Facing up to 20 years in prison, Durov is accused of complicity in enabling illegal transactions in an organized group and refusing to communicate at the request of "competent authorities" to share information and documents about the identities of the accounts that are part of the organized group.
In short, Durov is taking the same approach as Andrew Torba of Gab in refusing to hand over private user data at the government's request, instead choosing to respect privacy rights.
To really trump up the charges, those in hot pursuit of Durov also claim he is complicit in the possession of pornographic images of minors, and in the distribution, offering and availability of them in an organized group.
Furthermore, Durov is accused of:
- Complicity in acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering, or selling narcotic substances
- Complicity in offering, selling, or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs, or data designed for or adapted to obtain access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system
- Complicity in organized fraud
- Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by five or more years in prison
- Laundering the proceeds derived from organized group's offenses and crimes
- Providing cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without certified declaration
- Providing a cryptology tool that does not solely ensure authentication of integrity monitoring without prior declaration
- Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration
(Related: Russia's ambassador to Washington believes that Americans will be under total censorship before Election Day.)
Will the owners of all other tech platforms, i.e., Facebook, face similar charges?
Basically, the aggressors who want to make Durov rot in prison for as long as possible are accusing him of complicity in all sorts of crimes that users of Telegram are allegedly committing on the platform, even though Durov is simply responsible for providing the platform to do it.
When such a thing was tried against Facebook and the other big guys, the defense argument was that Mark Zuckerberg is not responsible for what Facebook users do on his platform because of Section 230. Why, then, is Durov and Telegram not being afforded the same treatment?
"Why aren't Google executives arrested for misuse of Gmail?" further asked the Health Ranger on X. "Why aren't AT&T executives arrested when people use their bandwidth to distribute kiddy pics? This is all selective prosecution and a full-blown assault on a free speech platform."
Others echoed this, further noting that the charges Durov faces are for crimes allegedly committed on Telegram "in any country in the world."
"If Mr. Durov is responsible for the crimes done by other people because they happen in the virtual spaces he oversees, then it goes without saying that all political leaders need to be charged for the crimes occurring in their own countries, correct?" one asked insightfully.
France, by the way, is one of Europe's censorship ringleaders. It is leading Europe off a cliff when it comes to freedom of speech, which is all but completely dead across much of the continent.
"Today, it's the owner of Telegram. Tomorrow, it could be Elon Musk or even you and me," warned another X user.
The latest news about the deep state and its war on free speech can be found at Censorship.news.
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