Days after his release from French custody, Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov defended himself and said that his arrest was the result of a "misguided approach".
The French-Russian founder of the messaging platform made his first public comments since the French judicial investigation, and promised to step up efforts to fight the criminal activities on the app.
In a Telegram post, Durov said, "Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach."
Highlighting the difficulty around building technology, he said that no innovator will ever build any new tools if they knew they can be personally held responsible for the potential abuse of those tools.
Insisting that his platform is not "some sort of an anarchic paradise", the Russian-born billionaire said that increasing numbers of Telegram users "caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform".
“That's why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We've already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon," he said.
Durov alleged that while being in police custody, he was told that he might be personally responsible for other people's illegal use of the messaging app, because "French authorities didn't receive responses from Telegram".
“This was surprising for several reasons,” he added.
Durov clarified that Telegram has an official representative in the European Union who responds to EU requests, with a public email address. French authorities had multiple ways to reach me to request assistance, Durov said, adding that he previously worked with them to "establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France".
"If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he said.
WHAT HAPPENED?
France's anti-fraud office authorities, who work with French customs, arrested Pavel Durov at Le Bourget Airport two weeks back for "lack of moderation" on his Telegram app. He had landed at the airport outside Paris on a flight from Azerbaijan.
The 39-year-old CEO faced allegations of his platform being allowed to be used for money laundering, drug trafficking, and sharing illegal content.
France had reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov on several charges including complicity in drug trafficking, crimes against children and fraud.
These charges were based on the allegations that Telegram's lack of content moderation paved way for illegal activities and that Durov failed to cooperate with law enforcement.
TELEGRAM DENIES CHARGES
Day after Durov's arrest, Telegram had made denied all the charges of wrongdoing against him, saying that it abides by the European Union laws and has "nothing to hide".
"Telegram abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act — its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving. Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe," read the official statement issued by the messaging platform.
It further termed the allegations levelled by the French authorities against Durov to be "absurd".
"It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform. Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. "
WHAT IS TELEGRAM?
A messaging app, which allows one-on-one conversations, group chats, and large "channels" that let people broadcast messages to subscribers, was founded in 2013 by Durov and his brother Nikolai.
In comparison to WhatsApp's limit of 1,024 limit, Telegram allows group chats of as many as 200,000 people. Several people have alleged that the platform allows easy spreading of misinformation.
The platform offers end-to-end encryption to users for their communications and contrary to the popular misconception, the feature is not on by default.
“Popular Telegram features like group chats and channels are not end-to-end encrypted. That means that Telegram can access their contents,” John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizenlab, was cited by The Associated Press.
John further said, “Similarly, messages between users are not end-to-end encrypted by default, which means that Telegram could also access these messages. Only Telegram’s opt-in ‘secret chat’ feature is end-to-end encrypted, which would prevent Telegram from accessing the chat contents.”
TELEGRAM TO BE BANNED IN INDIA?
The Indian government last week launched an investigation into the Telegram app after the recent allegations over the platform's misuse for criminal activities.
"The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) (under MHA) and MeitY have been looking into P2P communications on Telegram," a central government official were reported as saying.
"We will examine the kind of material that we get and based on our laws, we will come to a conclusion," the official said.
The probe is reportedly being conducted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
Based on the findings of the probe, the messaging platform which has over 5 million registered users in India, could also be banned.
