Telegram CEO Pavel Durov spoke out on Thursday against the crackdown against his platform by French authorities, warning that the spate of charges could mark the start of serious setbacks for the tech industry as a whole.
In a post shared on Telegram, Durov detailed that he had been questioned by French authorities over a period of four days, and that he had been informed he would be held "personally responsible" for criminal actions that occur on the platform due to past notifications that had gone answered.
"This," Durov went onto emphasis, "was surprising for several reasons." Not least of which was the fact that Telegram has an official representative in the EU that both "accepts and replies to EU requests."
"Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles 'Telegram EU address for law enforcement,'" he pointed out, adding that authorities could have easily contacted him via the French consulate in Dubai.
"A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France."
" Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," he said. "Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools."
Rather than pursuing criminal charges, French authorities should have instead opted for the "established practice" of filing legal action against an internet service to start proceedings.
Durov underscored that Telegram would not be abandoning its principles on ensuring users' privacy and security, but that it was and will continue to hold open lines of communications with country regulators. However, if no balance can be made in any one nation, the company will opt to "leave."
The CEO further rejected reports that painted Telegram as "some sort of anarchic paradise" and slammed them as "absolutely untrue."
However, while the platform's user count has soared upwards of 950 million, he acknowledged the spike "made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform." Durov revealed that new internal measures were being implemented, and that such steps would be made public at a later time.
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur was detained at a Paris airport on August 24 on charges related to criminal uses of his messaging app, including terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud. He was released on August 28 on a 5-million-euro ($5.5 million) bail and is barred from leaving France.