Late this afternoon, French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram news and publishing service, at a Paris airport. They reportedly plan to hit him tomorrow with serious charges of aiding and abetting terrorism, fraud, money laundering and crimes against children, all of which appear to stem from a near-total lack of moderation on Telegram. According to French authorities, Telegram has become the new top tool of organized crime thanks to its encryption and support for crypto.

French broadcaster TF1 first had the news from sources close to the investigation. (Reuters and CNN have since published articles as well.) Their source said: “Pavel Durov will definitely end up in custody. On his platform, he has allowed an incalculable number of offenses and crimes to be committed, and he is doing nothing to mitigate them, nor is he cooperating.”

Durov is a 39-year-old who made a fortune building VKontakte, a Russian version of Facebook, before being pushed out of his company by the Kremlin. He left Russia and founded Telegram, which gained huge popularity, especially in Europe. He was arrested today as his private plane flew from Azerbaijan to Paris’ Bourget airport.

Telegram has become an important news channel for Russians, as it is one of the few uncensored ways to hear non-Kremlin propaganda from within their own country. It is also the main outlet for nationalist Russian “military bloggers” writing about the war in Ukraine. Durov’s arrest has already caused panic among many of them, partly because it could reveal secrets – but also because the Russian military often uses the channel to communicate.

Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted tonight: “One popular Russian channel says that Telegram is also used by Russian forces to communicate and that if Western intelligence agencies gain access to it, they could gain sensitive information about the Russian military.”

Right-wing and crypto influencers are also angry about the arrest, writing things like: “This is a serious attack on freedom. Today they target an app that promotes freedom, and tomorrow they will pounce on DeFi. If you claim to support crypto, you have to show your support. #FreeDurov, it’s time for digital resistance.”

Durov appears to be an old-school cyber-libertarian who believes in privacy and encryption. His arrest is sure to resonate in America, where there is a similar debate about the extent to which online services should cooperate with law enforcement. The FBI, for example, has occasionally warned that end-to-end encryption will lead to a “going dark” problem where crime simply disappears from sight, and there have been repeated attempts in the US to legislate backdoors into encryption systems. However, these have all been rejected, and civil liberties activists and technologists generally point out that creating backdoors makes such systems fundamentally insecure. The global debate about crime, encryption, civil liberties and messaging apps is sure to heat up with Durov’s arrest.