The arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, in Paris on Saturday has put the messaging app in the spotlight. Prosecutors said on Monday that he was in custody as part of a cybercrime investigation.
What is Telegram?
At its core, Telegram is a messaging app that competes with services like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage. For many of its users, it’s nothing more than that: a good place to chat with friends.
However, the app also offers more social networking features than most of its competitors. Group chats are virtually unlimited in size, as are Telegram’s broadcast “channels” through which users can “follow” individual accounts.
These channels also allow followers to comment on posts and chat with each other in a way that’s more reminiscent of a Facebook group or even an old-fashioned internet forum than a simple instant messaging service.
Is it encrypted?
That’s a surprisingly controversial question. “Everything on Telegram, including chats, groups, media, etc., is encrypted using a combination of 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and secure Diffie-Hellman key,” the company says, and that’s true. But it’s a different type of encryption than what’s become standard on messaging apps, known as end-to-end (E2E) encryption.
Unless Telegram users go through the tedious process of setting up a “secret chat” (which is not possible with group chats or broadcast channels), their messages are not protected from being read by Telegram itself. Telegram, therefore, unlike its competitors, has no excuse not to support law enforcement.
Who supports Telegram?
Despite this different approach to security, Telegram has long appealed to communities that find no home on mainstream platforms; cryptocurrency advocates, anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers have all moved to the platform following the crackdown on social networks like Facebook.
Durov, once known as the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg,” has spoken about his belief in the importance of free speech, and others with similarly absolutist views, including Elon Musk, have come to his defense.
Surprisingly, Russia has also expressed concern over the arrest. The state effectively took control of his first company, the Facebook clone VKontakte, and Telegram was founded by Durov in exile.
He is now said to have three other nationalities in addition to his Russian passport, but that does not stop the Russian Foreign Ministry from attacking France for the imprisonment of the head of government.
Why did the French arrest Durov?
The French allegations essentially allege that Telegram failed to combat the use of the service for criminal purposes, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material.
The investigation concerns crimes related to illegal transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and refusal to provide information to authorities. The arrest warrant was issued by OFMIN, a French child protection agency, the group’s secretary general said in a post on LinkedIn.
It is extremely rare for web service providers to be held liable for the actions of their users, and even rarer for them to be held personally liable. It remains unclear whether Telegram’s alleged failings are exceptional or whether the escalation lies more on the side of the French authorities.
In a statement on Sunday, Telegram said Durov had “nothing to hide” and that it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the misuse of that platform.”
What does this mean for other messaging services?
Some have already spoken out, fearing a “chilling effect”: executives feel they have to over-moderate and censor their services to avoid putting their own security at risk every time they fly to Cannes for vacation.
The arrest is also likely to accelerate the transition to universal end-to-end encryption, as politicians will no longer be held liable for content they cannot see.
The details of Durov’s arrest remain unclear, particularly whether his conduct was consistent with industry standards.
In 2015, Telegram’s founder famously rejected allegations that his platform was a safe haven for the Islamic State, arguing simply that “privacy is more important than our fear of bad things like terrorism.”
