Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is in France for a criminal investigation into the platform’s failure to cooperate with law enforcement requests: a press release
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov continues to be detained in France in connection with a criminal investigation into the messaging app’s failure to cooperate with law enforcement requests, authorities in Paris announced on Monday.
Durov is a French citizen who was arrested in French territory with an arrest warrant issued by French judges. She said the list of charges involved in the investigation was not entirely surprising in the context of France’s ambiguous legislative arsenal meant to balance free speech and content moderation.
A person unnamed was launched an investigation last month for crimes including the spread of child pornography, peddling illegal drugs and failing to cooperate with authorities during a probe into organized fraud.
“At the heart of the case is the lack of moderation and cooperation of the platform,” said Jean-Michel Bernigaud, a top police official in France wrote on LinkedIn. Particularly in the fight against child pornography.
It’s been criticized that Telegram didn’t take action against the groups that have served as recruiting hubs for terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State and Hamas.
Former Facebook executive Brian Fishman who studies counter-terrorism wrote on Threads that Telegram has ignored law enforcement requests examining terror groups and child pornography for years.
French president Emmanuel Macron said in a social media post on Monday that “France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication … The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision.”
The investigation was initiated by “Section J3” cybercrime prosecutors and has involved collaboration with France’s Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime (C3N) and Anti-Fraud National Office (ONAF), according to the press release. “It is within this procedural framework in which Pavel Durov was questioned by the investigators,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau wrote in the statement.
The case raises questions of the balance between the right to free speech and users’ protection on one side and the ability to communicate in engorged form on the other. But she notes that there is a lot of information about the investigation that is unknown and “a lot of blurry zones still.”
How Did Telegram Break the App Store? What Should We Tell the CEO before He Set Foot on Facebook? Insights from Durov’s Case in France
On Monday afternoon, Telegram seemed to be receiving a download boost from the situation, moving from 18th to 8th place in Apple’s US App Store apps ranking. Global iOS downloads were up by 4 percent, and in France the app was number one in the App Store social network category and number three overall.
Durov’s arrest also raises the question of what should push a platform into legal liability. Serious crimes happen on Facebook and nearly every other major social network, but in at least some cases, someone at the company wasn’t warned about it and didn’t take action. It’s possible Durov was clearly, directly involved in a criminal conspiracy — but short of that, how ineffectual can a company’s moderation get before its CEO is detained the next time they set foot on European soil?
Scott-Railton thinks that this case shows how many people care about the ability to communicate safely and privately with each other.
European and US police have increasingly targeted encrypted chat platforms used by criminals in recent years, hacking a platform called EncroChat and even going as far as to secretly run an encrypted phone company called Anom. Those platforms focused on serving criminals. Telegram is for the general public. Durov claimed in an interview with Carlson that the FBI tried to persuade Telegram to put a surreptitious back door.
In posts on X, University of Lorraine law professor Florence G’sell noted that the most serious charges against Durov are the ones alleging direct criminal conspiracy and a refusal to cooperate with the police. By contrast, the charges around declaring encryption tech for import seem like minor offenses. (Notably, in the United States, certain import / export controls on encryption have been found to be violations of the First Amendment.) There are still unknowns on which criminal codes Durov could be charged under but the main issue seems to be giving tech to criminals.
Telegram: From a messaging app to a safe haven for all sorts of criminals, from scammers to terrorists: A brief review
The brothers started Telegram in order to create a messaging app. While it’s sometimes portrayed as an “encrypted chat app,” it’s mostly popular as a semi-public communication service like Discord, particularly in countries like Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and India.
It’s a massive platform that is used by millions of innocent people every day, but it’s also gained a reputation for being a safe haven for all sorts of criminals, from scammers to terrorists.