Telegram CEO Pavel Durov Formally Charged in France ⇥ lemonde.fr
Cyrille Louis, Le Figaro, originally in French and translated here with DeepL:
After four days in police custody, Pavel Dourov, founder and boss of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, was indicted in Paris on Wednesday evening by two examining magistrates for a litany of offences relating to organised crime, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced in a statement. The 39-year-old entrepreneur was released under a strict judicial supervision order, which includes the obligation to post a €5 million bond, to report to the police twice a week and to refrain from leaving French territory.
The charges are related to criminal uses of Telegram’s platform and its refusal to cooperate with authorities. I know there are some people who are worried about the potential implications of this for other services. I am not yet sure whether these concerns are merited.
Anyway, what legal issues arise from the investigation? The content moderation ones are easiest; if Telegram has been notified of CSAM, etc. and has failed to act then it loses the hosting immunity under Art 6 DSA and may be liable under French law on complicity.
The issue of failure to respond to official requests for data may be more difficult. The Telegram entities seem to be based in multiple non-EU jurisdictions, including the British Virgin Islands and Dubai, and Telegram may attempt to argue that French orders do not have extraterritorial effect.
Adam Satariano and Cecilia Kang, of the New York Times, compared Durov’s arrest to those of Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom and the Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht, neither of which I find particularly controversial. Perhaps I should; let me know if you think either arrest was unjustified. If Durov knew about criminal activity on Telegram and took little action to curtail it — which seems to be the case — it seems reasonable to hold him accountable for his company’s facilitation of that activity.
And from an un-bylined story in Le Monde:
His [Durov’s] lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski said it was “absurd” to suggest Durov could be implicated in any crime committed on the app, adding: “Telegram complies in all respects with European rules concerning digital technology.”
Separately, Durov is also being investigated on suspicion of “serious acts of violence” towards one of his children while he and an ex-partner, the boy’s mother, were in Paris, a source said. She also filed another complaint against Durov in Switzerland last year.
Maybe Durov is a piece of shit and Telegram sucks and this is also worrisome for civil liberties. But we do not yet have evidence for any of these things yet.