Resolves to Yes if Pavel Durov is alive and physically detained by any governmental authority, including but not limited to:
- Under arrest (including house arrest).
- Out on bail but prohibited from leaving the country, unless Durov successfully escapes to a different jurisdiction where his freedom is not restricted by the local authorities. [clarified on August 28th]
- Serving a prison or jail sentence.
- Confined within a foreign consulate or diplomatic mission to evade arrest (similar to Julian Assange’s situation).
- In a hospital or medical facility where he is not free to leave due to being under guard or restricted by legal authority.
Resolves to No if Pavel Durov is alive and effectively free, even if:
- There are active arrest warrants against him in one or more countries.
- He is residing or traveling in a jurisdiction where he is not detained or under arrest, despite the existence of such warrants (e.g., living freely in the UAE while wanted by the U.S. or EU).
Resolves to No if Pavel Durov is deceased, regardless of the circumstances surrounding his death.
The market will close on December 31st but resolution might take a few days or weeks in case there’s confusion over what Durov’s status is on December 31st, 2024.
He was placed under judicial supervision and is not allowed to leave France. He also has to pay $5M EUR. Does that count as arrest? @nsokolsky
This is still a form of detention, as he’s forced to stay in France. If he’s still out on bail but stays in France as of December 31st, this will resolve to Yes. If he manages to escape to (say) Russia or the UAE and local authorities do not try to detain him there, this will resolve to No.
I’ve now clarified this in the question text too.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240828-telegram-ceo-durov-to-appear-in-paris-court-after-initial-detention-ends
"A Paris investigating magistrate will decide whether to press charges against Durov, and the judiciary would then rule on whether he will be remanded in custody or allowed to go free, possibly under judicial control with restrictions on his movements."
“The UAE has now put its order of 80 jets with France on hold”
-Varinder Singh (coingape)
I don't usually shill my own markets in comments but here's an option to bet on if he dies in custody
https://manifold.markets/TimothyBandors/will-pavel-durov-die-before-being-r
Updated question to clarify that market will close on December 31st but I might not be able to resolve it immediately if there’s confusion over what Durov’s status was on that day. I think it’s highly unlikely but want to avoid pressure to resolve the market incorrectly if the information is inconclusive.
Telegram is so shady:
No encryption by default & probably not great encryption
Lots of Russian funding, which they lied about
Some kind of "agreement on terrorism" with Russian government
Fake office in UAE, which they lied about
Durov's history of cooperating with the FSB when needed at VKontakte
Russia still allowing Telegram implies that they're happy with it
I think it's pretty likely that Telegram is cooperating in some way with the Russian government, either through
1) making it very easy to monitor user activity in public channels, making it very easy to infiltrate and read unencrypted chats, locate people, etc.
Or
2) actually giving access to private chats directly
Russian opposition leaders are still using Telegram, so they're either stupid or disagree about the FSB access.
Nobody cracked the “probably not great” encryption algorithm after 10 years. The cybersecurity community is famously annoyed by Durov but never produced any proof of the app being insecure, with the exception of two or three bugs fixed during the early bounty program.
Lack of encryption by default is a feature required to make chats easily shareable across devices and preserved even for users who lose their device or forget their passwords. Preserving and sharing message history in Signal or WhatsApp is very annoying.
@datachef Or… maybe they know more about the FSB than non Russians? Many members of the opposition are former members of the Russian government and have extensive knowledge of the intelligence agencies. Don’t over estimate the level of competence of Russian intelligence services.