Telegram CEO Pavel Durov calls his arrest "misguided"

• Durov said he found his arrest last month "surprising" because he "personally helped" French authorities "establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France."
• Paris prosecutors charged Durov last week with offenses including complicity in managing an online platform to enable illegal transactions; complicity in crimes such as enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraud; and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement.

What he's saying: "If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself," wrote Durov, who holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

• "Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," added Durov, who noted Telegram was "not perfect."
• "Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools."

Go deeper: What to know about Telegram CEO Pavel Durov