Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular Telegram messaging app that also includes a social media platform, has taken to his account on X (formerly Twitter) to address the community about the recent development that is directly related not only to Telegram but to all other messaging apps in the market.
Particularly, he addressed Telegram users residing in France – their privacy could be endangered once again in this country.
France could ban encryption in messaging apps
Durov expressed heavy concerns about the situation with encrypted messages in communication apps in France. Last month, he tweeted, the French authorities almost succeeded in banning encryption.
A law that required developers to leave a back door to private messages for police to access was passed by the French Senate. However, it the National Assembly rejected it.
According to Durov, the Paris Police Prefect has renewed the push for this law. Durov stated that unless this law is rejected once again, France may become the first country where users will not be protected by privacy in their electronic correspondence.
He stressed that even countries that many believe to have few freedoms have never banned encrypted messages since that developers cannot give any guarantee that the police will be the only ones who will have access to those private messages.
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“Once introduced, a backdoor can be exploited by other parties — from foreign agents to hackers,” Durov insists. In this case every law-abiding citizen would lose their privacy and have their private messages compromised.
Besides, Pavel is certain that, while this law is aimed at helping to prevent drug trafficking, it would not be very useful anyway. Since “criminals could still communicate securely through dozens of smaller apps — and become even harder to trace due to VPNs.”
He underscored the importance of this threat to his own brainchild, Telegram, saying that should this law be passed and approved, Telegram “would rather exit a market than undermine encryption with backdoors and violate basic human rights.” Without naming any platforms in particular, Durov said that unlike them, Telegram does not trade privacy for market share. But the reference seems to go to Facebook and the scandals it had roughly ten years ago when it sold user data to advertisers without asking users’ permission.
