Access Now is following with great concern the recent news of French authorities’ detention of Telegram Co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov on August 24, 2024.
We understand from the Paris public prosecutor’s official press release that they have opened a judicial investigation against “an unnamed person” with respect to specific alleged crimes, some of which relate to the administration of an online platform to enable an illegal transaction and refusal to provide, at the request of authorized authorities, information or documents necessary for the investigation. Based on this press release, our understanding is that Durov is being held in custody pursuant to the criminal investigation, and may or may not be charged or be engaged in another capacity, such as as a witness.
To be clear, Telegram is no model for corporate responsibility. Access Now and our partners have been vocal about Telegram’s lack of clear and transparent policies when it comes to content moderation, and its lack of workable support channels and accessible remedy for abuses on the platform. Without a human rights policy, or a team able to conduct human rights due diligence, Telegram fails to meet industry standards. Access Now and other digital security experts have also criticized Telegram’s deficient privacy and digital security measures.
For example, Telegram does not use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) — a tool that ensures that only the sender and intended recipient(s) can see the message — on all its chats by default. People need to manually opt-in to use E2EE “secret chats,” which are limited to two users, meaning that group chats are never end-to-end encrypted. Furthermore, Telegram uses its own proprietary, partially closed-source cryptography protocol, instead of existing mature and tested protocols, making it the only major messaging app supporting E2EE messenger to take this path. The failure to enable E2EE by default, and the lack of open-source and tested protocols verified by security researchers, endangers the privacy and security of Telegram’s communications.
We urge French authorities to strictly adhere to the rule of law and procedural safeguards, as well as human rights standards, in their prosecution, and to refrain in particular from using any heavy-handed tactics that would be incompatible with the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality.
Pavel Durov’s detention is concerning, especially in light of recent incidents such as French authorities threatening to cut off social media and blocking TikTok during moments of social unrest, all while France strengthens its surveillance apparatus. Detaining the staff of platforms that people use to exercise their rights to free expression and peaceful assembly, without demonstrable alignment with human rights principles, may result in over-censorship, and could further shrink civic spaces.
We call on all governments to reject measures that disrupt entire social media and communications platforms, that undermine, circumvent, or hamper access to E2EE, or incentivize mass privacy violations and censorship.