French prosecutors released preliminary details on Monday in a press release regarding their investigation into Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who was arrested abruptly on Saturday at Paris’ Le Bourget airport. Though not charged with any crime yet, Durov is detained as part of a probe described as “against person unnamed” and may remain in custody until Wednesday.
The inquiry, which started on July 8, encompasses extensive allegations including purported money laundering, illegal dealings in encryption tools, non-compliance with law enforcement, and involvement in drug trafficking, possession and distribution of child pornography, among other crimes.
The investigation is led by “Section J3” cybercrime prosecutors and includes teamwork with France’s Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime (C3N) and Anti-Fraud National Office (ONAF), as detailed in the press release. “It is under this procedural context that Pavel Durov was interviewed by the investigators,” stated Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau in the release.
Telegram has not replied to numerous inquiries on the investigation but claimed in a statement published on the company’s news channel on Sunday that Durov has “nothing to hide.”
“Given the existence of several preliminary investigations in France concerning Telegram in relation to the protection of minors’ rights and in cooperation with other French investigation units—for instance, on cyber harassment—the arrest of Durov, does not seem to me like a highly exceptional move,” says Cannelle Lavite, a French lawyer who specializes in free-speech matters.
Lavite notes that Durov is a French citizen who was arrested in French territory with an arrest warrant issued by French judges. She adds that the list of charges involved in the investigation is “extensive,” a wide net that she says is not entirely surprising in the context of “France’s ambiguous legislative arsenal” meant to balance content moderation and free speech.
Durov is a controversial figure for his leadership of Telegram, in large part because he has not typically cooperated with calls to moderate the platform’s content. In some ways, this has positioned him as a free-speech defender against government censorship, but it has also made Telegram a haven for hate speech, criminal activity, and abuse. Additionally, the platform is often billed as a secure communication tool, but much of it is open and accessible by default.
“Telegram is not primarily an encrypted messenger; most people use it almost as a social network, and they’re not using any of its features that have end-to-end encryption,” says John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab. “The implication there is that Telegram has a wide range of abilities and access to potentially do content moderation and respond to lawful requests. This puts Pavel Durov very much in the center of all kinds of potential governmental pressure.”
On top of all of this, many researchers have questioned whether Telegram’s end-to-end encryption is durable when users do elect to enable it.
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.”
News of Durov’s arrest is fueling concerns, though, that the move could threaten Telegram’s stability and undermine the platform. The case seems poised, too, to have implications in long-standing debates around the world about social media moderation, government influence, and use of privacy-preserving end-to-end encryption.
Lavite says the case certainly invokes debates about “the balance between the right to encrypted communication and free speech on the one hand, and users’ protection—content moderation—on the other hand.” But she notes that there is a lot of information about the investigation that is unknown and “a lot of blurry zones still.”
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. source