Pavel Durov’s arrest suggests that the law enforcement dragnet is being widened from private financial transactions to private speech.
The arrest of the Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France this week is extremely significant. It confirms that we are deep into the second crypto war, where governments are systematically seeking to prosecute developers of digital encryption tools because encryption frustrates state surveillance and control. While the first crypto war in the 1990s was led by the United States, this one is led jointly by the European Union — now its own regulatory superpower.
Durov, a former Russian, now French citizen, was arrested in Paris on Saturday, and has now been indicted. You can read the French accusations here. They include complicity in drug possession and sale, fraud, child pornography and money laundering. These are extremely serious crimes — but note that the charge is complicity, not participation. The meaning of that word “complicity” seems to be revealed by the last three charges: Telegram has been providing users a “cryptology tool” unauthorised by French regulators.
Matrix does have this the same. Most of publicly accessible channels are non encrypted. It’s all because of e2e performance issues for big channels. It comes with a cost which is not required for most people
Matrix spec is E2EE by default. Just because popular rooms turn it off does not mean Matrix is not encrypted. Frankly if a room is public, why does it need E2EE? A fed could join a 1k+ room all the same, encryption or not and just download the messages.
The same argument is valid for telegram
No, it isnt. Telegram is not E2EE even though they claim they are a private messenger.