French prosecutors charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with supporting the activities of crime organizations. It was a rare occasion holding the CEO of an online platform responsible for illegal uses of its platform. Prosecutors said Durov failed to respond to requests for data relating to child sexual abuse, drug trafficking and fraud. (NBC News, August 28, 2024, by Kevin Collier and Bob Wile)
Princeton professor Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times, August 27 2024, writes about the Durov detention, “Free speech is an important value, but protecting it does not mean absolving anyone of responsibility for all criminal activity. Ironically, Telegram’s shortage of end-to-end encryption means the company is likely to be more liable simply because it can see the criminal activity happening on its platform. If, for example, Telegram did not cooperate with authorities at all after receiving legal warrants for information about criminal activities, that would mean trouble even in the United States, with its sweeping free speech protections.”
Stanford professor Daphne Keller thinks that if Telegram was notified about content on its platform such as child sexual abuse, failed to act and is held responsible, that does not pose much of a threat to free speech. She finds it more problematic in the case of distributing a product with encrypted communications. She says, “If the idea turns out to be that merely allowing users to communicate securely online and protect themselves from hacking or surveillance using encryption — that’s illegal? That’s a whole other can of worms. That’s a very problematic case, if actually they go forward on that theory, because that would make some really essential tools illegal and greatly chill people’s willingness to speak frankly in communications online.” (New York Magazine, August 31, 2024, by Kevin T. Dugan)