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August 27, 2024 - 12:15pm
Surfing Telegram channels is rarely a pleasant experience. One is met with an infinite splurge of Videodrome-esque gore: Russian and Ukrainian soldiers’ final moments as drones drop explosives on them; Mexican cartel beheadings; glimpses of the unfiltered horrors in Gaza. While it remains legal, the partly encrypted communication network truly is the digital Wild West.
Yet over the weekend the app’s founder, Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, was arrested after he flew into Paris on his private jet for allegedly failing to curb criminal activity on the platform.
Durov is an ardent supporter of free speech. He adopts a laissez-faire approach to moderation on his platform and denies requests by police and government authorities to hand over user data. In 2014, he left Russia for Dubai because he refused to disseminate Russian propaganda on his platform. While Telegram is often heralded as an encrypted service, end-to-end encryption must be turned on manually and doesn’t work in group chats of more than two people.
It is no secret that Telegram hosts a number of illicit activities — typically drug trafficking and terrorist recruitment. The app has also failed to deal with a growing child sexual abuse issue, to which citing a policy of “free speech” is obviously not a valid response for inaction. French police have also charged Durov with failing to communicate with authorities about illicit activities, and with complicity in some of these crimes.
However, more than many of its competitors, Telegram is also a valuable tool for news and open-source intelligence (Osint) research, particularly in times of war. What’s more, people living under authoritarian regimes use it for safe communication. Telegram has nearly a billion users — the vast majority are undoubtedly not using it for illicit means.
But it is unsurprising that Durov’s arrest should happen in France. For years the French authorities have been finding EncroChat devices at drug busts. EncroChat was an encrypted phone network with over 60,000 users often used by drug traffickers to coordinate and execute their illicit endeavours across Europe. In 2020, French authorities found the servers and hacked into them, collecting millions of messages from the criminal underworld. The hack led to the arrest of thousands of criminals globally, including over 3,000 in the UK.
As with the Durov case, French authorities have sought to hold the head of EncroChat to account, extraditing Paul Krusky from the Dominican Republic in 2022 and claiming he knowingly sold the encrypted devices to criminals. These same authorities then came after the world’s largest encrypted messaging service, Sky ECC, which was also used extensively by drug dealers across Europe.
These government hacks blur the boundaries of what is acceptable surveillance in the digital age. In the case of organised criminals, targeted surveillance seems morally uncomplicated. But these encrypted networks are also used by law-abiding civilians, many of whom are fearful of surveillance on less secure networks. It’s not that they have anything to hide, but instead that they are unsettled by the principle of having no privacy. The hacking of EncroChat and Sky ECC meant that legal users, along with criminals, had their conversations monitored and their messages recorded.
French lawyer Guillaume Martine, who has been challenging the legality of the EncroChat hack, claimed on Sunday that Durov’s arrest is a “spectacular confirmation of a shift made in recent years by the French justice system concerning encrypted messaging: the idea that these messaging services constitute, in essence, the tool of crime”. The change in the past couple of years with Durov’s arrest and Krusky’s extradition seems to be holding owners directly accountable for user activity on their platforms. The eccentric Durov’s commitment to unfettered freedom of expression puts him at odds with the French authorities, who appear to prioritise the rule of law over free speech.
Should apps and encrypted messaging services be held responsible for the illicit activities that users carry out on their networks? Crime must be dealt with, but Telegram prioritises user privacy and security, which in many cases limits the platform’s ability to monitor and moderate content. Denying any culpability for failing to prevent often horrific activities on your platform in the name of free speech is not sufficient. Then again, striking the balance between safety and freedom is never simple.
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SubscribeIn the eyes of the authorities we are all collectively guilty and we must prove our innocence.
I’m sure Durov will get a fair trial. After all, France is a civilised country.
Every time I see your name I think of Martin Bormann but I can’t figure out why.
It’s probably because Bormann starts with an “M”.
I freely ask…the rule of whose law?
France’s law. It’s in the headline.
It seems to me he was making the point of who does the law serve. But i’m sure you knew that.
The answer is presumably “the French People”.
I find it hard to believe that you’re satisfied with that answer.
I can only assume you haven’t met the French.
Law by Rule, not Rule of Law.
The change in the past couple of years with Durov’s arrest and Krusky’s extradition seems to be holding owners directly accountable for user activity on their platforms.
.
Carmakers should be jailed for all accidents on French roads. And May Macron Be Happy
I think the analogy is that carmakers should be held liable for assisting bank robbers escaping in cars and child abductors for using their car for nefarious ends.
These platforms simply enable people to communicate just as carmakers enable them to travel.
Ideally from the government’s point of view all cars would be fitted with a secret back door switch that the authorities could use to disable the car as soon as they became aware that it was being used for a nefarious purpose. So Governments want to be able to catch the malefactors and their enemies generally by having a secret back door to these platforms. Many of us would approve this in the case of criminal activity such as child pornographers but do we trust governments in general to draw the line where we would draw it?
Durov has left Russia when the Russian government wanted to make it easier to track their enemies – people we would probably want to support and now finds himself arrested by a different type of authoritarian government.
He should have been a bit smarter about which country his private jet lands in then, shouldn’t he?
Do you mean he should live in fear?
No, I mean that he should be aware that some countries don’t like what he gets up to (about which there is no secret), and avoid going to those countries. To put it another way, if one is a prominent internet critic of (say) Vladimir Putin, going to Russia on holidays might not be a smart idea.
I guess he misjudged France.
Well, tough luck for him. I hope he finds French jails to his liking.
So he’s guilty. Even though he hasn’t had a trial yet.
No, he is only guilty if he is convicted. However, going through an arduous criminal trial doesn’t sound like fun, and by being just a little smarter, he could have avoided it.
Once again we’re up against meanings.
”failing to communicate with authorities about illicit activities”.
What is illicit? Some of it’s obviously clear cut and our objection is probably due to our own sense of something morally wrong and consequently a crime we understand. We don’t really need to have a government inform us about what is right and wrong in those acts. But the rest. That seems to be a matter of government overreach or in fact control.Is it only the content that breaks the law they’re after? And if it’s not then they’re going to apply some sort of subjective “illicit” meaning to what they don’t like. They may simply be a journalist and their sources or just public unencrypted content that seeks to inform others of a planned strike or demonstration, as happened during covid, where they were arrested. If Telegram can be intimidated then it’s open season.
Maybe Macron himself could be arrested for running a country in which criminal activity occurs.
You hit the nail on the head
Public safety has been the default excuse for censorship by every dictator ever. This has been reinforced by Zuckerberg again in regards to Covid censorship by the Biden administration. This arrest will do nothing to stem the flow of illegal activity anywhere. It does send a message to Musk and other tech moguls that they too can be arrested and detained..
That last bit surely isn’t a bad thing.
But arrested and charged with what?
I’m sure he will be able to read the charge sheet.
But you thought it wasn’t a bad thing, so charged with what?
Providing a safe haven for child abusers to conduct their activities unchecked (to give but one example).
But isn’t that essentially the point? can he really control that? I don’t know. But is that all it’s about? Can he control encrypted content?
Of course he can. If he created the encryption, he can surely “uncreate it” in appropriate circumstances.
This is awful. The old owners of Twitter did nothing to stop child abuse. Nothing.
Just like most Labour councils then?
And the Catholic Church.
Seriously Martin. This if how you seriously feel? Men like Musk should be arrested. I can’t begin to put to words how repulsive this is.
I can’t begin to put to words how repulsive I find Musk. He should of course only be arrested and charged for crimes he has in fact committed, but if he ends up in a similar place to SBF, you cannot imagine how little sleep I would lose.
So, you find someone repulsive and, therefore, they should be thrown in prison?
A peculiar, but not very original stance, I would say…
No, I mean I find Musk repulsive on a personal level. He is a creepy weirdo of galactic proportions. However, that is not a crime, and he should only be imprisoned if he is convicted of a crime. However, if that does happen, the beers are on me.
Well said!
He shold have flown to Holland a happy narco state.