OPINION:
French authorities on Saturday arrested Pavel Durov for the crime of facilitating free speech. The exiled Russian programmer could spend the next two decades locked up — the very fate he fled his country of birth to avoid.
Mr. Durov is the creator of Telegram, a messaging platform relied upon by nearly a billion users worldwide. It is one of a handful of services that feature reliable encryption that makes it difficult for the prying eyes of the world’s intelligence services to peruse casual conversations.
The charge leveled against the billionaire tech guru is that his Wild West attitude toward speech allowed money laundering, drug trade, terrorism and other unsavory behavior to take place on his platform. This is the inevitable consequence of opening a forum to millions.
If you have a public transit system, for example, a few ruffians will go to the scene of their crimes. The head of Washington’s Metro system hasn’t been charged with facilitating villainy. But intelligence agencies worldwide hate Telegram because they want the power to review and approve the words of ordinary citizens. This has never before been the standard in a free society.
A decade ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s FSB demanded that Mr. Durov name the Ukrainian dissidents who had been using another social media platform the entrepreneur created, called VK. After refusing, Mr. Durov feared he might be shipped off to Siberia. So he ran to Dubai, relinquishing control of VK.
“It was a tool for these protestors to organize themselves,” Mr. Durov explained in an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year. “It wasn’t about us siding with one political side or the other. It was about us defending freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, which we believed were the right things. But that didn’t go too well with the government.”
Little did he know the Kremlin wasn’t the real danger. Mr. Putin never arrested Mr. Durov, but French President Emmanuel Macron just had the Telegram founder shackled as his private jet touched down at Le Bourget Airport.
Russian authorities highlight Western hypocrisy by referring to Mr. Durov as a “political prisoner.” Americans could be forgiven for assuming the First Amendment shields citizens on our shores against such abuse, but the Biden-Harris administration collusion with Big Tech is far more insidious.
It was enough to drive Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to abandon the Democratic Party. “When a U.S. president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression,” he said.
Elon Musk exposed the FBI and CIA’s labeling of ideas with which they disagreed as “misinformation” before ordering social media companies to suppress those disfavored thoughts. As documented in the Twitter Files, the tech companies not only went along with the demands but also allowed “former” intelligence community members to embed themselves as Facebook and Twitter employees — ensuring Langley always has a say in what the public is allowed to say.
Unlike his peers, Mr. Musk refused to comply with most speech-suppression demands, drawing the wrath of global censors. The White House retaliated with a coordinated series of investigations into Mr. Musk’s companies by the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Durov have put their freedom at risk to ensure free speech is an option for the rest of us. Without speech, the rest of our freedoms — including freedom of assembly and freedom of religion — will be lost.
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