In Car Driver / Passenger Monitoring
July 16, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
A month ago, a Waymo car drove a criminal from a burglary site. That was in June 2026. According to “A Thief Used a Waymo As a Getaway Car. Six Months Later, Police Still Have No Suspect.” Why? That’s a good question. The article says:
Waymo’s latest Jaguar vehicles are equipped with 29 cameras that provide a 360-degree view, and rides are tied to user accounts.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Okay, the issue may be fixed. The San Jose Mercury News reported “Waymo Car Delivers Misbehaving Teen Passengers to San Mateo Police.” Forget the blurring of faces and the other tweaks the Google makes to its monitoring systems.
According to the July 7, 2026, write up:
The 15-year-olds allegedly were drinking alcohol and shooting water beads from a toy gun as they rode in the driverless car Monday [July 6, 2026]…. Waymo stopped the car in a parking lot and notified the police, who detained the teens.
How does a Waymo car know there’s a problem with drunken teens? Easy. The write up says:
Waymo cars have interior cameras, and the images can be monitored by the company’s employees. In “more urgent circumstances,” the support team “may access live video during a trip,
The EU , according to “Every New EU Car Now Has a Camera Watching the Driver’s Face,” like the idea of driver surveillance. The jargon for the system is advanced drive distraction warning, and it:
tracks a driver’s gaze, head position, and eye movement to detect when attention has drifted from the road, triggering an alert after 3.5 seconds of distraction at highway speeds or 6 seconds at lower speeds.
Several observations seem to be warranted:
- Where is smart software in this monitoring game? I assume it is operating, but AI does not feature in either the Google “human monitor” approach or the semi-useful driver distracting buzzer or bell.
- Will automakers charge a fee for vehicle surveillance? This seems more interesting to me than a subscription to a heated seat.
- What’s the end point of vehicle monitoring? I can envision some increased costs for manufacturers and government agencies?
In order to be safe, monitoring is a thing. But I find the inability of the Google to provide useful Waymo data about a rider who allegedly committed a crime amusing. How long will it take for the owner or passenger in a face cam equipped vehicle to discover the impact of a daub of Vaseline petroleum jelly over the lenses? Of course, maybe the car won’t run. Presumably that’s not a problem.
Net net: Captured videos are definitely going to be posted on TikTok-type services.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2026
Cyber Fraud Takedowns: A French Connection?
July 15, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
The Interpol news release came from Lyon, France. My first question was, “Did the arrest of Pavel Durov by the French judiciary in August 2024 contribute to this remarkable announcement?” It is not every day that “a global anti-fraud operation involving 97 countries and territories has led to the arrest of 5,811 individuals and the interception of USD 293 million in illicit assets.”
“Over 5,800 Arrests, USD 293 Million Intercepted in Global Fraud Bust” adds:
After an initial period of intelligence collection and exchange, participating countries took part in more than three months of operational activities. This included pro-active action against high-value targets, raiding identified premises, blocking or freezing bank accounts and virtual wallets, requesting INTERPOL Notices and Diffusions and proactively utilizing INTERPOL’s Global Rapid Intervention of Payments (I-GRIP), a stop-payment mechanism that facilitates the swift blocking of illicit financial flows of both fiat and virtual assets.
Okay, MidJourney. Good enough.
A second remarkable fact in the news release was:
Operation First Light 2026 (15 Jan 2026 – 30 April 2026), coordinated by INTERPOL, focused on combatting social engineering scams and associated money laundering activities.
That works out to about 16 weeks. Contrast that with the takedown of Cyberbunker which took more than four years, including the judicial phase.
Let’s think about what may have contributed to this dramatic acceleration of what has been a tedious, time consuming process.
One reason for the acceleration may have been better intelware. At this time, more than 100 companies provide specialized software capable of ingesting large quantities of information, analyzing the data, and generating useful outputs. I personally believe that these intelware advancements have contributed to more efficient law enforcement processes. Therefore, kudos to these innovative and usually low profile firms,.
Another reason may be the better communication flows among agencies and law enforcement units. Based on my experience, the increase in the number of information sharing mechanisms — for instance, fusion centers or similar cross agency structures — have become more effective. The idea is not a new one, of course, but setting up, staffing, and working out procedural mechanisms take time. I would suggest that these structures and the involvement of Interpol have been important components in the turbo-charging of a number of investigations.
A third reason is that training programs for cyber investigators have been improving. The topic coverage and the depth of the instruction has been increasing over time. Based on my personal observations, I would suggest law enforcement is approaching peak instructional capability. There is room for improvement, but cyber training programs are, in general, excellent. One example that comes to mind is the US Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. A high five for this entity is warranted.
There are other contributing factors. These range from certain crypto currency exchanges providing information in a more timely way to the quality of the cyber investigators themselves.
However, I want to raise the possibility of one other contributing factor. I have no first-hand data to support my view. Nevertheless, I want to explore my idea as a hypothetical.
One reason for this remarkable operation as well as a number of others announced since August 2024 is the work of the French judiciary with involvement of other French government professionals. Pavel Durov, owner and founder of Telegram, awaits trial in France. The French judicial system is able to exert its influence over those accused of a crime. The legal and bureaucratic procedures are important. An accused person who is a citizen of France can be kept in a legal plastic baggie for months or, as is the case of Mr. Durov, years. My perception of the impact of the French judiciary’s approach is to allow the defendant to experience a version of sous vide cooking. The water temperature is hot but not too hot. The cooking lasts for some time but not forever. And, only the chef makes the determination when the fish has been cooked. During this complex sequence of bureaucratic moves — think in terms of the procedures a chef learns at Le Cordon Bleu — the defendant may make an effort to cooperate.
In Mr. Durov’s case, he is providing some information to the French judiciary about certain activities taking place on the Telegram platform. Simultaneously he has been releasing technological innovations to make future cooperation with French authorities technically impossible. My view is that he is providing information about relatively low level and mid level online criminal behaviors anchored in the remarkable Telegram platform.
Stated simply, my view is that he offers information to appear to be more cooperative with the French authorities. He checks in with the French judiciary. He obtains permission to travel outside of France. He is doing what his expensive lawyers are advising him. The reality is that Mr. Durov can be kept in limbo in the plastic baggie for an undetermined amount of time. The psychological toll is probably significant even on the magnificent physical and mental specimen of the GOAT of Russian innovation, Pavel Durov.
Net net: I think the French judiciary may be an important factor in reigning in certain types of online criminal activity. I want to be clear. I don’t have any first hand data that proves that the French judiciary contributed to this remarkable operation. But Lyon is in France. The French judiciary is in France. Pavel Durov is in France. Maybe there’s a connection. My caution is that Telegram is working on systems and methods that are likely to enable new variants of online crime. Mr. Durov may be yielding some information. He is not giving up his core principles yet.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2026
BAIT Does Not Attract the UK Fish
May 25, 2026
Is American big tech becoming a bit of a problem in the UK? Probably not, some of the BAIT folks would say. BAIT is my jargon for big AI tech. Perhaps “attitude” may be more of an issue? The do-what-we-tell-you approach may be unpalatable in some countries. After working in the UK on a number of projects over the years, in my experience saying “excuse me” when someone steps on your shoes indicates a different mental approach that stepping on a person’s toe and snarling excuse me at the individual whose 10 pound shoe shine has been besmirched.
Thanks, Midjourney. I did not know knees could speak. Good enough, of course.
I noted a BBC report a couple of weeks ago. The story “Millions’ Of Pounds Saved By Replacing Palantir Tech In Refugee System” suggests that the Palantir Technologies Tolkien infused intelware was not working for The Homes for Ukraine. That group replaced Palantir’s seeing stone with software designed by its own team. What began as a free service morphed into a US government procurement scale invoice.
Instead of paying the bill, the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) said its new in-house system was equipped to handle high standards of security and was more flexible. The BBC pointed out that is was proud to have supported the project and helped to resettle 157,000 refugees displaced from the Russia “special operation.” The decision to step away from Palantir was celebrated:
“That message may be particularly welcome to those who have criticized Palantir and its contracts across UK public services – including with the NHS, the Ministry of Defense (MoD), the Financial Conduct Authority and 11 police forces. Some argue the firm’s success is because its tech is badly needed and works well. But others contend Palantir’s involvement with US immigration enforcement and Israel’s military, as well as the beliefs of its two most prominent founders, make it an unsuitable partner. There are also concerns the UK is relying too much on large US tech suppliers.”
On May 22, 20266, the Guardian online service published “Palantir Hits Back at Sadiq Khan after £50m Contract with Met Police Blocked.” The article reported:
Palantir has accused Sadiq Khan of “putting politics above public safety” after the London mayor blocked its £50m contract with the Metropolitan police in a move that has also led to tensions inside Labor over its involvement with the US tech company. Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK and Europe, accused Khan of politicizing procurement after he rejected a two-year deal for Scotland Yard to use AI to process intelligence in criminal investigations, as first revealed by the Guardian. Mosley said: “What Londoners value is not being mugged, not being raped by a serving police officer.”
According the the article, Palantir has been raising the hackles of some in the UK. Here’s how the Guardian presents Palantir’s sales suavity:
Last year, when the company’s chief executive, Alex Karp, was challenged that “Palantir kills Palestinians” in Gaza, he said: “Mostly terrorists, that’s true.” Khan’s stance puts him at odds with the UK government which has a £330m NHS England deal with Palantir and a £240m deal with the Ministry of Defense.
Instead of beating the anti-BAIT tambourine, the article presents this:
Ministers say they are aware of the need for less reliance on foreign AI companies as the technology becomes increasingly applied in the delivery of public services. Kyle said: “We need to have more British AI companies that can do those kinds of things, which is why I’ve taken equity stakes in British AI firms and British tech firms, so that we can scale them up much, much faster.”
I think this is part of the “pardon me” offered by the person who is looking at a ruined shoe shine. The polite phrase does not mean, “Hey, you baseball-cap wearing American, I am at fault.” Nope, the excuse me means that the rude oaf is a social menace. But it sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2926
Telegram Gets a Note with Bad News from Roskomnadzor
February 10, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
The Kyiv Independent published "Russia Restricts Telegram in Latest Push to Tighten Internet Control." According to the cited article,
"Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, began restricting the operation of Telegram on Feb. 10, targeting one of the country’s most widely used messaging platforms, the regulator said. The move fits into the Kremlin’s broader push to replace Western digital services with domestic alternatives as it advances plans for a so-called "sovereign internet," tightening state control over online communications."
Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor has moved to restrict Telegram’s operations, with measures described as partial limitations rather than a full block. Russia has promoted state-aligned domestic messaging alternatives intended to reduce reliance on foreign platforms.
Telegram has over a billion users worldwide. Telegram’s largest concentrations of users are reported in Russia, Eastern Europe, South Asia, and parts of the Middle East. Telegram has been taking steps to increase the number of users in the United States.
The Kyiv Independent states:
"A full-scale crackdown on Telegram could present challenges for the Kremlin, as Russian state-aligned media outlets rely heavily on the platform, where many have amassed millions of subscribers."
Russia offers Max, a Telegram-like service with benefits to the government; namely, no dancing with Pavel Durov when information about a topic or a person of interest is deemed necessary.
It is too early to determine how Telegram, its users, its Russia-based service providers, its contractors, and the companies who use Telegram for sales and customer service will react.
Telegram has been adjusting to the uncertain outcome of the French judiciary’s criminal charges levied against Pavel Durov. A trial is expected in France sometime in 2026, but the wheels of the French court system can turn more slowly. Adding to the stress upon Telegram has been the slow, steady decline of the "value" of the TONcoin. Other U.S.-centric initiatives have faced financial headwinds, stalling Mr. Durov’s "we are coming to America" assertion in 2025.
The Russian action adds uncertainty to the Telegram ecosystem. Founded in 2013, Telegram sailed in relatively calm waters until the French judiciary’s arrest of Mr. Durov. But Telegram has been able to operate despite regulatory pressure in multiple jurisdictions, but the recent legal actions in Europe represent a different category of risk. Russia’s action, which may not deter die-hard Telegram users, suggests that 2026 may be another year clouded by uncertainty.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2026
Want to Catch the Attention of Bad Actors? Say, Easier Cross Chain Transactions
September 24, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I know from experience that most people don’t know about moving crypto in a way that makes deanonymization difficult. Commercial firms offer deanonymization services. Most of the well-known outfits’ technology delivers. Even some home-grown approaches are useful.
For a number of years, Telegram has been the go-to service for some Fancy Dancing related to obfuscating crypto transactions. However, Telegram has been slow on the trigger when it comes to smart software and to some of the new ideas percolating in the bubbling world of digital currency.
A good example of what’s ahead for traders, investors, and bad actors is described in “Simplifying Cross-Chain Transactions Using Intents.” Like most crypto thought, confusing lingo is a requirement. In this article, the word “intent” refers to having crypto currency in one form like USDC and getting 100 SOL or some other crypto. The idea is that one can have fiat currency in British pounds, walk up to a money exchange in Berlin, and convert the pounds to euros. One pays a service charge. Now in crypto land, the crypto has to move across a blockchain. Then to get the digital exchange to do the conversion, one pays a gas fee; that is, a transaction charge. Moving USDC across multiple chains is a hassle and the fees pile up.
The article “Simplifying Cross Chain Transaction Using Intents” explains a brave new world. No more clunky Telegram smart contracts and bots. Now the transaction just happens. How difficult will the deanonymization process become? Speed makes life difficult. Moving across chains makes life difficult. It appears that “intents” will be a capability of considerable interest to entities interested in making crypto transactions difficult to deanonymize.
The write up says:
In technical terms,
intentsare signed messages that express a user’s desired outcome without specifying execution details. Instead of crafting complex transaction sequences yourself, you broadcast your intent to a network ofsolvers(sophisticated actors) who then compete to fulfill your request.
The write up explains the benefit for the average crypto trader:
when you broadcast an intent, multiple solvers analyze it and submit competing quotes. They might route through different DEXs, use off-chain liquidity, or even batch your intent with others for better pricing. The best solution wins.
Now, think of solvers as your personal trading assistants who understand every connected protocol, every liquidity source, and every optimization trick in DeFi. They make money by providing better execution than you could achieve yourself and saves you a a lot of time.
Does this sound like a use case for smart software? It is, but the approach is less complicated than what one must implement using other approaches. Here’s a schematic of what happens in the intent pipeline:
The secret sauce for the approach is what is called a “1Click API.” The API handles the plumbing for the crypto bridging or crypto conversion from currency A to currency B.
If you are interested in how this system works, the cited article provides a list of nine links. Each provides additional detail. To be up front, some of the write ups are more useful than others. But three things are clear:
- Deobfuscation is likely to become more time consuming and costly
- The system described could be implemented within the Telegram blockchain system as well as other crypto conversion operations.
- The described approach can be further abstracted into an app with more overt smart software enablements.
My thought is that money launderers are likely to be among the first to explore this approach.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2025
Scattered Spider: Operating Freely Despite OSINT and Specialized Investigative Tools. Why?
July 7, 2025
No smart software to write this essay. This dinobaby is somewhat old fashioned.
I don’t want to create a dust up in the specialized software sector. I noted the July 2, 2025, article “A Group of Young Cybercriminals Poses the Most Imminent Threat of Cyberattacks Right Now.” That story surprised me. First, the Scattered Spider group was documented (more or less) by Trellix, a specialized software and services firm. You can read the article “Scattered Spider: The Modus Operandi” and get a sense of what Trellix reported. The outfit even has a Wikipedia article about their activities.
Last week I was asked a direct question, “Which of the specialized services firms can provide me with specific information about Telegram Groups and Channels, both public and private?” My answer, “None yet.”
Scattered Spider uses Telegram for some messaging functions, and if you want to get a sense of what the outfit does, just fire up your OSINT tools or better yet use one of the very expensive specialized services available to government agencies. The young cybercriminals appear to use the alias @ScatteredSpiderERC.” There is a Wikipedia article about this group’s activities.
So what? Let’s go back to the question addressed directly to me about firms that have content about Telegram. If we assume the Wikipedia write up is sort of correct, the Scattered Spider entity popped up in 2022 and its activities caught the attention of Trellix. The time between the Trellix post and the Wired story is about two years.
Why has a specialized services firm providing actionable data to the US government, the Europol investigators, and the dozens of others law enforcement operations around the world? Isn’t it a responsible act to use that access to Telegram data to take down outfits that endanger casinos and other organizations?
Apparently the answer is, “No.”
My hunch is that these specialized software firms talk about having tools to access Telegram. That talk is a heck of a lot easier than finding a reliable way to access private Groups and Channels, trace a handle back to a real live human being possibly operating in the EU or the US. I would suggest that France tried to use OSINT and the often nine figure systems to crack Telegram. Will other law enforcement groups realize that the specialized software vendors’ tools fall short of the mark and think about a France-type of response?
France seems to have made a dent in Telegram. I would hypothesize that the failure of OSINT and the specialized software tool vendors contributed to France’s decision to just arrest Pavel Durov. Mr. Durov is now ensnared in France’s judicial bureaucracy. To make the arrest more complex for Mr. Durov, he is a citizen of France and a handful of other countries, including Russia and the United Arab Emirates.
I mention this lack of Telegram cracking capability for three reasons:
- Telegram is in decline and the company is showing some signs of strain
- The changing attitude toward crypto in the US means that Telegram absolutely has to play in that market or face either erosion or decimation of its seven year push to create alternative financial services based on TONcoin and Pavel Durov’s partners’ systems
- Telegram is facing a new generation of messaging competitors. Like Apple, Telegram is late to the AI party.
One would think that at a critical point like this, the Shadow Server account would be a slam dunk for any licensee of specialized software advertising, “Telegram content.”
Where are those vendors who webinars, email blasts, and trade show demonstrations? Where are the testimonials that Company Nuco’s specialized software really did work. “Here’s what we used in court because the specialized vendor’s software generated this data for us” is what I want to hear. I would suggest that Telegram remains a bit of a challenge to specialized software vendors. Will I identify these “big hat, no cattle outfits”? Nope.
Just thought that a reminder that marketing and saying what government professionals want to hear are easier than just talking.
Stephen E Arnold, July 2025
Telegram Lecture at TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics on June 4, 2025
April 3, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
The organizers of the June 2025 TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference posted a 60 second overview of our Telegram Overview lecture on LinkedIn. You can view the conference’s 60 second video at https://lnkd.in/eTSvpYFb. Erik and I have been doing presentations on specific Telegram subjects for law enforcement groups. Two weeks ago, we provided to the Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts a 60-minute run down about the technical architecture of Telegram and identified three US companies providing services to Telegram. To discuss a presentation for your unit, please, message me via LinkedIn. (Plus, my son and I are working to complete our 100 page PDF notes of our examination of Telegram’s more interesting features. These range from bots which automate cross blockchain crypto movement to the automatic throttling function in the Telegram TON Virtual Machine to prevent transaction bottlenecks in complex crypto wallet obfuscations.) See you there. — Thank you, Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2025, 223 pm U S Eastern
More about NAMER, the Bitext Smart Entity Technology
January 14, 2025
A dinobaby product! We used some smart software to fix up the grammar. The system mostly worked. Surprised? We were.
We spotted more information about the Madrid, Spain based Bitext technology firm. The company posted “Integrating Bitext NAMER with LLMs” in late December 2024. At about the same time, government authorities arrested a person known as “Broken Tooth.” In 2021, an alert for this individual was posted. His “real” name is Wan Kuok-koi, and he has been in an out of trouble for a number of years. He is alleged to be part of a criminal organization and active in a number of illegal behaviors; for example, money laundering and human trafficking. The online service Irrawady reported that Broken Tooth is “the face of Chinese investment in Myanmar.”
Broken Tooth (né Wan Kuok-koi, born in Macau) is one example of the importance of identifying entity names and relating them to individuals and the organizations with which they are affiliated. A failure to identify entities correctly can mean the difference between resolving an alleged criminal activity and a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is the specific problem that Bitext’s NAMER system addresses. Bitext says that large language models are designed for for text generation, not entity classification. Furthermore, LLMs pose some cost and computational demands which can pose problems to some organizations working within tight budget constraints. Plus, processing certain data in a cloud increases privacy and security risks.
Bitext’s solution provides an alternative way to achieve fine-grained entity identification, extraction, and tagging. Bitext’s solution combines classical natural language processing solutions solutions with large language models. Classical NLP tools, often deployable locally, complement LLMs to enhance NER performance.
NAMER excels at:
- Identifying generic names and classifying them as people, places, or organizations.
- Resolving aliases and pseudonyms.
- Differentiating similar names tied to unrelated entities.
Bitext supports over 20 languages, with additional options available on request. How does the hybrid approach function? There are two effective integration methods for Bitext NAMER with LLMs like GPT or Llama are. The first is pre-processing input. This means that entities are annotated before passing the text to the LLM, ideal for connecting entities to knowledge graphs in large systems. The second is to configure the LLM to call NAMER dynamically.
The output of the Bitext system can generate tagged entity lists and metadata for content libraries or dictionary applications. The NAMER output can integrate directly into existing controlled vocabularies, indexes, or knowledge graphs. Also, NAMER makes it possible to maintain separate files of entities for on-demand access by analysts, investigators, or other text analytics software.
By grouping name variants, Bitext NAMER streamlines search queries, enhancing document retrieval and linking entities to knowledge graphs. This creates a tailored “semantic layer” that enriches organizational systems with precision and efficiency.
For more information about the unique NAMER system, contact Bitext via the firm’s Web site at www.bitext.com.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2025
FOGINT: Big Takedown Coincident with Durov Detainment. Coincidence?
December 19, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
In recent years, global authorities have taken down several encrypted communication channels. Exclu and Ghost, for example. Will a more fragmented approach keep the authorities away? Apparently not. A Europol press release announces, “International Operation Takes Down Another Encrypted Messaging Service Used by Criminals.” The write-up notes:
“Criminals, in response to the disruptions of their messaging services, have been turning to a variety of less-established or custom-built communication tools that offer varying degrees of security and anonymity. While the new fragmented landscape poses challenges for law enforcement, the takedown of established communication channels shows that authorities are on top of the latest technologies that criminals use.”
Case in point: After a three-year investigation, a multi-national law enforcement team just took down MATRIX. The service, “by criminals for criminals,” was discovered in 2021 on a convicted murderer’s phone. It was a sophisticated tool bad actors must be sad to lose. We learn:
“It was soon clear that the infrastructure of this platform was technically more complex than previous platforms such as Sky ECC and EncroChat. The founders were convinced that the service was superior and more secure than previous applications used by criminals. Users were only able to join the service if they received an invitation. The infrastructure to run MATRIX consisted of more than 40 servers in several countries with important servers found in France and Germany. Cooperation between the Dutch and French authorities started through a JIT set up at Eurojust. By using innovative technology, the authorities were able to intercept the messaging service and monitor the activity on the service for three months. More than 2.3 million messages in 33 languages were intercepted and deciphered during the investigation. The messages that were intercepted are linked to serious crimes such as international drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering. Actions to take down the service and pursue serious criminals happened on 3 December in four countries.”
Those four countries are France, Spain, Lithuania, and Germany, with an assist by the Netherlands. Interpol highlights the importance of international cooperation in fighting organized crime. Is this the key to pulling ahead in the encryption arms race?
Cynthia Murrell, December 19, 2024
FOGINT: Telegram Steps Up Its Cooperation with Law Enforcement
December 12, 2024
This short item is the work of the dinobaby. The “fog” is from Gifr.com.
Engadget, an online news service, reported “Telegram Finally Takes Action to Remove CSAM from Its Platform.” France picks up Telegram founder Pavel Durov and explains via his attorney how the prison system works in the country. Mr. Durov, not yet in prison, posted an alleged Euro 5 million with the understanding he could not leave the country. According to Engadget, Mr. Durov is further modifying his attitude toward “free speech” and “freedom.”
The article states:
Telegram is taking a significant step to reduce child sexual abuse material (CSAM), partnering with the International Watch Foundation (IWF) four months after the former’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested. The French authorities issued 12 charges against Durov in August, including complicity in “distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in an organized group” and “possessing pornographic images of minors.”
For those not familiar with the International Watch Foundation, the organization serves as a “hub” for law enforcement and companies acting as intermediaries for those engaged in buying, leasing, selling, or exchanging illicit images or videos of children. Since 2013, Telegram has mostly been obstinate when asked to cooperate with investigators. The company has waved its hands and insisted that it is not into curtailing free speech.
After the French snagged Mr. Durov, he showed a sudden interest in cooperating with authorities. The Engadget report says:
Telegram has taken other steps since Durov’s arrest, announcing in September that it would hand over IP addresses and phone numbers in legal requests — something it fought in the past. Durov must remain in France for the foreseeable future.
What’s Telegram going to do after releasing handles, phone numbers, and possibly some of that log data allegedly held in servers available to the company? The answer is, “Telegram is pursuing its next big thing.” Engadget does not ask, “What’s Telegram’s next act?” Surprisingly a preview of Telegram’s future is unfolding in TON Foundation training sessions in Vancouver, Istanbul, and numerous other locations.
But taking that “real” work next step is not in the cards for most Telegram watchers. The “finally” is simply bringing down the curtain of Telegram’s first act. More acts are already on stage.
Stephen E Arnold, December 12, 2024
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