The app for independent voices
For now, Pavel Durov has been set free, pending appearance in court to answer probable charges stemming from what the French government insists are legitimate investigations of criminal activity on Durov’s Telegram platform.
Allegations against the Russia-born Durov, who is a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud and abetting organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.
Durov is not alleged to have participated in any of the presumptively criminal activity itself, but merely that Durov is refusing government requests for information.
That Russia is condemning Durov's arrest for such failure to cooperate is rich with irony, given that Durov fled Russia over similar pressures from the Kremlin regarding his previous platform startup VKontakte.
The company came under pressure during the Russian government’s crackdown following mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.
Durov had said authorities demanded that the site take down online communities of Russian opposition activists, and later that it hand over personal data of users who took part in the 2013-2014 popular uprising in Ukraine, which eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.
Criminal investigation is an eternal point of collision between civil liberties and law enforcement, a conflict which is magnified by the ongoing use of social media platforms for inarguably illegal activity. It bears mentioning that Facebook has come under fire for allowing a literal slave trade to take place, with domestic servants from the Middle East and Northern Africa being “advertised” on Instagram as well as the main Facebook platform.
An undercover investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that domestic workers are being illegally bought and sold online in a booming black market.
Some of the trade has been carried out on Facebook-owned Instagram, where posts have been promoted via algorithm-boosted hashtags, and sales negotiated via private messages.
At the same time, political dissident voices are themselves criminalized by authoritarian regimes such as in Russia and Iran, two countries where Telegram is extremely popular.
To what extent are private citizens and private enterprises obligated to assist governments in their investigations of “criminal” activity? To what extent does the defense of Free Speech obligate platform providers to not assist government investigations?
Ultimately, despite the protestations of the French government to the contrary, Durov's arrest still comes off as an authoritarian response to a private citizen and company unwilling to serve as an extension of the government’s efforts to police speech and online communication.
Rights to Free Speech and privacy are fundamental, and even those engaged in illegal activity still retain their full measure of civil liberties.
Demanding that people inform on each other is simply not a demand that reconciles either to a defense of Free Speech or of privacy.
