Pavel Durov, the Russian born entrepreneur and founder of telegram, the hugely popular messaging app with over 900 million users, was arrested in France with a large range of crimes being alleged but all essentially falling under his failure to prevent illicit activity on the app. [00:00:20] This is incredibly noteworthy, as it is a very rare instance of authorities trying to hold a top executive accountable and personally liable for the behavior of its users on a tech platform. Mr. Durov, 39 years old, was detained by the French authorities on Saturday [00:00:37] after a flight from Azerbaijan. He was charged on Wednesday with complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions by an organized group, which could lead to a sentence of up to ten years in prison. He was also charged with complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution [00:00:53] of child sexual abuse, material drug trafficking and fraud, and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. He was ordered to pay bail equal to about $5 million, has to check in with the police twice a week and cannot leave France. [00:01:09] Telegram has played a role in multiple criminal cases in France tied to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and online hate crimes, but has shown a near-total absence of response to requests for cooperation from law enforcement. The Paris prosecutor said the case has turned up the heat [00:01:26] on a long debate about free speech online, and whether companies themselves should be policing what their users say and do on their tech platforms. Governments, especially in the UK and the EU, are putting increased pressure on these companies to do something about very important categories, of course, [00:01:44] of child safety, terrorism, disinformation and other harmful content, often running like wildfire on these platforms, on these apps after the arrest. The Dubai based company said that it follows all EU laws. And that, quote, it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are [00:02:03] responsible for abuse of that platform. Mr. Durov now joins a small list of high ranking tech figures who have been indicted in connection with crimes committed by users of their services, including Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road online black market, and Changpeng Zhao, [00:02:19] the founder of Binance, who pleaded guilty last year to US money laundering violations that took place on his cryptocurrency platform. According to a New York Times article. Daphne Keller, professor of internet law at Stanford Law School, said Mr. Durov and Telegram were conspicuously different from other [00:02:37] major platforms such as Meta and Google, which have a more robust, have more robust safety and trust teams that take down illegal content and respond to law enforcement requests. Quote, I continue to assume the reason they can indict is because telegram [00:02:52] forfeited their immunity by not taking down things they were notified about. If that's true, the indictment seems like a not surprising next step. In Mr. Durov's case, telegram did not answer a request from the French authorities to identify one of his users in an investigation [00:03:08] into child sexual abuse materials, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The article continued. Telegram, which Mr. Durov founded in Russia in 2013, has more than 900 million users. It works as a messaging app similar to WhatsApp or iMessage, but also hosts groups with up to 200,000 users and has other channels with broadcasting features [00:03:27] to help reach even larger audiences. Light oversight of content on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments on a positive side to communicate, but has also made the app a haven of harmful content. Durov has refused, has infused rather telegram with an anti-authority ethos [00:03:45] and commitment to free speech. He said his worldview was informed by his experience in Russia, and he came to believe strongly that government should put few restrictions on people's online speech and actions, and that digital privacy trumped security. Saying, quote, privacy ultimately is more important than our fear [00:04:02] of bad things happening, he said in 2015. This could, however, also serve as precedent for authoritarian regimes to, try to restrict executives or try to imprison them, even for content or freedom of expression that they do not like. [00:04:18] So it's a really thorny issue. It's a crazy precedent. - I'm curious your guys thoughts. - Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. You power our honest reporting. You do it at t.com/team and we love you for it. [00:04:35] Super hard issue. So let me give you the spectrum here. So you see why it's so hard. So if someone sneaks child porn onto a platform, whether it's Twitter or Telegram or whatever it is, and you say, well, they did not take it down quickly enough, efficiently enough, etc., I'd say [00:04:53] you're going to arrest somebody over that. No. That's crazy. They didn't put the child porn up and they don't want the child porn up on their platform. Yeah, sometimes it's super hard to run a business. In Elon Musk's case, when you fire two thirds of your employees. Right. And so and okay, so that was a mistake or that was a thing that they didn't want. [00:05:11] And it's not like the founder of the company or the CEO of the company, like was advocating for it or trying to make it. No, that's not if you arrest somebody over that. That's nuts that you can't run any business online. Right. Because there's all guys. And if you don't know this, there's always people who are trying to put this kind [00:05:30] of crazy material on every platform, on different websites, 24 over seven. There's like a whole industry of this. So when you start anything online, you have to like figure out, how do I block the trolls? Dragons. Monsters like dragons is a bad thing to use here because. [00:05:47] But anyway. But like all these ghouls and goblins, I mean, from coming on. Now, if you don't do that perfectly well and they arrest you for it, I think that's nuts. On the other hand, if the platform knows oh, there's a ring on here that's doing [00:06:03] child porn, money laundering, string of robberies, a string of rapes, child rape. Oh, my God. And you've got an evidence and a warrant, and a country comes and says, we know there is illegal activity going, and somebody is going to get harmed. [00:06:18] Somebody is being harmed right now, and they go, whatever, I'm not going to do anything about it. Okay. Well, that's a different issue. You see the range of possibilities here. And so when you get to issues in the middle, it gets really hard. And there's one other complexity here. And I'm going to give you a curious analogy here. [00:06:35] But I think you'll see why I'm doing this. So I'm watching suits with my kids and I'm explaining the law to them as we go along. It's a fun show, but it's heavy on legalese, right? And I happen to go to law school and I'm a lawyer, etc., and so I can at least explain the basics. [00:06:51] And so what I explained to them is lawyers have a responsibility to their clients. And that responsibility is so sacred in that profession that in that context, we put different burdens and responsibilities on them than we would an average person. [00:07:09] So if you know your client did something wrong, there's a range of things there. If you know they're about to commit a crime, you still have to turn them in, right? But if you know they did something wrong in the past, a normal person would have to turn them in, but their lawyer can't and shouldn't. It's a different moral code for a good reason, [00:07:26] which is we need you to advocate for your client in this system unreservedly. Right. And we're superseding other moral factors we care about to make that possible. So when you're running a platform like this, there's a really interesting argument to have over is privacy on these platforms so important like serving [00:07:47] your client is If you're a lawyer, that is supersedes other moral factors involved. Again, I don't have that answer because it's a super hard answer, but it's one that we're going to have to decide as a society here. So how this applies to this particular guy depends on the details of the case. [00:08:07] And right now we don't know the details well enough. Are they on the end of the spectrum where they're like, oh, there's bad things on there. Let's just arrest the guy. Crazy. I would be 100% against that. Or is it on the side here where they go? No, no, we have evidence of law breaking happening right now. [00:08:22] We're trying to stop it and they won't let us. - And we'll get. - A few more details in a second. But I'm curious to hear what his thoughts before we get to a little bit more of the nuance. This is a really interesting case. As Jake just mentioned, there's a couple of things. One, telegram has gone out of their way and I think quite a little dishonestly [00:08:41] as marketing themselves to the people who use the app as the most encrypted or private of all of them, and it's just not true. In terms of what is the most privacy forward of the messaging apps, you can take, for example, iMessage, where, you know, you can only do about 32 [00:09:02] people at a time on group message. And there's a reason for that, because Apple's just like we're encrypting end to end every single message. When the feds come to us, our stuff is so encrypted, we literally can't even go in there and tell you what people are texting to each other. [00:09:18] However, the FBI has figured out how to, hijack iPhones, so it's a moot point, right? Like when the feds want to get into a phone, they can. So it kind of doesn't really matter. Whatsapp can have up to 1000 people, in a group chat, and it's also end [00:09:34] to end encrypted, but it's only 1000. How telegram, got popular is because they do have these 200,000 people chats, and they also have what's called like these channels where as many people as they want can kind of subscribe and get a news feed, or almost like a blog [00:09:52] from the telegram people. But telegram again, is the most loosely encrypted, meaning all of the information that happens on telegram is happening on a server that they can go in and look at. And so the idea that the French authorities are coming to these guys, [00:10:10] like bro, we found the freaking, you know, pedophiles and money smugglers and all of these people, this is what they're doing. We want the freaking information. We know you can you have access to it and give it to us? And they're just like, nah, can't help you. [00:10:26] It's insane. And lastly, what I will say about, you know, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, all of these people trust me, in America, they play ball with our government law enforcement agencies, period. Yeah, I mean, they often do. Sometimes they say no to that. [00:10:43] But you know, these things always have, you know, pros and cons because people use it for illicit activities, for sure. But I'm also in a few telegram groups that keep me up to date on things breaking on the ground in the Israel-hamas War. [00:10:59] I mean, a group that talks about atrocities and difficult things happening to Israelis. That group's got like 20,000 people. And I'm in a group called Gaza now in English that talks about horrible things happening to the Gazan people that has 200, almost 200,000 people. [00:11:14] And there's another group that I can't read, but it's Gaza now in in Arabic, and it's got 2 million people. They're broadcasting out constantly. Those are not encrypted. So also they can just they can just get that information themselves. By joining those groups, I was able to join with no problem. [00:11:31] But it does bring up the details of encryption and makes encryption really put on the spotlight here. French authorities said telegram had provided cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without a license. Encryption has been a long running point of friction between governments [00:11:47] and tech companies around the world. For years, tech companies have argued that encrypted messaging is crucial to maintain people's digital privacy. While law enforcement and governments have said that the technology enables illicit behaviors by hiding illegal activity, U.S. Tech companies, including some of the ones that was mentioned, signal, [00:12:05] Apple and Meta's WhatsApp, all give their users end to end encryption. These apps are encrypted by default as well, which means users conversations are immediately private at the moment they start chatting, whereas telegram handles encryption differently actually, and is a lot less encrypted. [00:12:21] You have to opt in via a pretty hard to find setting, and is only offered again for the one on one communication, not for large groups. The debate has grown more heated as encrypted messaging apps have become mainstream. Signal has grown by tens of millions of users since its founding in 2018. [00:12:37] Apple's iMessage is installed on the hundreds of millions of iPhones the tech company sells each year. WhatsApp is used by more than 2 billion people globally, but one of the examples they didn't turn it over in 2020. Apple pushed back against an FBI request, for example, that the company break its encryption in order to access data on two iPhones [00:12:54] that belonged to a gunman who opened fire at a naval base in Florida. I didn't even know until researching this story that Apple's iMessage is encrypted end to end. I did not know that. It takes away a lot of the reason to even use some of these other apps, but to my mind, if something genuinely is encrypted end to end, [00:13:11] in a world where privacy is disappeared and it becomes very hard to have truly private conversations, and there are times when you have to rise up against a government or against an invading force like we've, you know, like I just mentioned with some of these other groups that I'm part of, if they're truly end to end encrypted, the company can't get into that communication. [00:13:28] I don't think they should be asked to. There has to be other ways to investigate those crimes. - That's my thought. - Yeah, so devil's in the details. So this is a trial I'll probably follow very closely to see what exact evidence they have. Is it a crime they know is happening? Is it imminent? [00:13:45] Can it be stopped? And you know, how are they holding the the founder of the company accountable for that? Is it someone else to hold accountable? So I just I think it's super interesting, but I'm worried on both sides. I'm a little worried that if they can't, if they found a way to to create a safe [00:14:06] haven for significant criminal activity that we're all worried about, that's a problem. And on the other hand, if they basically block us from having any private conversations, I'm massively worried about that. And then saying, oh yeah, if you create a safe space for anyone online [00:14:24] to have any private conversation, you're going to get arrested. That's a giant problem, that's big Brother, etc.. So this case could be deeply problematic or it could be logical depending on the details. And so I think a lot of the world is going to be watching this case. [00:14:43] This is not a little thing. This is a giant giant issue for the whole planet. Yeah. And just a couple of things for people to understand at home, like this concept of freedom of speech. That's a very American thing. That's our right. That's why like, you know, a lot of times companies can go [00:14:58] to court based on that, right? Like it's literally codified, here in our laws here. That's not the case. In a place like France and England, there's no First Amendment up there. And so, this is just a different animal altogether over there because like, [00:15:16] this telegram guy can say, I believe in the principles of freedom of speech. And these other governments can be like, we don't care. You don't get to operate here. Under that principle. And the second thing that I will say, because I think all of us here, on the show today are pretty staunch free speech advocates. [00:15:33] I think when people when, when the framers, invented this amendment. Like, you know, they're thinking about some wacko on the corner yelling at the, you know, howling at the moon, right? Like, of course he should have the freedom to do that. I don't think they could conceive of a of an internet where like, theoretically [00:15:52] from your phone, like, theoretically, you can reach the entire planet, you know, it's just a different way of viewing these principles that we hold so dear. Yeah. One super last thing that was and Ben both kind of alluded to that. [00:16:07] I want to make clear, remember, there's different laws in different countries. So if a country goes well in this country, it's illegal to criticize the leader of the country. And you allowed an your app to have private conversations where they were criticizing the leader of this country. That's illegal. You're under arrest. [00:16:24] That's a huge problem. Right. And how do we solve that problem? Of course, one way is don't go to that country. - Right. - Yeah. Just stay out of Saudi Arabia. Right. That's for sure. And Jake. And the implications here are exactly that, because Elon Musk obviously [00:16:40] does not want this to be happening and does not want to be held accountable. He immediately tweeted out on X free Pavel because he doesn't want this happening. But on the same token, it also doesn't make a ton of sense to hold some of these platforms accountable when like why is it different than a telephone? [00:16:57] Once you have like conference calling because somebody plans a drug deal on a four way phone call. Is AT&T responsible? You should stop the crime, not the ability to talk to people. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. [00:17:13] You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. [00:17:29] So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.