Headline:  Founder & CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was just arrested in France at the airport as he arrived from Azerbaijan.

Reality: The First Amendment is unique to the United States.

Further, we (the United States) have a history of attempting to attack encryption.  Who remembers that debate and people literally printing the code for PGP on a t-shirt?  Yes, the people's capacity to do this has been upheld and ultimately the government gave up but they did try it.

End-to-end encryption, of course, pisses governments off because the operator of the service doesn't have the keys so absent an intentional flaw (usually in the keying because modern cryptography is extremely difficult to actually break) forget it -- you can eventually break it but by then the people communicating will already be dead and you can't prosecute a corpse, the information will be of no value -- or both.

So am I particularly surprised that a European nation considers end-to-end encryption when they have reason to believe it is used to facilitate a criminal act a crime standing alone and the parties who operate it to be jointly and severably liable?

Not really.

Note that the United States has constraints, and they mean it too -- its a felony to violate these constraints -- on export of certain technology or even allowing certain nationals to use said things.  The regulations are called "ITAR" and they're not a joke.  Things you can buy and own perfectly-legally as a US citizen, if you send them overseas, can be a felony offense.

So spare me the breathless outrage.  This guy knew full well that some other nations would take extreme exception to what he was doing, and he did it anyway.  If he didn't know which nations those were and where he could and couldn't travel without the risk of being arrested then he's really not very bright.

Personally, I find the premise of attempting to constrain encrypted communications to be foolish; its a war that governments cannot win but that doesn't mean they won't try, and it also won't do a bit of good to raise that as a legal defense if they come after you.

Is a "company town" model, imposed nationally or even internationally by multiple firms -- in fact, a plurality of firms and a majority of large ones across various horizontal areas of business -- credit, foods, health care, transportation and more -- a criminal act?

Is it a violation of 15 USC Chapter 1, or even Racketeering?

PBS has an interesting take on this: Slavery by another name.

Where's the line?  Well, in a world where health care is a cabal that's a good question because if advertising on a collusive basis (allegedly "shared values") is a violation then every hospital administrator should be in irons and all the doctors attached to same should be living under a freeway overpass with their spouse and children -- in a refrigerator box.

Of course the latter is not the case, despite the fact that we keep finding out that the entirety of the so-called "recommendations" that they make -- and then sell "treatments" for -- are in fact likely CAUSED by the very thing they tell you to do.

There's an interesting counter-point to this, however: Is the basic business model broken or was it designed this way on purpose and, if so, then even Elon's "X" is a co-conspirator and thus he gets to go to prison too.

I'd argue the basic premise of so-called "social media" is a fraud: You are the product or service being sold; it is not communications but rather your actions, which they silo without your knowledge or consent, then sell in order to egg on your behavior in a way that suits their merchandising, that is what they actually are in business to do.

"X", for example, has dozens of "labels" that can be attached to your account.  You neither can see them or contest them; indeed, you don't even know precisely why such a label was attached!  Google does the same thing -- I've had multiple articles "de-monetized" with only a cursory label as to the alleged "violation" and they will not tell me, or anyone else, exactly WHAT they objected to.

You can "appeal" but there's no transparent process.  If the reason for the flag on your content is one word or phrase without knowing exactly what it is how do you edit it and then appeal?  You can't and they designed their system that way for that explicit reason.

Facebook does the same thing.  I deleted my account some decade back and recently tried to set another one up to look in Marketplace. Same email address I've had since 1999 -- and on my own domain.  They deemed me "inauthentic", I appealed, they denied it and its not reviewable.  I assure you -- my email address is indeed mine, it hasn't changed since 1999 and the same person, me, is on it that was in 1999.  In other words they're lying but have siloed me into "undesirable" under a demonstrably -- and in fact provably -- false claim.

How is this legal when you claim to be "the town square"?  

Well, you're obviously not and provided you make no such claim then heh, have at it.  But Facebook, X and the rest do make such a claim.  None of them tell you up front that they keep whatever metrics they want, they use this to silo you and the information you can both see and how widely what you say is sent, and to whom, you cannot see any of this information, you cannot challenge it as incorrect and they won't even tell you why they applied said labels to you.   This is in fact a social credit score ala Communist China.

Is it legal?

Not if its misrepresented and also not if there is material market power and any of it is done in concert with others.

Both of which it is.

This isn't a fine folks: It is a criminal felony carrying prison time for offenders -- a decade for each offense.

If you think all those ignored felonies by people you favored in the political class had no impact on you -- you're wrong.  It not only has an impact its very real and in-your-face via this exact mechanism; you are being screwed daily via various disfavors (oh, you don't think they sell this data to, oh, your insurance company?) and you can't even see how your classified or why.

Well?