Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested in France, source says | in re criminality, "lack of moderators and a lack of cooperation with police"

essentialsaltes said:

There was no official confirmation from France of the arrest, which French and Russian media have also reported, saying that Durov was arrested shortly after arriving at Le Bourget airport on a private jet from Azerbaijan.

France's BFM and TF1 said that Durov, who has dual French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation into allowing possible criminality due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a lack of cooperation with police. Reuters' police source could not confirm that.

Russia began blocking Telegram in 2018 after the app refused to comply with a court order to grant state security services access to its users' encrypted messages.

Telegram's increasing popularity, however, has prompted scrutiny from several countries in Europe, including France, on security and data breach concerns.

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Telegram app founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested at French airport

Billionaire CEO, who was travelling aboard his private jet, was subject of arrest warrant, according to TV reports

www.theguardian.com

Pavel Durov - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

DaisyDay said:

Should Musk be worried?

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DaisyDay said:

Should Musk be worried?

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essentialsaltes said:

Arrest of Telegram’s Durov inflames debate over online crime and free speech​

The arrest in France of the site’s Russia-born founder highlights ongoing disputes over social media’s responsibility for spreading child sexual abuse material and other criminal content.

Durov was being temporarily detained in connection with distributing child sex abuse material and drugs, money laundering and working with organized crime, according to a statement released by French prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

The accusations also included improper use of cryptography and failure to allow authorized law enforcement interception, flash points in the efforts by some governments to force companies to reveal private messages between users. The prosecutor’s statement said the probe is of an unnamed person, allowing for the possibility that Durov is not the ultimate target.

Former Facebook anti-terror chief Brian Fishman said on Threads that the issue was not just insufficient moderation, a criticism many platforms have faced. Telegram, he wrote, “has been the key hub for ISIS for a decade. It tolerates [child sexual abuse material]. It’s ignored reasonable [law-enforcement] engagement for YEARS. It’s not ‘light’ content moderation; it’s a different approach entirely.”

Law enforcement agencies across the globe have long focused on the app because it has become a tool of choice for child predators, terrorist organizations, narcotics traffickers and far-right extremists for communicating and organizing their activities.

Telegram’s terms of service say it does not allow users to post pornographic content on public channels but also states that it does not moderate private messages between users or group chats that are not public. [my emphasis]

A June report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found that Telegram was the only major platform not to prohibit illegal material in private channels and chats.

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