Arrest of Telegram founder adds impetus to online freedom debate

PARIS: The arrest of Russian-born billionaire and tech industry founder Pavel Durov has drawn French police into a heated debate over freedom of expression online that could have global implications.

Durov, founder of the hugely popular messaging service Telegram, was arrested on Saturday night and is accused of failing to tackle various forms of crime on his platform.

Telegram immediately condemned the action, calling it “absurd” to hold him personally responsible for misusing the platform.

The company was joined by a chorus of outrage, led by industry giant and self-proclaimed free speech advocate Elon Musk.

However, others have pointed out that Durov, one of the world’s most influential tech companies, may have come under fire itself.

“Crime and hate speech are increasing on Telegram, but Durov is extremely reluctant to cooperate,” Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, told AFP.

“If he had cooperated a little more, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in this situation.”

He suggested that Musk might be concerned because he has refused to cooperate in the past and even challenged officials on his platform X, formerly Twitter.

The arrest underscores a general trend among lawmakers and law enforcement officials becoming less tolerant of special requests from tech executives.

‘Confusing and contradictory’

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) undermines the logic that companies are not responsible for content by forcing platforms to monitor what their users do or risk severe penalties.

Britain, the United States and the European Union are also busy pushing laws that would force services like Telegram to create backdoors in encrypted messages.

Governments claim that they need this access to investigate criminal behavior, often seeing it as a fight against child sexual exploitation.

Free speech advocates have joined forces with technological freedom advocates and civil rights activists to oppose these developments. This coalition pushes back against traditional left-right divides.

Australian researcher Timothy Koskie wrote on the website The Conversation that Durov’s arrest was “another step in the often confusing and contradictory negotiation over the extent to which platforms bear responsibility for the content on their sites”.

If Durov were convicted, he wrote, it could “prompt countries around the world to launch their own investigations.”

But Florence G’sell of the University of Lorraine in France argued that the debate is really about the level of privacy we want when using messaging services.

“Do we want complete protection from any form of surveillance?” she asked.

“Or do we lift the encryption and force companies to provide data to the authorities?”

‘No exceptions’

The irony of Durov’s arrest is that, by his own admission, he was forced to flee Russia in 2014 when he became embroiled in a very similar debate.

He claims that Russian intelligence ordered him to hand over data on various anti-Kremlin groups.

When he refused, he was threatened and eventually forced to relinquish control of VKontakte, another social network he had founded.

Since then, he has been a tireless advocate for online freedoms, no matter the cost.

“You can’t make just one exception for law enforcement without endangering the privacy of hundreds of millions of people,” Durov told 60 Minutes in 2016.

“Encryption is either secure or it isn’t.”

Durov may feel hurt by his arrest while Musk is being received during his visit to the presidential palace in Paris.

G’sell pointed out that French investigators have a hard time getting cooperation from Musk’s X, and that Google takes forever to hand over emails, even those related to serious crimes.

“French researchers often say that it takes six to eight months to get just three emails (from Google),” she said.