America First Legal (AFL) is attempting to shed light on the role that the Biden-Harris administration may have played in the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
The French-Emirati citizen was arrested in France and charged with a large number of alleged crimes – in effect, failure to censor third-party content that can be qualified as criminal behavior. However, there is suspicion that the real reason is to force Telegram to censor all content, in the style of Google or Meta. The charges also attack encryption.
Announcing its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the US State Department’s possible involvement in the arrest, AFL noted that the encrypted app is one of the world’s largest, based on the premise of protecting its users’ free speech from what the non-profit dedicated to promoting the rule of law calls “government-sponsored” censorship.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
AFL cites statements made by Mike Benz, founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online and former State Department official, as the reason to suspect the current White House either had advance knowledge or has had its hand in the highly controversial arrest.
Hellbound and Down 