French judges have never been as popular as at the Eurojust meeting in The Hague on Thursday September 19. Several European colleagues approach the members of the J3 section of the Paris prosecutor’s office, responsible for cybercrime, to thank them and warn them… that the company Telegram is now cooperating with their services, whereas this was never the case until in August 2024. A magistrate even indicates that the company administered from Dubai has just responded to his request on a file of assassinations sponsored on the encrypted application. D3? It was within this small section of five magistrates that the decision was taken to arrest Pavel Durov, the general director of the platform, on August 24, 2024. The founder of the application has since been indicted for a host of offenses, including the laundering of organized crime, complicity in the dissemination of child pornography or drug trafficking.
This arrest changed everything, say many magistrates confronted with organized crime. Traditionally, Telegram never responded to legal requests – except in very rare cases linked to terrorism -, hiding behind respect for the confidentiality of exchanges, its main marketing argument. “Telegram’s mission is to preserve privacy and free speech around the world. When local laws run counter to that mission or impose technologically infeasible requirements, we sometimes have to exit those markets. […] Such events, although regrettable, are preferable to the betrayal of our users and the beliefs on which we were founded,” wrote Pavel Durov in April 2023, after his platform was blocked in Brazil.
However, during his custody, Durov changed his attitude; he undertakes to cooperate from now on with the French judicial services. Shortly after his arrest, the Juvenile Office of the Judicial Police began to obtain answers to his requests. Today he received feedback in around ten cases, notably child molestation. The national cyber unit of the gendarmerie also obtained answers, in a proportion which would amount to around a hundred cases. A shift confirmed Monday September 23.
The weapon of law
On his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov announces a major cleaning of his search bar for groups or bots – automated conversations or services. The “problematic content” was removed thanks to the intervention of a moderation team assisted by artificial intelligence, he specifies. Above all, the application updates its conditions of use with a major new feature: “IP addresses [un identifiant utile à l’identification d’un utilisateur] and the telephone numbers of those who violate our rules may be disclosed to competent authorities in response to valid legal requests.” A turning point in Telegram’s collaboration with authorities, so far limited to a handful of cases, for example when a user was declared “suspect of terrorist activities” by a court “Telegram now aligns with the minimum standards of moderation for this type of platform,” comments Damien Liccia, president of the Strategic Information Observatory. (OSI), specialized in the analysis of social networks The company’s transparency data is being updated, L’Express noted on Telegram Before, it was simply indicated that this type of document was not. was not available for France.
The tone of Durov’s message also contrasts with his previous publications dated September 5 and 6. Mockingly, the billionaire of Russian origin recalled that the official representative of Telegram in the European Union was easily reachable by searching for his email address via Google. Durov, of course, already granted some concessions such as the removal of the “People Nearby” functionality, which made it possible to contact users located nearby without their numbers – ideal for drug trafficking, or sending mass spam. But he claimed that “99.999%” of users had “nothing to do with the crime.” A way of minimizing what he was accused of.
Banned from leaving the country, with the obligation to report twice a week to the police station, Pavel Durov risks up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros for certain offenses. This is due to provisions amending the French Penal Code, resulting from the Lopmi law, which came into force… in February 2024, the date on which investigators formally opened their investigation against Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolaï. “This is a text which does not innovate in terms of principles of criminal law, but which is very specific to digital technology. It thus facilitates the apprehension of platform bosses who ignore requests for judicial cooperation,” indicates Constantin Pavleas, lawyer specializing in technology law. Durov, guinea pig of French justice?
The authorities are also holding him on an important detail: his missing declaration of the cryptology services offered by Telegram, to Anssi, the French cybersecurity policeman. A little-known obligation, but totally “binary”, points out Sadry Porlon, lawyer and digital expert. “It’s just a question of: Did he sign up or not? That seems pretty easy to figure out.” The penalty incurred here amounts to two years of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. When contacted, neither Telegram nor Pavel Durov’s lawyer wished to comment.
“Clean your account”
In addition to his legal troubles, the founder of VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, has another good reason to quickly change his behavior. Telegram, 900 million users, and valued according to its statements to the tune of 30 billion dollars, dreams of entering the stock market. Pavel Durov had already promised to clean up his network. Without until now giving ourselves the means. Because in the balance, Durov also had to remain attractive in the eyes of a crypto community essential to its business, by nature very libertarian and suspicious of any form of regulation.
The democratic states which have been multiplying investigations on Telegram for several years without obtaining answers, intend to help it in its transformation. South Korea, through Woo Jong-soo, head of the National Police Investigation Bureau, affirmed its ambition to collaborate with their French counterparts and other international institutions. The country is in the grip of an epidemic of pornographic deepfakes on the tablet. The European Union, for its part, is currently investigating whether Telegram should be considered a large platform under the DSA, the Digital Services Act, the regulation on digital services. The threshold is located at 45 million users per month on the continent. Durov claims, despite Telegram’s phenomenal growth in recent years, to only have “41”. Will the latter provide updated figures, the latest dating from February? New obligations regarding the reporting of illicit content could weigh on the app in the event that the Brussels procedure is successful.
The end of impunity does not only target the creator of Telegram. A trial has just opened in Paris, where 10 adults are being tried for child pornography activities on loops on the platform. Strengthening moderation could lead to more complaints, and ultimately more arrests. “Back up your Telegram data as quickly as possible and clean up your account,” wrote Kim Dotcom, an old hand in content piracy on the Internet, on X (ex-Twitter). Several illegal streamers of Ligue 1 football matches, whose television rights were won by a new channel, DAZN, have also ceased their activities.
Surely “Telegram will lose a little of its sulphurous aura”, analyzes Damien Liccia. But alternatives for cybercriminals or propagandists are still lacking. Unclassifiable, Telegram combines private messaging functions, with optional encryption, and public groups that can bring together up to 200,000 members. One of its essential components, the API – an application programming interface – makes it possible in particular to create bot systems. Not sure that the platform will be deserted from this fringe anytime soon. Afterwards, “it is perhaps not so bad to have a place to monitor the rise of extremist and terrorist movements…”, remarks Damien Liccia. Especially since in the event of slippage, France now knows which door to knock.
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