Durov has 'nothing to hide', says Telegram after France arrest

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00:00There are arguably more questions than answers at this stage as to the arrest of Durov.

00:06Our tech editor Julia Seager has been looking into the story and she may be able to answer

00:10a few of those questions for us now. Julia, first of all, do we know any more about his arrest?

00:17No, since the beginning of his custody we haven't had any information regarding the case. It has

00:23indeed, the custody has been extended and it could last up to 96 hours, but that's usually what

00:28happens for terrorist suspects. Now, what we know is that the arrest warrant was issued by

00:33what we call Offman here in France. It's an agency that's dedicated to combat violence

00:38against minors and it's part of a preliminary probe for many alleged offenses and they range

00:45from fraud, drug trafficking, cyber bullying, organized crime to even the promotion of

00:50terrorism. Now, of course, he's not personally accused of it. We're not saying that he

00:54personally participated in cyber bullying or drug trafficking, but he's accused of not having done

01:00enough to stop the criminal use of Telegram as asked also by the EU's Digital Markets Act,

01:06which is a law that was voted in by the EU recently. But that said, the search warrant

01:12was issued here in France. Now, so the first thing is that, you know, we're told that he didn't

01:18moderate the platform enough and one of the problems with Telegram is that you have those

01:22groups that can accommodate up to 200,000 people. These are huge communities and they're often

01:28singled out and accused of increasing the viral potential of certain content. And the second thing

01:32he's accused of is not collaborating enough with investigators when we're told they were asked,

01:38he was asked to do so. Now, we're not told when he was asked to do so, how many times he was asked

01:43to do so or in which case. That does though fit with how Durov describes himself because he sees

01:49himself as a libertarian. That's right. He's very much committed to security and confidentiality of

01:55the personal data of his users and also protecting freedom of speech. Now, the entire model of

02:01Telegram is based on this. So, the conversation are encrypted end to end. This is a protocol that

02:06guarantees the security of the communication. So, that means that Telegram or other people,

02:11no one can actually access the information when it's being sent. Now, they've also chose

02:16transparency because the code is open source. This means that anybody in the public can come

02:20and audit the line of code to see if perhaps there's been a backdoor that's been added to it

02:25and that's a choice, a transparency choice that Meta, for instance, hasn't made. When you look at

02:29their economic model, they don't resell or monetize the data and they're also known historically to

02:35not easily collaborate indeed with governments or with law enforcement. Twice they've done it

02:41before. Well, several times actually they've done it before, but it's only after several

02:46procedures. Now, some other platforms tend to do it more readily, for instance, by giving IP

02:51addresses or email addresses. Now, he said it several times, loud and clear, he won't answer

02:56to anybody. He hasn't answered to the Kremlin when the Kremlin asked him to shut down certain

03:01accounts like Navalny's account and he refused and that's also why he left Russia. He won't

03:06receive orders from Paris or Washington either, let me tell you that. In an interview that he gave

03:10recently, there aren't many of interviews out there, but he gave an interview to Tucker Carlson

03:16and he explained that the FBI had approached him to try to poach one of his coders, perhaps to

03:22create a backdoor. Of course, that's an information we can't verify, but it's not that surprising when

03:27we know also the history of certain programs that were set up by American Secret Services using

03:32personal information, including, for instance, the PRISP program that was revealed by Edward Snowden.

03:39And is it the way that Telegram operates, particularly that confidentiality,

03:44the encryption you were talking about that makes the app so popular?

03:47Exactly. It's exactly why people go to Telegram, it's because they know that

03:53their information is safe. It's been downloaded by more than almost a billion active users today,

03:59probably next year they'll reach that amount of users. But it's also why, because it's so secure,

04:06you're going to have criminals on the platform, of course, but you're also going to have heads of

04:09states and also groups of opponents in countries where there's a lot of censorship. It's become

04:14extremely strategic, especially in the conflict opposing Ukraine and Russia, because Russian

04:19officials, but also Ukrainian officials are using it. So pretty much what you have today is all the

04:24most strategic global conversations that are on Telegram, but with an encryption that is incredible.

04:30Julia Seager, great to get your take on this. Thanks very much indeed.

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