Now that France has sued the founder of Telegram for failing to stop illegal activity on his platform, other tech companies may be thinking it wise to turn to Europe themselves.
Russian-born Pavel Durov is accused of “complicity” in running an online platform that facilitated illegal transactions, child sexual abuse images and other illegal content.
French lawyers told AFP it is “unprecedented” that an individual can be held criminally liable for what users do on a technology platform.
Chat apps like Telegram, which has more than 900 million users, almost certainly host illegal content, whether their bosses knew it or not, according to experts at AFP.
“It is clear that if they take this case against Pavel Durov to the extreme, any other platform could face the same problem,” lawyer Guillaume Martine told AFP.
However, the idea that X owner Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, who belongs to his Meta group Facebook and WhatsApp, would be arrested in Europe remained unlikely.
“I would be very surprised if any EU member state, including France, were to arrest Elon Musk on similar charges,” Jan Penfrat of the advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi) told AFP.
“But I was also surprised that they arrested Durov.”
– ‘Limited cooperation’ –
While comparing these platforms may seem appealing at first glance (like its competitors, Telegram is not based in France and Durov is an ally of Musk), there are key differences.
First, Durov is a French citizen, making him a much more likely target in France.
But even though Musk expresses extreme views on free speech, he generally complies with government orders to remove X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.
However, Telegram refuses on principle.
“It is true that Telegram is characterised by a very limited degree of collaboration, if any,” said digital rights lawyer Alexandre Lazaregue.
“They don’t respond to letters, they don’t respond to summons, they don’t even have a lawyer in court… While Facebook, Twitter, etc. still have well-known lawyers in Paris.”
According to Penfrat, comparisons with services like Signal or WhatsApp are also misleading, because these services are encrypted by default, unlike Telegram.
“Signal and WhatsApp can then say, ‘We are cooperating, we just don’t have the right information,’” he said.
“But Telegram says, ‘Well, we could give you all that information because it’s in plain text on our servers, but unfortunately we’re not going to do that.’”
– ‘Red flags’ –
Durov and Telegram’s specific positions suggest other tech executives have little reason to worry right now.
However, Penfrat said he was concerned that the action against Telegram could serve as a precedent for other encrypted services.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have long argued that they need access to encrypted messages to stop criminal activity.
However, services like WhatsApp and Signal have resisted, arguing that the only way to do this is to ban encryption.
“These accusations raise a lot of suspicion. They seem arbitrary and are also not very convincing,” Penfrat said, suggesting it is akin to accusing a knife maker of a stabbing.
Lawyer Martine said it was “extremely dangerous” to hold Telegram accountable for the actions of its users, likening it to prosecuting Europcar for renting a car to a drug trafficker.
Lazaregue concluded that the charges against Durov pushed the legal definition of “complicity” to its extreme.
“To be convicted of complicity, you still have to know that a crime is happening and intend to participate in it,” he said.
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