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.