Telegram CEO criticizes French arrest

Police interviewed Pavel Durov for four consecutive days following his arrest last week, the founder of the social media app Telegram said on Friday, in his first public remarks about the incident. French authorities want to hold him personally accountable for criminal activity on his platform because French investigators’ didn’t receive responses to requests for information from Telegram, Durov said.

Durov said he was surprised by the charges and seemed to suggest there had been a miscommunication or lapse in communication. It was easy for law enforcement to contact his platform, Durov said. Anyone could find the email address through a simple Google search. French authorities had other ways to reach him, he added. Durov said he frequently visited the French embassy in Dubai where authorities could easily have contacted him.

Telegram abides by European Union laws and regulations and its content moderation policies matched industry standards, the social media app said last month. Furthermore, Durov said he previously helped the French government set up a hotline so law enforcement could quickly reach out to Telegram staff about possible terrorist threats.

Telegram is happy to digitally leave countries where it can’t agree with the governments about the balance between privacy and security, Durov said. He added that the app was banned from Russia and Iran. It was absurd to use laws that predate smartphones to charge a social media platform founder for crimes committed by others on the platform, Durov said. If app developers are held accountable for someone else’s improper use of their products, they will cease developing useful systems, he added.

What do French authorities have to say? Durov’s arrest had no political motivation, French President Emmanuel Macron said shortly after his arrest last week. Freedoms, both in-person and online, existed within a framework of laws and French authorities were trying to enforce those laws with Durov’s arrest, he said.

Dig deeper: Read Leo Briceno’s report in The Stew about how Congress members are looking at TikTok as a Trojan horse of Chinese cyberwarfare.