After Telegram’s co-founder, Pavel Durov was arrested in France, French authorities released “details” for why the arrest – which turned out to be short on details.
Yesterday, we reported on the arrest of Telegram co-founder, Pavel Durov. The nature of the arrest was simply bizarre. Durov arrived in France where he was immediately arrested. For Durov, while some were worried he was going to get arrested should he step foot in the country, he concluded he had nothing to hide as he had done nothing wrong. Of course, as Wikileaks co-founder, Julian Assange found out the hard way, just because you didn’t break any laws doesn’t necessarily mean authorities aren’t going to arrest you and invent charges against you anyway when you prove to be politically inconvenient.
In the hours following Durov’s arrest, French authorities were light on details as to why he was arrested in the first place. That left the mainstream media, who have built a reputation for having dubious credibility in recent years when it comes to technology related news stories, to speculate on why he was arrested. For them, the speculation was that Telegram was harbouring illegal content such as terrorism and that Durov was somehow linked to all of it. This while demonizing the Telegram platform by calling it “controversial” without really any shred of evidence to back up their claims. Ironically, many reporters working in the industry also use Telegram for their work, so much of the speculation of the platform itself quickly died down shortly after the wild claims were pushed.
So, the hope was that French authorities would eventually release their actual reasoning behind the arrest – especially given the high profile nature of the person the had just arrested. Unfortunately, the details of the arrest turned out to be almost as light on details as the information released earlier on. From TechDirt:
First, the report notes “the context of the judicial investigation” which may be different from what he is eventually charged with, though the issues are listed as “charges.”
I would bucket the list of charges into four categories, each of which raise concerns. If I had to put these in order of greatest concern to least, it would be as follows:
- Stuff about encryption. The last three charges are all variations on “providing a cryptology service/tool” without some sort of “prior declaration” or “certified declaration.” Apparently, France (like some other countries) has certain import/export controls on encryption. It appears they’re accusing Durov of violating those by not going through the official registration process. But, here, it’s hard not to see that as totally pretextual: an excuse to arrest Durov over other stuff they don’t like him doing.
- “Complicity” around a failure to moderate illegal materials. There are a number of charges around this. Complicity to “enable illegal transactions” for “possessing” and “distributing” CSAM, for selling illegal drugs, hacking tools, and organized fraud. But what is the standard for “complicity” here? This is where it gets worrisome. If it’s just a failure to proactively moderate, that seems very problematic. If it’s ignoring direct reports of illegal behavior, then it may be understandable. If it’s more directly and knowingly assisting criminal behavior, then things get more serious. But the lack of details here make me worry it’s the earlier options.
- Refusal to cooperate with law enforcement demands for info: This follows on from my final point in number two. There’s a suggestion in the charges (the second one) that Telegram potentially ignored demands from law enforcement. It says there was a “refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law.” This could be about encryption, and a refusal to provide info they didn’t have, or about not putting in a backdoor. If it’s either of those, that would be very concerning. However, if it’s just “they didn’t respond to lawful subpoenas/warrants/etc.” that… could be something that’s more legitimate.
- Finally, money laundering. Again, this one is a bit unclear, but it says “laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes.” It’s difficult to know how serious any of this is, as that could represent something legitimate, or it could be French law enforcement saying “and they profited off all of this!” We’ve seen charges in other contexts where the laundering claims are kind of thrown in. Details could really matter here.
In the end, though, a lot of this does seem potentially very problematic. So far, there’s been no revelation of anything that makes me say “oh, well, that seems obviously illegal.” A lot of the things listed in the charge sheet are things that lots of websites and communications providers could be said to have done themselves, though perhaps to a different degree.
So we still don’t really have enough details to know if this is a ridiculous arrest, but it does seem to be trending towards that so far. Yes, some will argue that Durov somehow “deserves” this for hosting bad content, but it’s way more complicated than that.
What I will say in all of this is that the communications by French authorities are absolutely horrendous in all of this. They could have filled the speculative void by saying, “this is what he is being charged with and this is the activity that caused him to be arrested.” That could’ve very easily cleared the air in all of this. Instead, you get vague hand-waving to various charges with precious little evidence or even concrete accusations to go along with it. Releasing these charges was French authorities opportunity to be clear on why they took these actions and they fumbled hard.
In the wake of a lack of details, this gives room for speculation, rumours, and conspiracy theories to thrive. Naturally, mainstream media seemed satisfied with the scant details and began reporting as if it has long been concluded that Durov participated in huge amounts of criminal activity. For example, here’s the Associated Press reporting on the arrest and reporting as if the criticisms of the arrest are just from Russian and related allied sources:
A French investigative judge extended police custody for the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Durov was detained Saturday at Le Bourget airport as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged criminal violations. They include complicity in selling child sexual abuse material and in drug trafficking, fraud, abetting organized crime transactions and refusing to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.
A statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office said Durov’s police custody order was extended on Monday evening for up to 48 hours. After that, authorities must release or charge him, the prosecutor’s office said in an earlier statement.
Durov is a citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.
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 among Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block Telegram but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the allegations against Durov were “very serious” and emphasized that “they require evidence that is just as serious” to quash suspicions his arrest was politically motivated.
I’ll give you a moment to finish your facepalm at the reporting.
At any rate, we don’t know if Durov did anything wrong as of yet. Did he personally partake in illegal activity or are French authorities arresting him because of content that appeared on his platform or that French authorities are upset that he won’t hand the keys to the platforms encryption over to the government? We really don’t have any answers on that at this point. While the mainstream media seems content on practically painting Durov as some sort of Russian operative, the questions will continue as to why the heck he was arrested. At least, the questions will continue until French authorities finally provide an actual reason for his arrest anyway. Until then, for all we know, he was arrested just for funzies.
