We get out of bed again to do a quick ep on Pavel Durov, his arrest in France, what happens when you run a successful international tech business like Telegram without playing by the rules, and how this all fits into the thesis of my book Surveillance Valley.
The fact that Durov isn’t tied into the US imperial-military complex like his biggest competitors — including Signal, which was launched with CIA spinoff money — clearly hasn’t been doing him any favors. Can you imagine Zuck not cooperating with the cops and getting snatched off his plane? No, because Zuck and the rest of his peers are made men in a system that demands loyalty.
Take a listen.
—Yasha
A few notes. On the show I mentioned a few of my articles that touch on the political aspects of privacy, crypto, surveillance, state power…
The Crypto- Keepers: How the politics-by-app hustle conquered all. This one features my extended interview with Pavel Durov from 2017. One thing that Durov and I shared was bewilderment that big name privacy activists, including Edward Snowden, could with a straight face promote Internet crypto tools like Signal and Tor—apps that are openly funded by CIA spinoffs, the State Department and the Pentagon.
And of course I cover all this in Surveillance Valley.
Pavel Durov, tech billionaire dissident?