Good Enough Junk Food: Knowledge without the Work
December 16, 2024
This write up emerged from the dinobaby’s own mind. Yes, the dinobaby used AI because this write up is about the knowledge value lost with smart software. Intellectual junk food is not the same as my mother’s overcooked chicken which she killed on her aunt’s farm. Cluck, cluck, squawk.
I plugged the Guardian’s opinion essay into You.com’s Chat GPT-4o model. You can read the original essay titled “Is Doom Scrolling Really Rotting Our Brains? The Evidence Is Getting Harder to Ignore.” The original essay is clear, reasonably well researched, and structured to speak to [a] a person who has access to the Guardian online or in (gasp!) a print form, [b] who reads the Guardian’s opinion essays, and [c] who has the ability to recognize that “brain rot” has probably affected that individual, co-workers, government leaders, children, and people who repair refrigerators.
This illustration is good enough and it was produced by the AI system Magic Studio.
Here’s the summary Chat GPT-4o spit out:
The essay critiques the decline of human intellect in the digital age, using the viral “Skibidi Toilet” video as a cultural metaphor for deteriorating focus and intellectual engagement. The Oxford English Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year, “brain rot”, reflects this phenomenon, defined as the mental degradation caused by excessive consumption of trivial online content. The essay draws on academic research to demonstrate how compulsive internet use is literally shrinking grey matter, weakening memory, shortening attention spans, and distorting cognitive functions. Studies from Harvard, Oxford, and King’s College reveal the harmful effects of media multitasking and heavy internet usage, with findings such as reduced grey matter in the brain and the risk of “digital dementia” in young people during critical developmental years.The prevalence of infinite scroll and dopamine-driven design in apps is highlighted as a deliberate tactic by tech companies to exploit human psychology for profit, creating powerful addiction loops. Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris warns that this “race to the bottom of the brain stem” manipulates fear, outrage, and reward systems, potentially driving society to catastrophe if left unchecked.Despite the grim outlook, the essay finds hope in the growing self-awareness among younger generations, who coined the term “brain rot” and recognize its effects. Movements advocating for reduced technology use, such as switching to dumbphones or promoting smartphone-free childhoods, are gaining traction. These trends suggest the possibility of reclaiming mental clarity and focus, countering the current trajectory of cognitive decline.Ultimately, the essay positions “Skibidi Toilet” as both a symptom of modern intellectual decay and a call to action. Humanity stands at a critical juncture: to either rise above the current trends of distraction and degradation or succumb further to the “U-bend” of intellectual regression.
For what it is worth, this is a typical bite-sized knowledge cookie. No one will know if the summary is good or bad unless that person takes the time to get the original full text and compare it with this AI generated output. The informational fast food provides a sugar jolt from saving time or the summary consumer’s belief that the important information is on the money. A knowledge cookie if you will, or maybe intellectual junk food?
Is this summary good enough? From my point of view, it is just okay; that is, good enough. What else is required? Flash back to 1982, the ABI/INFORM database was a commercial success. A couple of competitors were trying to capture our customers which was tricky. Intermediaries like Dialog Information Services, ESA, LexisNexis (remember Buster and his silver jumpsuit?), among others “owned” the direct relationship with the companies that paid the intermediaries to use the commercial databases on their systems. Then the intermediaries shared some information with us, the database producers.
How did a special librarian or a researcher “find” or “know about” our database? The savvy database producers provided information to the individuals interested in a business and management related commercial database. We participated in niche trade shows. We held training programs and publicized them with our partners Dow Jones News Retrieval, Investext, Predicasts, and Disclosure, among a few others. Our senior professionals gave lectures about controlled term indexing, the value of classification codes, and specific techniques to retrieve a handful of relevant citations and abstracts from our online archive. We issued news releases about new sources of information we added, in most cases with permission of the publisher.
We did not use machine indexing. We did have a wizard who created a couple of automatic indexing systems. However, when the results of what the software in 1922 could do, we fell back on human indexers, many of whom had professional training in the subject matter they were indexing. A good example was our coverage of real estate management activities. The person who handled this content was a lawyer who preferred reading and working in our offices. At this time, the database was owned by the Courier-Journal & Louisville Times Co. The owner of the privately held firm was an early adopted of online and electronic technology. He took considerable pride in our line up of online databases. When he hired me, I recall his telling me, “Make the databases as good as you can.”
How did we create a business and management database that generated millions in revenue and whose index was used by entities like the Royal Bank of Canada to index its internal business information?
Here’s the secret sauce:
- We selected sources in most cases business journals, publications, and some other types of business related content; for example, the ANBAR management reports
- The selection of which specific article to summarize was the responsibility of a managing editor with deep business knowledge
- Once an article was flagged as suitable for ABI/INFORM, it was routed to the specialist who created a summary of the source article. At that time, ABI/INFORM summaries or “abstracts” were limited to 150 words, excluding the metadata.
- An indexing specialist would then read the abstract and assign quite specific index terms from our proprietary controlled vocabulary. The indexing included such items as four to six index terms from our controlled vocabulary and a classification code like 7700 to indicate “marketing” with addition two digit indicators to make explicit that the source document was about marketing and direct mail or some similar subcategory of marketing. We also included codes to disambiguate between a railroad terminal and a computer terminal because source documents assumed the reader would “know” the specific field to which the term’s meaning belonged. We added geographic codes, so the person looking for information could locate employee stock ownership in a specific geographic region like Northern California, and a number of other codes specifically designed to allow precise, comprehensive retrieval of abstracts about business and management. Some of the systems permitted free text searching of the abstract, and we considered that a supplement to our quite detailed indexing.
- Each abstract and index terms was checked by a control control process using people who had demonstrated their interest in our product and their ability to double check the indexing.
- We had proprietary “content management systems” and these generated the specific file formats required by our intermediaries.
- Each week we updated our database and we were exploring daily updates for our companion product called Business Dateline when the Courier Journal was broken up and the database operation sold to a movie camera company, Bell+Howell.
Chat GPT-4o created the 300 word summary without the human knowledge, expertise, and effort. Consequently, the loss of these knowledge based workflow has been replaced by a smart software which can produce a summary in less than 30 seconds.
And that summary is, from my point of view, good enough. There are some trade offs:
- Chat GPT-4o is reactive. Feed it a url or a text, and it will summarize it. Gone is the knowledge-based approach to select a specific, high-value source document for inclusion in the database. Our focus was informed selection. People paid to access the database because of the informed choice about what to put in the database.
- The summary does not include the ABI/INFORM key points and actionable element of the source document. The summary is what a high school or junior college graduate would create if a writing teacher assigned a “how to write a précis” as part of the course requirements. In general, high school and junior college graduates are not into nuance and cannot determine the pivotal information payload in a source document.
- The precise indexing and tagging is absent. One could create a 1,000 such summaries, toss them in MISTRAL, and do a search. The result is great if one is uninformed about the importance of editorial polices, knowledge-based workflows, and precise, thorough indexing.
The reason I am sharing some of this “ancient” online history is:
- The loss of quality in online information is far more serious than most people understand. Getting a summary today is no big deal. What’s lost is simply not on these individuals’ radar.
- The lack of an editorial policy, precise date and time information, and the fine-grained indexing means that one has to wade through a mass of undifferentiated information. ABI/INFORM in the 1080s delivered a handful of citations directly on point with the user’s query. Today no one knows or cares about precision and recall.
- It is now more difficult than at any other time in my professional work career to locate needed information. Public libraries do not have the money to obtain reference materials, books, journals, and other content. If the content is online, it is a dumbed down and often cut rate version of the old-fashioned commercial databases created by informed professionals.
- People look up information online and remain dumb; that is, the majority of the people with whom I come in contact routinely ask me and my team, “Where do you get your information?” We even have a slide in our CyberSocial lecture about “how” and “where.” The analysts and researchers in the audience usually don’t know so an entire subculture of open source information professionals has come into existence. These people are largely on their own and have to do work which once was a matter of querying a database like ABI/INFORM, Predicasts, Disclosure, Agricola, etc.
Sure the essay is good. The summary is good enough. Where does that leave a person trying to understand the factual and logical errors in a new book examining social media. In my opinion, people are in the dark and have a difficult time finding information. Making decisions in the dark or without on point accurate information is recipe for a really bad batch of cookies.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2024
China Good, US Bad: Australia Reports the Unwelcome News
December 13, 2024
This write up was created by an actual 80-year-old dinobaby. If there is art, assume that smart software was involved. Just a tip.
I read “Critical Technology Tracker: Two Decades of Data Show Rewards of Long-Term Investment.” The write up was issued in September 2024, and I have no confidence that much has changed. I believe the US is the leader in marketing hyperbole output. Other countries are far behind, but some are closing the gaps. I will focus on the article, and I will leave it to you to read the full report available from the ASPI Australia Web site.
The main point of this report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is that the US has not invested in long-term research. I am not sure how much of this statement is a surprise to those who have watched as US patents have become idea recyclers, the deterioration of US education, and the fascinating quest for big money.
The cited summary of the research reports:
The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five year period, it was leading in just seven.
I want to point out that playing online games and doom scrolling are not fundamental technologies. The US has a firm grip on the downstream effects of applied technology. The fundamentals are simply not there. AI which seems to be everywhere is little more than word probability which is not a fundamental; it is an application of methods.
The cited article points out:
The chart is easy to read. The red line heading up is China. The blue line going down is the US.
In what areas are China’s researchers making headway other than its ability to terminate some US imports quickly? Here’s what the cited article reports:
China has made its new gains in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch and advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication (semiconductor chip making). The US leads in quantum computing, vaccines and medical countermeasures, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering and natural language processing.
The list, one can argue, is arbitrary and easily countered by US researchers. There are patents, start ups, big financial winners, and many fine research institutions. With AI poised to become really smart in a few years, why worry?
I am not worried because I am old. The people who need to worry are the parents of children who cannot read and comprehend, who do not study and master mathematics, who do not show much interest in basic science, and are indifferent to the concept of work ethic.
Australia is worried. It is making an attempt to choke off the perceived corrosive effects of the US social media juggernaut for those under 16 years of age. It is monitoring China’s activities in the Pacific. It is making an effort to enhance its military capabilities.
Is America worried? I would characterize the attitude here in rural Kentucky as the mascot of Mad Magazine’s catchphrase, “What, me worry?”
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2024
ChatGPT: The New Chegg
December 13, 2024
Chegg is an education outfit. The firm has faced some magnetic interference related to its academic compass. An outfit in Australia has suggested that Chegg makes it possible for a student to obtain some assistance in order to complete certain work. Beyond Search knew AI would displace some workers and maybe even shutter some companies. But it is hard to find sympathy for this particular victim. “Chegg Is on Its Last Legs After ChatGPT Sent Its Stock Down 99%,” reports Gizmodo. So industrial scale cheating kills rich-kid cheating. Oh no.
Those of us who got our college degrees last century may not be familiar with Chegg. Writer Thomas Maxwell explains:
“[Chegg] started out in the 2000s renting out textbooks and later expanded into online study guides, and eventually into a platform with pre-written answers to common homework questions. Unfortunately, the launch of ChatGPT all but annihilated Chegg’s business model. The company for years paid thousands of contractors to write answers to questions across every major subject, which is quite a labor intensive process—and there’s no guarantee they will even have the answer to your question. ChatGPT, on the other hand, has ingested pretty much the entire internet and has likely seen any history question you might throw at it.”
Yep. The Wall Street Journal reports Chegg put off developing its own AI tools because of machine learning’s propensity for wrong answers. And rightly so. Maxwell suggests the firm might be able to make that case to “curious” students, but we agree that would be a long shot at this point. If Chegg does indeed go under, we will not mourn. But what other businesses, and the workers they support, will be next to fall?
Does the US smart software sector care if their products help students appear smarter and more diligent than they are in real life? Nope. Success in the US is, like much of the high-technology hoo-hah, creating a story and selling illusion. School education is collateral damage.
Cynthia Murrell, December 13, 2024
Autonomous AI Agents: The Next Big Thing for a Rolodex-Type Service
December 13, 2024
Are the days of large language models numbered? Yes, according to the CEO and co-founder of Salesforce. Finance site Benzinga shares, “Marc Benioff Says Future of AI Not in Bots Like ChatGPT But In Autonomous Agents.” Writer Ananya Gairola points to a recent Wall Street Journal podcast in which Benioff shared his thoughts:
“He stated that the next phase of AI development will focus on autonomous agents, which can perform tasks independently, rather than relying on LLMs to drive advancements. He argued that while AI tools like ChatGPT have received significant attention, the real potential lies in agents. ‘Has the AI taken over? No. Has AI cured cancer? No. Is AI curing climate change? No. So we have to keep things in perspective here,’ he stated. Salesforce provides both prebuilt and customizable AI agents for businesses looking to automate customer service functions. ‘But we are not at that moment that we’ve seen in these crazy movies — and maybe we will be one day, but that is not where we are today,’ Benioff stated during the podcast.”
Someday, he says. But it would seem the race is on. Gairola notes OpenAI is poised to launch its own autonomous AI agent in January. Will that company dominate the autonomous AI field, as it has with generative AI? Will the new bots come equipped with bias and hallucinations? Stay tuned.
Cynthia Murrell, December 13, 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
Telegram: Edging Forward in Crypto
December 12, 2024
This blog post flowed from the sluggish and infertile mind of a real live dinobaby. If there is art, smart software of some type was probably involved.
Telegram wants to be the one stop app for anonymous crypto tasks. While we applaud those efforts when they related to freedom fighting or undermining bad actors, the latter also uses them and we can’t abide by that. Telegram, however, plans to become the API for crypto communication says Cryptologia in, “DWF Labs’ Listing Bot Goes Live On Telegram.”
DWF Labs is a crypto enterprise capital firm and it is launching an itemizing Bot on Telegram. The Bot turns Telegram into a bitcoin feed, because it notifies users of changes in the ten main crypto exchanges: Binance, HTX, Gate.io, Bybit, OKX, KuCoin, MEXC, Coinbase Alternate, UpBit, and Bithumb. Users can also watch foreign money pairs, launchpad bulletins, and spot and/or futures listings.
DWF Labs is on the forefront of alternative currency and financial options. It is a lucrative market:
“In a latest interview, Lingling Jiang, a Associate at DWF Labs, mentioned DWF Labs’ place on the forefront of delivering liquidity providers and forging alliances with conventional finance. By offering market-making assist and funding, Jiang stated, DWF Labs provides tasks the infrastructure needed to grasp of tokenized belongings. With the launch of the brand new Itemizing Bot, DWF Labs brings market information nearer to the retail consumer, particularly these on the Telegram (TON) community. Following the introduction of HOT, a non-custodial pockets on TON powered by Chain Signature, DWF Labs’ Itemizing Bot is one other welcome addition to the ecosystem, particularly within the mild of the latest announcement of HOT Labs, HERE Pockets and HAPI’s new joint crypto platform.”
What’s Telegram’s game for 2025? Spring Durov? Join hands with BRICS? Become the new Morgan Stanley? Father more babies?
Whitney Grace, December 12, 2024
Do Not Worry About Tomorrow. Worry About Tod”AI”
December 12, 2024
This blog post flowed from the sluggish and infertile mind of a real live dinobaby. If there is art, smart software of some type was probably involved.
According to deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, we may be headed for utopia—at least if one is a certain wealthy tech-bro type. For the rest of us, not so much. The Byte tells us, “Godfather of AI Warns of Powerful People who Want Humans ‘Replaced by Machines’.” He is not referring to transhumanism, which might ultimately seek to transform humans into machines. No, this position is about taking people out of the equation entirely. Except those at the top, presumably. Reporter Noor Al-Sibai writes:
“In an interview with CNBC, computer science luminary Yoshua Bengio said that members of an elite tech ‘fringe’ want AI to replace humans. The head of the University of Montreal’s Institute for Learning Algorithms, Bengio was among the public signatories of the ‘Right to Warn‘ open letter penned by leading AI researchers at OpenAI who claim they’re being silenced about the technology’s dangers. Along with famed experts Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton, he’s sometimes referred to as one of the ‘Godfathers of AI.’ ‘Intelligence gives power. So who’s going to control that power?’ the preeminent machine learning expert told the outlet during the One Young World Summit in Montreal. ‘There are people who might want to abuse that power, and there are people who might be happy to see humanity replaced by machines,’ Bengio claimed. ‘I mean, it’s a fringe, but these people can have a lot of power, and they can do it unless we put the right guardrails right now.’”
Indeed. This is not the first time the esteemed computer scientist has rung AI alarm bells. As Bengio notes, those who can afford to build AI systems are very, very rich. And money leads to other types of power. Political and military power. Can government regulations catch up to these players? Only if it takes them more than five years to attain artificial general intelligence, he predicts. The race for the future of humanity is being evaluated by what’s cheaper, not better.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2024
Dark Web: Clever and Cute Security Innovations
December 11, 2024
This write up was created by an actual 80-year-old dinobaby. If there is art, assume that smart software was involved. Just a tip.
I am not sure how the essay / technical analysis “The Fascinating Security Model of Dark Web Marketplaces” will diffuse within the cyber security community. I want to highlight what strikes me as a useful analysis and provide a brief, high-level summary of the points which my team and I found interesting. We have not focused on the Dark Web since we published Dark Web Notebook, a complement to my law enforcement training sessions about the Dark Web in the period from 2013 to 2016.
This write up does a good job of explaining use of open source privacy tools like Pretty Good Privacy and its two-factor authentication. The write up walks through a “no JavaScript” approach to functions on the Dark Web site. The references to dynamic domain name operations is helpful as well.
The first observation I would offer is that in the case of the Dark Web site analyzed in the cited article is that the security mechanisms in use have matured and, in the opinion of my research team, advanced to thwart some of the techniques used to track and take down the type of sites hosted by Cyberbunker in Germany. This is — alas — inevitable, and it makes the job of investigators more difficult.
The second observation is that this particular site makes use of distributed services. With the advent of certain hosting providers to offer self managed virtual servers and a professed inability to know what’s happening on physical machines. Certain hosting providers “comply” and then say, “If you try to access the virtual machines, they can fail. Since we don’t manage them, you guys will have to figure out how to get them back up.” Cute and effective.
The third observation is that the hoops through which a potential drug customer has to get through are likely to make a person with an addled brain get clean and then come back and try again. On the other hand, the Captcha might baffle a sober user or investigator as well. Cute and annoying.
The essay is useful and worth reading because it underscores the value of fluid online infrastructures for bad actors.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2024
Bitext NAMER: Simplifying Tracking of Translated Organizational Names
December 11, 2024
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. No smart software was used.
We wrote a short item about tracking Chinese names translated to English, French, or Spanish with widely varying spellings. Now Bitext’s entity extraction system can perform the same disambiguation for companies and non-governmental entities. Analysts may be looking for a casino which operates with a Chinese name. That gambling facility creates marketing collateral or gets news coverage which uses a different name or a spelling which is different from the operation’s actual name. As a result, missing a news item related to that operation is an on-going problem for some professionals.
Bitext has revealed that its proprietary technology can perform the same tagging and extraction process for organizational names in more than two dozen languages. In “Bitext NAMER Cracks Named Entity Recognition,” the company reports:
… issues arise with organizational names, such as “Sun City” (a place and enterprise) or aliases like “Yati New City” for “Shwe Koko”; and, in general, with any language that is written in non-Roman alphabet and needs transliteration. In fact, these issues affect to all languages that do not use Roman alphabet including Hindi, Malayalam or Vietnamese, since transliteration is not a one-to-one function but a one-to-many and, as a result, it generates ambiguity the hinders the work of analysts. With real-time data streaming into government software, resolving ambiguities in entity identification is crucial, particularly for investigations into activities like money laundering.
Unlike some other approaches — for instance, smart large language models — the Bitext NAMER technology:
- Identifies correctly generic names
- Performs type assignment; specifically, person, place, time, and organization
- Tags AKA (also known as) and pseudonyms
- Distinguishes simile names linked to unelated entitles; for example, Levo Chan.
The company says:
Our unique method enables accurate, multilingual entity detection and normalization for a variety of applications.
Bitext’s technology is used by three of the top five US companies listed on NASDAQ. The firm’s headquarters are in Madrid, Spain. For more information, contact the company via its Web site, www.bitext.com.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2024
FOGINT: Pavel Durov: A Waffling Borzoi with a Shock Collar Now?
December 11, 2024
Information from the FOGINT research team. No smart software involved.
Cointelegraph, one of the “future of money” news services covering crypto ran an interesting story on Saturday, December 7,2024. “Telegram Found Pavel Durov Questioned in Paris Court for First Time: Report.” We know this is a blog post about a write up sharing information from another source. Keep this dicey chain in mind.
The core of the story is that Pavel Durov was under the control of French authorities in August 2024. Wikipedia reports that Mr. Durov may have met with Vladimir Putin before jetting to Paris and landing at Paris-Le Bourget Airport. In the last three months, information about Mr. Durov’s and his lawyer’s interaction with the French authorities has been limited. After 90 days of having his movements restricted, Mr. Durov has been rumored to:
- Expressed a desire to cooperate with law enforcement when duly authorized requests for alleged bad actors is provided to “Telegram”, which is Mr. Durov for practical purposes. Pavel’s brother Nikolai seems pre-occupied with technical issues related to the Telegram platform.
- Telegram has apparently agreed to interact with organizations focused on preventing human trafficking and child sexual abuse material
- Reversing course on his statements about responding to government pressure. One example was Telegram’s blocking of Ukrainian content from Ukrainian government agencies to Telegram users in Russia and possibly other countries in the Russian Federation.
Here’s what Cointelegraph reported:
Durov appeared in a Parisian court at 10 am CET on Dec. 6, alongside his lawyers David-Olivier Kaminski and Christophe Ingrain.
The lawyers have offices at 126 Boulevard St. Germain. Kaminski’s Web site says:
We specialize in criminal defense. The Kaminski law firm has built up recognized expertise in all areas of criminal defense. We can represent our clients at any stages of the judicial procedure, including police custody, preliminary investigation, judicial information, criminal court and before the assize court). The firm defends individuals as well as companies, legal entities, or institutions (Non-governmental organizations, associations, professional bodies). Kaminski’s catchphrase is, “The culture and practice of criminal defense is respect for fundamental freedoms.” https://www.kaminskiavocats.com/
Christophe Ingrain is part of the defense team. He was / is affiliated with Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier. He was named one of the 30 most influential lawyers in France, and he appeared on a list of the “best layers” in France. His office is on Avenue Victor Hugo.
According to Cointelegraph:
An anonymous source familiar with the matter told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the questioning focused on the allegations tied to Telegram’s potential use for illicit transactions. When asked about the legal proceedings, Durov reportedly told the AFP that he “trusts the French justice” system but refused to elaborate on the case.
His “refusal” to comment means that the 40 year old with more than 100 children is listening to his French attorneys. He may also have been informed about France’s low profile prison system. La Santé was built in 1867 and entertains a number of high-risk criminals. For those who chat with French law enforcement officials, La Santé is often described as a place one goes but never leaves. This prison has a VIP section which is somewhat different from the VIP services available for online gamblers in pursuit of an ejunket. It is located in the 14th arrondissement. There are two other facilities in Paris as well. France also has some special purpose prisons located near military bases and allegedly a couple of in-ground facilities in North Africa. If “in-ground” does not resonate with you, you may not want to know the set at these alleged incarceration facilities. As a point of reference, French prisons are overcrowded but c’est dommage. As a rule of thumb one may want to avoid getting ensnared in the French judiciary or prison system. Red tape is a specialty of French bureaucrats, and it can be a challenging situation for defendants and their lawyers.
Cointelegram observes:
Industry insiders are worried that the case against Durov raises alarming concerns for privacy-preserving Web3 technologies.
The Web3 reference includes blockchain technology, distributed infrastructures like Telegram’s, distributed finance, and a number of other innovations. These can add to the investigative burden of law enforcement and tax authorities.
Durov has paid bail of $5 to $6 million. However, Cointelegraph points out:
If convicted, Durov could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of €500,000 ($550,000).
Was Durov’s interaction with French authorities an accident or coincidence? No. France allegedly began a preliminary investigation if February 2024. In July 2024 that was promoted to a judicial inquiry. In August, he was apprehended.
Sean Brizendine, a blockchain researcher, told Beyond Search:
Mr. Durov definitely appears to be listening to his high-power legal team. He is obviously aware that everything is at stake.
Net net: FOGINT wonders if the prosecution of CSAM perpetrators will ramp up as Durov demonstrates his willingness to cooperate. What’s at risk for Telegram is that the significant push into crypto services could be derailed. Other “free speech” advocates will create alternative services, but that will be expensive and time consuming. The core of Telegram is not available as open source software. Most cyber professionals are not aware of the scope of the Telegram platform.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2024
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