pavel Durov arrested... The truth about Telegram

pav 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 un receded 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 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 evad for doing terrorism and the list goes on but there's a lot more to the 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 PA durov is Russian born but he's also a citizen of the UAE in France I don't know 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 rri 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 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 Durk of durkastan and the Durk of durkastan anies 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 it 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 harp to summon a freak shark NATO 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 pav durov but will 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