Who is Pavel Durov – and why is his arrest via Telegram so important?

It’s been a wild week for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.

The Russian billionaire and social media magnate stepped off a private jet in Paris last Saturday, arriving from Azerbaijan, and was promptly arrested after French police noticed his name on the passenger list.

Child pornography, drug trafficking, extremist propaganda, organized crime – Druov is not accused of any of these crimes.

Instead, prosecutors charged him with 12 felonies related to allegations that his messaging app, known for its encryption options, was complicit in enabling such illegal activity by users and that he refused to cooperate with law enforcement.

French authorities have been investigating Durov and Telegram for months. But his arrest came as a surprise and, critics say, could serve as a warning to the heads of other technology companies who are seen as too soft in moderating offensive content and activities on their platforms.

“I can’t think of any previous precedent where something similar has happened to someone in the tech industry in such a significant position of power,” British tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker told CBC. Front burner this week.

Durov has been provisionally released after four days of questioning and paying bail of nearly 7.5 million Canadian dollars. He is not allowed to leave France, where he is also a citizen, pending further investigation.

Here’s what you need to know about Durov, Telegram, and the consequences of his arrest.

Who is Pavel Durov?

The 39-year-old, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, founded Telegram in 2013 with his older brother Nikolai, with whom France also has a relationship. looking for arrest.

According to Telegram, Pavel supports the app “financially and ideologically, while Nikolai’s input is technological.”

Together with Nikolai, he also founded the popular Russian social media platform VKontakte (or VK) and served as its CEO from 2006 to 2014. In 2014, he sold his stake under pressure from Russian authorities.

In addition to Russia and France, he is also a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based, and of the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Durov is somewhat withdrawn and rarely gives interviews.

He has his own channel on Telegram where he shares updates about the platform, personal thoughts and photos with over 11.5 million subscribers. His last post was on August 14, on the occasion of the app’s 11th anniversary.

WATCH | Durov arrested in France:

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Arrested in France

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Sunday for allegedly facilitating criminal activity on his popular app and refusing to cooperate with authorities.

Why is encryption so important?

One of the most popular features of Telegram 950 million active users is its encryption.

Not all features are fully, or “end-to-end,” encrypted. Communications in group chats and channels can be read by Telegram, said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizenlab.

“Messages between users are not end-to-end encrypted by default.”

But the ‘secret chat’ option is end-to-end encrypted, meaning Telegram, or anyone except the intended recipients, cannot read the messages.

WhatsApp, Telegram’s larger rival, automatically offers end-to-end encrypted messaging.

However, WhatsApp is owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which has long provided user data and communications to law enforcement and government agencies.

According to Stokel-Walker, the fact that Meta is a large company headquartered in the US raises “suspicions” among some that Meta companies “might be willing to hand over some of their user data if the government asks for it.”

Why does Telegram have a shady reputation?

Encryption, and the ability to bypass law enforcement and government agencies, has attracted some shady characters to Telegram, from extremist groups to child pornography makers.

In a 2016 interview with CBS 60 minutesDurov argued that “encryption is either secure or it isn’t” and that any exception would jeopardize the “private communications of hundreds of millions of people.”

But it’s not just the encrypted chats that are a problem.

Telegram also offers group messaging, which can accommodate up to 200,000 interactive members, and channels, which allow users to broadcast announcements to an unlimited number of subscribers.

Western governments have often criticized Telegram for its lack of content moderation.

“When terrorist organizations used Telegram in the past, it took quite a long time for Telegram to respond and do something, which (Durov) “There’s a lot of criticism,” journalist Darren Loucaides told CBC Radio The current this week.

The company also has a reputation for not working with organizations that work to protect children from online sexual exploitation.

According to Stephen Sauer, director of Cybertip.ca, the national tip line of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), Telegram has increasingly become a source of child sexual abuse material in recent years, including “child exploitation techniques and tactics.”

“We have also seen situations where young people have been lured to Telegram through luring and extortion incidents,” he told CBC News.

And, he says, a lot of that happens in the open, unencrypted groups and channels. People looking for child pornography are often linked to Telegram from other places on the internet and the dark web.

Sauer says CP3 reaches out to Telegram weekly about problematic material or users, but unlike other platforms, they receive no response.

WATCH | Encrypted apps are difficult to moderate:

How encrypted messaging apps spread war disinformation

Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have become a major source of misinformation and disinformation in the war between Israel and Hamas. Disinformation experts say this is because they are difficult to moderate.

What does this mean for ‘free speech’ platforms?

Several leading advocates of freedom of expression on the internet have defended Telegram and Durov.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as what is now known as X, has spoken out in support of Durov. The self-described “free speech absolutist” shared a post on X with the hashtag #freePavel following the arrest.

Noted journalist Glenn Greenwald also said on X that holding a tech company’s CEO accountable for activities on their platform sets a “dangerous precedent” that “could be used as leverage to push companies to censor content at the request of the government.”

The controversy centers on both free speech and debate over whether executives at such companies are “directly responsible for the consequences of what users do on their devices,” Stokel-Walker said.

Sauer said the investigation into Telegram is important and should put pressure on other companies to take a more active role in preventing the spread of harmful material.