Telegram CEO Pavel Durov arrested at airport near Paris, French media reports
French police arrested Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov on Saturday at an airport near Paris for alleged offences related to the popular messaging app, French media reported.
The French-Russian billionaire, 39, was detained at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital on Saturday evening, one of the officials told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
French television news outlets TF1 TV and BFM TV also reported the arrest, citing unnamed sources, according to Reuters.
after he was ousted from VKontakte — a popular social networking site in Russia which he-cofounded — after being pressured by the Kremlin to hand over users’ personal data, which he refused to do.
In a 2016 interview with “60 Minutes,” Durov said he was “horrified” when he learned that Telegram — which was designed to be heavily encrypted so that governments cannot access users’ personal data — was being used by terrorist groups like the Islamic State to communicate.
“I’m personally for the privacy side,” Durov said in that interview when asked whether privacy concerns outweighed security risks. “But one thing that should be clear is that you cannot make just one exception for law enforcement without endangering private communications of hundreds of millions of people because encryption is either secure or not.”
Source: cbsnews.com