Telegram founder Pavel Durov spoke out for the first time after being fired in France, saying that Telegram was "preparing to leave markets that are incompatible with its principles."
Durov speaks out for the first time since being replaced in France
Durov was detained while transiting France on 8/24. Although the judge later granted him bail of 5 million euros, he was prohibited from leaving France. France has also opened a formal investigation into Durov's alleged conspiracy to operate online platforms that allowed illegal transactions, child sexual abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud, as well as withholding information from authorities, laundering money and providing encryption services to criminals.
India, Indonesia and South Korea are also scrambling to investigate Telegram for allegedly facilitating crime.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov spoke out on Telegram for the first time after the incident. In addition to clarifying false rumors about him and Telegram during this period, he also stated that Telegram was ready to leave markets that were incompatible with its principles.
We don't do this for the money. We are driven by delivering benefits to people and defending their fundamental rights, especially where these rights are violated.
Posted by Pavel Durov (original translation)
Thank you all for your support and love!
Last month, I was questioned by the police for four days upon my arrival in Paris. I was told that I could be personally liable for someone else's illegal use of Telegram because the French authorities had not heard back from Telegram.
This is surprising for several reasons:
1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU who is responsible for accepting and responding to EU requests. Its email address is publicly available for anyone in the EU to search for "Telegram EU law enforcement address" on Google.
2. The French authorities have several ways to contact me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I am a regular visitor to the French Consulate in Dubai. Not long ago, at request, I personally helped them set up a hotline with Telegram to deal with the terrorist threat in France.
3. If a country is dissatisfied with an online service, the common practice is to initiate legal proceedings against the service itself. It is misleading to use laws from the pre-smartphone era to accuse a CEO of third-party crimes committed on the platforms he manages. Developing technology is hard enough on its own. Innovators would not develop new tools if they knew they could be held personally responsible for the potential misuse of those tools.
Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You must align privacy laws with law enforcement requirements and local laws with EU law. You have to consider technical limitations. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally while ensuring they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We remain committed to working with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect users in authoritarian regimes. But we're always open to dialogue.
Sometimes we are unable to agree with a country's regulator on the appropriate balance between privacy and security. In this case, we are ready to leave that country. We've done it many times. When Russia asked us to hand over our "encryption keys" for surveillance, we refused and Telegram was banned in Russia. When Iran asked us to block access to peaceful protesters, we refused – Telegram is banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that do not align with our principles because we are not doing it for the money. We are driven by delivering benefits to people and defending their fundamental rights, especially where these rights are violated.
None of this means Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities may be confused about where to send requests is something we should improve on. But claims by some media outlets that Telegram is some kind of anarchist haven are absolutely untrue. We remove millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (such as http://t.me/stopCA or https://t.me/isiswatch ). We have established a direct hotline with NGOs to handle urgent review requests more quickly.
However, we hear some voices saying that this is not enough. Telegram's sudden increase in user numbers to 950 million creates opportunities for criminals to abuse our platform more easily. That’s why I’ve made it a personal goal to ensure we make significant improvements in this area. We have started this process internally and I will share more details about our progress with you soon.
I hope the events of August will make Telegram, and the entire social networking industry, safer and stronger. Thank you again for your love!
This article Say goodbye to France? Telegram founder Durov: Leave if the ideas don’t match first appeared on Lian News ABMedia.
