Washington Post Calls Telegram 'a Haven for Free Speech - and Child Predators'

The Washington Post writes that Telegram's 'anything-goes approach' to its 950 million users 'has also made it one of the internet's largest havens for child predators, experts say....'

'Durov's critics say his public idealism masks an opportunistic business model that allows Telegram to profit from the worst the internet has to offer, including child sexual abuse material, or CSAM... '

[Telegram is] an app of choice for political organizing, including by dissidents under repressive regimes. But it is equally appealing for terrorist groups, criminal organizations and sexual predators, who use it as a hub to share and consume nonconsensual pornography, AI 'deepfake' nudes, and illegal sexual images and videos of exploited minors, said Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. 'Due to their advertised policy of not cooperating with law enforcement, and the fact that they are known not to scan for CSAM, Telegram has attracted large groups of pedophiles trading and selling child abuse materials,' Stamos said.

That reach comes even though many Telegram exchanges don't actually use the strong forms of encryption available on true private messaging apps, he added. Telegram is used for private messaging, public posts and group chats. Only one-to-one conversations can be encrypted in a way that even Telegram can't access them. And that occurs only if users choose the option, meaning the company could turn over everything else to governments if it wanted to... French prosecutors argue that Durov is in fact responsible for Telegram's emergence as a global haven for illegal content, including CSAM, because of his reluctance to moderate it and his refusal to help authorities police it, among other allegations...

David Kaye, a professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law and former U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression... said that while Telegram has at times banned groups and taken down [CSAM] content in response to law enforcement, its refusal to share data with investigators sets it apart from most other major tech companies. Unlike U.S.-based platforms, Telegram is not required by U.S. law to report instances of CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. Many online platforms based overseas do so anyway — but not Telegram. 'NCMEC has tried to get them to report, but they have no interest and are known for not wanting to work with [law enforcement agencies] or anyone in this space,' a NCMEC spokesperson said.

The Post also writes that Telegram 'has repeatedly been revealed to serve as a tool to store, distribute and share child sexual imagery.' (They cite several examples, including two different men convicted to minimum sentences of at least 10 years for using the service to purchase CSAM and solicit explicit photos from minors.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.