Telegram Messaging Platform Founder Arrested

Uploaded on 2024-08-27 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Social Media, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Russian born Billionaire CEO Pavel Durov, who was travelling aboard his private jet, was arrested in France on Saturday 24th August.

The youthful Chief Executive of the widely used Telegram encrypted messaging platform is being held by French police for alleged offences related to a range of criminal offences which are facilitated via the Telegram app, which has almost one billion users worldwide.

The alleged offences including fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, cyberbullying, and terrorism promotion and Durov is accused of failing to take action to restrict the criminal use of his platform. French authorities are reported to say that Durov is refusing to cooperate, while his supporter insist he has "nothing to hide".

Russian government officials have expressed outrage at his detention, with some calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows amongst Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block Telegram but later withdrew the ban in 2020. "We immediately asked French authorities to explain the reasons for this detention and demanded that his rights be protected and that consular access be granted. Up to now, the French side is refusing to cooperate on this question," the Russian embassy said in a statement.

Responding to the news, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President said Telegram’s founder had “miscalculated” by fleeing Russia and thinking that he would never have to cooperate with the security services abroad.

Durov has said he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government when working at VK, a social network he created before selling it and leaving Russia in 2014. He then tried to settle in Berlin, London, Singapore and San Francisco, before choosing Dubai, which he praised for its business environment and "neutrality". Medvedev has related a subsequent conversation with Durov several years ago in which Medvedev told him that if he did not want to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, he would have problems in any country.

By basing itself in Dubai, Telegram has been able to shield itself from laws on content moderation at a time when Western countries are pressuring large platforms to remove illegal content.

Telegram has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms, including WhatsApp and Twitter which have both been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users' personal data. In contrast, Telegram has committed to never disclosing any information about its users. People "love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram", Durov told US TV personality, Tucker Carlson.

Unlike Whatspp and Signal, Telegram does not encrypyt messages end-to-end, unless users specifically select that feature, and it could pass messages to law enforcement if it chose to.

The service is hosted on servers in multiple jursisdictions and government agencies would need to obtain warrants from differrn countries simulatneously to enforce access.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which has led to accusations that it makes it easier for false information to spread virally, as well as for users to disseminate neo-Nazi, paedophilic, conspiratorial and terrorist content. Competitor messaging service WhatsApp introduced worldwide limits on message forwarding in 2019 after it was accused of enabling the spread of false information in India.

In Britain, the app has been scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising the violent disorder in English cities earlier this August. Telegram did remove some groups, but overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is considered to be significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps.

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