Telegram founder Pavel Durov questioned over cyber crime charges

Judicial matter

Data of Durov’s arrest used to be at the beginning reported on LinkedIn by Jean-Michel Bernigaud, secretary general of Ofmin, France’s youngster protection unit. Bernigaud’s LinkedIn accounts and posts appear to possess since been deleted.

French president Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that Durov’s arrest used to be a judicial matter in preference to a political circulate. “France is deeply dedicated to freedom of expression and verbal substitute, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship,” he said. “It would possibly well stay so. The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took station as phase of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no manner a political resolution. It is as a lot as the judges to rule on the matter.”

Durov, who used to be born within the former Soviet Union, primarily based Russian social network VK – Russia’s identical of Facebook – nonetheless left the nation in 2014, after being positioned beneath tension by the Russian govt to portray recordsdata on users of the platform.

In an interview with US beautiful-soar commentator Tucker Carlson in April, Durov claimed that he moved to Dubai after going thru similar tension from the US govt to introduce backdoors into Telegram. He said the company employed 30 engineers and had no HR division. The corporate depends fully on note of mouth to buy original users.

Telegram positions itself as an anti-censorship platform, claiming to possess played a prominent role in pro-democracy movements in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Hong Kong.

The carrier gives encrypted messaging functionality utilizing “secret chats”. Unlike other encrypted messaging apps, equivalent to Signal or WhatsApp, encryption is now no longer grew to change into on by default.

It lets in messages to be shared in groups of as a lot as 200,000 of us and for discipline fabric to be broadcast over channels to astronomical audiences.

Encryption breaches

The French indictment accuses Durov of breaching France’s licensed pointers restricting the provision of cryptographic products and services without “prior declaration”.

Below French regulations, operators of encrypted communications products and services can also face fines, jail sentences or confiscation of their merchandise without seeking formal approval.

Regulation enforcement companies and governments had been inserting tension on encrypted messaging products and services to introduce technology equivalent to consumer-side scanning to detect illegal whine.

In August, the National Crime Company, within the wake of the Huw Edwards scandal, claimed that technology used to be accessible to establish illegal photography, nonetheless that tech corporations equivalent to WhatsApp weren’t utilizing it.

On the opposite hand, such proposals to require tech corporations to exhaust technologies to establish illegal photography in encrypted products and services had been broadly criticised by leading cryptographers and laptop scientists, who argue that such technology will basically undermine the usage of encryption.

Durov’s arrest has raised issues for other services of encrypted messaging products and services. Andy Yen, CEO and founding father of encrypted mail carrier Proton, described the costs in opposition to Durov as “insane” in a put up on X. “If sustained, I don’t explore how tech founders will seemingly be in a blueprint to bolt to France, worthy less rent in France. Right here’s economic suicide, and is impulsively and completely altering the thought of founders and merchants.

He said the extraterritorial nature of the costs in opposition to Durov used to be also troubling. “France is pronouncing that a carrier working on servers in a foreign jurisdiction and primarily based totally foreign can now be discipline to its jurisdiction,” he wrote. “The single [French] connection is that Durov made the error of acquiring FR nationality.”