Pavel Durov explained why the British surveillance plan is not only useless but also dangerous

But the old tale about the dragon, which was impossible to defeat, because every knight who killed him turned into the one with whom he fought - a dragon living in the same cave.

In a world where politicians are obsessed with the fight against terrorism, regardless of price, there is a risk that they will win by depriving us of our freedoms, just like in the environments that generate terrorists.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, who called Facebook a haven for terrorists two months ago, yesterday announced a project to block all communications that his government cannot listen to. As usual, under the pretext of combating terrorism.
')
The intelligence program proposed by Mr. Cameron will not help in the fight against real terrorism. Serious terrorist organizations have many ways to bypass the interception. In addition to the good old conventional language, they can use programs that hide information in invisible graphic noises in funny pictures. They can embed information into encrypted noises within harmless voice messages or in metadata of random videos. Opportunities do not count.

As a result, Mr. Cameron will be wasting taxpayer money. Unless, of course, his true purpose is anything else.

If we look at the statistics and irrefutable facts, terrorism is not the most serious threat we face today. There are hundreds of terrible diseases that kill thousands of times more people than terrorists, not to mention the accident. In fact, every year more people die by slipping on a rug in the bathroom than from terrorists. But politicians devote a disproportionate amount of time to these problems. On the contrary, they are usually interested in those areas that can increase their own strength and resources - at the expense of our freedom and money.

Of course, terrorists attract more of our attention than diseases or accidents, because they attack our values. And that’s why Mr. Cameron’s surveillance plan is so dangerous. If the law proposed by the Prime Minister ever passes, the terrorists will win more than any expectations. They succeeded in coercing us into betraying values. If Britain, one of the Lighthouse of Freedom, passes such restrictive laws, then other countries will probably follow the example, and Western civilization will begin to change.

In the end, we will have surveillance cameras in each bedroom (remember, “this is for your own safety” and “if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide”), there will be no explosions. Not because these cameras will actually prevent terrorist attacks. There will be no explosions, because after we accept their notions of fear and control, the terrorists will no longer have any conflict with our civilization.

We killed the dragon. And this cave will be our new home.