Pavel Durov, the Russian billionaire and founder and CEO of messaging service Telegram who also holds French citizenship, has been arrested on entering France. He is accused of doing too little to combat the use of Telegram for criminal activities such as drug trafficking, fraud and sexualised violence against children and of not cooperating with the investigating authorities.
The secret services will also have their reasons
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Internet lawyer Kostjantyn Korsun sees the arrest as a logical step. He writes on Ukraine's Censor.net:
“You can't spit in the face of the police in the world's most powerful countries for years and hope to get away with it. You can't simply ignore the international 'rules of the game' that require certain content to be removed. And you can't beat competitors by ignoring the boundaries of what is permissible. ... I suspect that among the accusations that have not been made public, one is cooperation with the secret services of the terrorist state [Russia]. I am sure that the French special intelligence service DGSI has already compiled a thick dossier on this subject.”
Telegram is not a media outlet
Writing on Facebook, Russian human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek describes the conflict between state monitoring and freedom of expression:
“On the one hand, why not assist the police of a democratic state in finding real criminals? On the other hand, the police are the police. ... Telegram is a messenger service, not a mass medium. Should Durov censor correspondence? By that logic, telephone companies should also eavesdrop on their subscribers' conversations and prevent illegal activities. Is that okay in a democracy? In China, Russia, Belarus and other countries under despotic regimes, it is.”
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The Russian army's only messaging service
Russia's reaction is panic-driven, says Croatia's Jutarnji list:
“Following Durov's arrest, Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, published a number of comments taken from Russian social networks on X. He sees a lot of speculation and panic there. There are comments saying things like: 'Durov allegedly requested a meeting with Putin in Baku a few days ago and was refused.' 'Durov's arrest may be like the cracking of the Enigma code by the British during the Second World War: Telegram is the only messaging service used by the Russian army. All its messages could end up in the hands of the West', and 'The Russian agent network could be exposed'.”
Both a blessing and a curse
In an X post republished by Russia's Echo, Russian human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov makes the case for international standards for the moderation of online content:
“Some claim that Durov has been passing on information to the Russian authorities for a long time, and there have been precedents confirming that. But I also know that without Telegram, resistance to the Russian regime would now be almost impossible. After Pavel Durov is released, the global community needs to engage in a major discussion on this issue. ... Perhaps democratic countries should set up a sort of international committee to develop standardised regulations for the moderation of all major information platforms. A certain minimum effort must be made to combat things like the dissemination of illegal goods and materials through these networks.”
Reprinted from Eurotopics. You can find the original here.
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