Telegram CEO Arrested in France for Strong App Encryption
Written by Chriss Street
French billionaire Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram as fourth largest global chat app, was arrested and charged in France for “complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions by an organized group” and “complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud.”
Telegram offers encrypted direct chat and group messaging, plus broadcast channels for 700 million users in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Ukraine, and other countries where it acts as both a chat and a news app. Because of the strength of its encryption, Telegram is also considered the default app of the Russian military.
According to Tribunal Judiciaire De Paris, France’s largest court, Durov was arrested following an investigation that started last month regarding Telegram’s failure to provide documents regarding illegal crypto-enabled distribution of child abuse material, drugs, money laundering and organized fraud.
According to 404 Media, the real reason for the arrest was related to Manhattan Institute intellectual Christopher Rufo supposedly “targeting” the encrypted open-source Signal messaging app as unsafe for conservatives after the platform went “woke” by adding National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher to its Board of Directors in April.
Rufo quoted Maher’s Twitter biased posts during the 2020 election, when she was CEO for Web Summit and Wikimedia Foundation prior to taking over NPR last month. Rufo claimed the posts demonstrated Maher’s strident support for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, and rabid opposition to former President Donald Trump.
Rufo specifically highlighted Maher’s advocacy for critical race theory language and other progressive initiatives. Maher in 2020 stated that: “looting is counterproductive,” but it was “hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.”
Durov supposedly sensing an opportunity to gain app market share, actively promoted Telegram as a “truly safe alternative.” He also was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s YouTube show in April, where he extolled the virtue of Telegraph unique encryption.
Conservatives, like court intellectual Balaji Srinivasan, howled that “this is another battle in the struggle between Network and State” Adding that Durov’s only crime “appears to be enabling free speech online.”
Tucker Carlson sarcastically added: “It wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech… a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies.”
The arrest comes less than a week after Facebook Founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg turned “state's evidence” in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigations into the 2020 election. Zuckerburg signed a letter admitting that Facebook colluded with federal agencies including the FBI, Homeland Security, the State Department, Stanford University and others in a scheme of deceit to rig the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
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