Pavel Durov: Messiah of Free Speech?

In a free world, you can idolize anyone for security but you can’t escape the reality that internet security is a misnomer. Ever since the PRISM project was launched, conglomerates have been forced to comply with the governments across the world by sharing their user data. The Russian version of Facebook and WhatsApp applications doesn’t entail any other secret story. When Pavel Durov launched his initial project “VKontakte.com”, he was constantly in beef with the Kremlin. His second project “Telegram” is now facing the same heat. To understand what actually happened, we need to put together some pieces in the right order.

“VKontakte.com” was under fire for spreading uncensored news around the time of Crimea annexation and the Kremlin wanted a piece of it. Pavel Durov was forced to resign and sell his stake at the company. The “Mail.Ru” group, owned by Alisher Usmanov, bought the network for $1.47 billion which eventually ended with Sogaz, a state-run insurer. Its user data from 2011-2012 was also sold on the dark web sometime around 2015-2016. The platform was insecure from the beginning and especially now when the platform is state owned, you can’t do anything about it.

Pavel then went on to work only on Telegram which he launched in 2013 and moved its headquarters from Berlin to Dubai. Though Telegram is touted to be the most secure messaging application, its popularity is its biggest hindrance. In 2020 Belarus protests, Telegram, played a pivotal role in amassing and coordinating rallies. The Telegram group channel Azezos was too in question during the Israeli spread of violent news about Gaza. In an ongoing conflict between Armenia-Azerbaijan and Russia-Ukraine, Telegram has again been instrumental in spreading uncensored news and support for nationalism on both sides. Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself uses it to address various speeches. The Russian influencers are too guilty of using it. The reason why Telegram becomes a pivotal tool.

Despite all that, Telegram had indeed shared its user data with the governments for acts of terrorism and violent content. So, it’s a fair question to ask why arrest Pavel Durov now? The answer is in total control of the platform. To understand it, you need to understand how the PRISM program works. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are part of it and so if you use any application on your iPhone/MacOS, Android/ChromeOS, or Windows, you’re automatically sharing your data with the governments no matter what secure applications you use. Telegram’s story becomes different because it offers its tool from their website which uses a different encryption that stores data only on the client devices and not the server. This encryption was devised by Pavel’s brother, Nikolai Durov who holds a PhD in mathematics and is a computer programmer. He is a recognized genius in the tech community. Now, if you’re security conscious, you can easily use this feature by running Telegram’s desktop version on a more secure operating system such as GNU/Linux or FreeBSD. That is something governments can’t control. And when they can’t, they exercise their control through different means.

Only time will tell how Telegram will continue to support this encryption feature. In any case, it’s west that got hold of him first and so it’s totally up to the far east to show some discontent and try grabbing some meat here.