Jailing of Telegram founder Pavel Durov is an attack on our freedoms

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.