Tag: france

France Moves to Break Encrypted Messaging

France’s intelligence delegation in parliament has formally backed breaking the encryption that protects WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram conversations, recommending that magistrates and intelligence agents be granted what lawmakers describe as targeted access to messages that platforms currently cannot read even themselves.

The delegation, an eight-member body composed of four deputies and four senators, published its conclusions on Monday after months of work on a question that keeps returning to the French Parliament. “The inability to access the content of encrypted communications constitutes a major obstacle for the work of the justice system and intelligence services,” the delegation wrote, framing end-to-end encryption as a problem to be solved rather than a protection to be preserved.

The technology end-to-end encryption uses is precisely the thing the delegation wants weakened. Decryption keys live on user devices, not on company servers, which means the platforms holding your messages genuinely cannot read them. That’s the design and the point. Strip that property away and the protection collapses because a system that lets investigators read messages on demand is also a system that can be abused, leaked, subpoenaed, or hacked.

French police and intelligence services have spent years complaining about this tech. They can still intercept old-fashioned phone calls and SMS messages with a judge’s warrant but encrypted platforms route around that capability entirely.

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Paris public prosecutor opens judicial investigation into Elon Musk and X

Paris’ public prosecutor has opened a judicial investigation into Elon Musk’s X social media platform, a new step in a probe over alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data, the prosecutor’s office said on May 7.

The latest legal development puts investigating judges in charge of the probe and follows tech billionaire Mr Musk’s failure to appear at an April 20 summons for questioning.

The public prosecutor is requesting that judges place X.AI Holdings Corp, X Corp and xAI, as well as Mr Musk and former X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino, under formal investigation.

This would be achieved by summoning them for that purpose, or, if they failed to appear, judges could issue a warrant which would be equivalent to putting them under formal investigation, the statement said.

Reuters could not immediately reach representatives for Mr Musk or X.

Mr Kami Haeri, a lawyer for X, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the US and Europe over Big Tech and free speech.

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France’s ID Portal Hacked: 19 Million Records Up for Sale

French authorities have added another case study to the growing argument against centralizing citizen identity data.

France Titres, formerly known as ANTS, operates the portal where residents apply for passports, national ID cards, residence permits, driver’s licenses, and vehicle registrations.

On April 15, something broke inside that system. A week later, the Interior Ministry confirmed what anyone watching digital ID schemes has been saying about this exact architecture for years, and the scale on offer from the attacker makes the warning harder to wave away.

A threat actor using the aliases “breach3d” and “ExtaseHunters” appeared on criminal forums on April 16, claiming to have stolen between 18 and 19 million records from the agency’s internal systems.

If accurate, that is roughly a third of France’s population sitting in a for-sale listing. The seller describes the haul as a fresh, structural compromise rather than a recycled dump, and is actively shopping it.

Early French press reports, including Le Figaro, initially pegged the figure at around 12 million accounts before later estimates climbed. The government has not confirmed any number.

What the ministry has confirmed is a “security incident that may involve the disclosure of data from both individual and professional accounts.”

Login credentials, full names, email addresses, dates of birth, unique account identifiers, postal addresses, places of birth, and phone numbers may all have been extracted. That combination is a starter kit for identity fraud, synthetic identity construction, and convincing phishing attacks against people who already expect email from French government domains.

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Elon Musk Is a No-Show for Questioning in French Court Hearing Into X Social Media Platform and Grok Chatbot

France is scrambling to censor free-speech X.

We have been reporting on how France is waging lawfare against free-speech X platform, and how US authorities refused to aid in the nefarious lawsuit, as you can read in DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform.

Today (20), it arose that the platform owner, tech billionaire Elon Musk did not appear at a summons for questioning in a French probe into X and its AI ‌chatbot, Grok.

The investigation began looking into alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Reuters reported:

“The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the U.S. and Europe over Big ​Tech and free speech.”

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DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform

The U.S. Justice Department has flatly refused to help French authorities investigate Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

In a letter sent Friday obtained by The Wall Street Journal , the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs said the French probe is an attempt to regulate a U.S. company through criminal law.

“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the letter states.

The department added that France’s requests “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

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Data Breach Exposing French Gun Owners a Warning to America

Anytime there’s a list of anything, there are going to be people who want to view that list for whatever reason. As we are firmly in the 21st century, that list is going to be digital more often than not, and that means the number of people who want to get that data increases exponentially. Especially when it’s something like a gun registry.

Luckily, federal law bars the federal government from creating a gun registry, though let’s be real here. If they change their minds, they’ll repeal the law in a heartbeat. It won’t stop them. Hell, it’s not even stopping the ATF from digitizing old records, which is really just a gun registry with a different name.

France, however, didn’t think gun registries were a bad thing.

Now, though, they’re finding out that data breaches into that registry are.

In a development that will shock absolutely nobody acquainted with the realities of gun control, there was another security breach of firearm owner data maintained by a government agency. This one took place in France, and an online cybersecurity resource, NeuraCyb Cybersecurity, reported it involved that country’s firearm registration system. Known as the Système d’Information sur les Armes (SIA), all law-abiding French gun owners are required to register information with it that includes, among other things, the gun owner’s name, address, firearms (including serial numbers), and a complete transaction history of each gun.

Because the SIA can be accessed in a number of ways—the firearms industry can access it to report commercial activity while gun owners can also access it to report any changes to their personal collection of firearms—it may be susceptible to being hacked from multiple points.

According to the NeuraCyb article:

Authorities detected the unauthorized access in late March 2026. The intrusion did not involve a direct hack of the central SIA database. Instead attackers used a compromised account belonging to a legitimate company or professional user authorized to interact with the system. This allowed them to extract commercial files stored within that specific account.

An anonymous hacker who took credit for the breach claimed to have stolen information on roughly 60,000 firearms and has allegedly offered to sell the data on underground online forums.  It is currently unknown how many law-abiding French gun owners might now have their personal information floating around the Internet and offered for sale to the highest (and shadiest) bidder, but some estimate it would be in the tens of thousands.

The absolute best-case scenario here is that the hacker just took the data because he needed proof he’d actually hacked it. In the hacker world, there are bragging rights to hacking certain systems, and having data from it proves you did it. They don’t want to do anything with the data so much as just support their claims and win acclaim in the hacking universe. He’s just saying he was going to sell it to make himself look cooler.

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French Police Tries to Raid Elysée Palace in Corruption Probe, but Are Denied Entrance by Presidency Staff Invoking Macron’s Immunity

A Panthéon corruption scandal is brewing.

A new French corruption scandal erupted today (14) as financial and anti-corruption police raided services linked to the Élysée Palace as part of an investigation opened in October 2025.

The probe is looking into allegations of favoritism, conflict of interest, corruption, and influence peddling when awarding public contracts for organizing prestigious Panthéon ceremonies by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (Center of National Monuments).

French cops are focusing on Shortcut Events, which monopolized the organization of all such €2 million ceremonies from 2002 to 2024.

Investigators want to know if the contracts awarded to the same firm involved improper support from the Élysée, Ministry of Culture, or related bodies, bypassing normal procurement rules.

But the French police found the doors of the Presidential Palace closed to them.

Politico reported:

“The French presidency refused to let investigators enter the Elysée Palace on Tuesday as part of a probe into contracts linked to memorial ceremonies, invoking the immunity enjoyed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The investigators that presented themselves at the Elysée Palace weren’t granted entry, according to a French presidency official who was granted anonymity for protocol reasons.

‘Investigators were told that the documents pertaining to Élysée Palace staff, which are unrelated to the President’s official duties and can therefore be disclosed, would be provided to them upon request’, an Elysée official said.”

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Archaeologists Are Mystified by These 2,000-Year-Old Bodies Found Seated Upright and Facing West in France

In 2024, archaeologists in France discovered an unusual grave site that contained 13 sets of human remains. All of the individuals appeared to have been buried sitting upright and facing west—a highly unusual and puzzling position.

Now, the researchers say they’ve identified at least five additional seated burials in a previously unexplored area of the same site. The latest discoveries raise more questions about the culture these individuals belonged to more than 2,000 years ago.

According to a March 18 statement from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), the team unearthed the skeletons while conducting excavations during ongoing renovations of the Josephine Baker primary school complex in Dijon, located in France’s east-central Burgundy region.

Just like the remains found in 2024, the newly discovered individuals were interred upright in a seated position, with their faces turned west and their hands resting in their laps. At least three appear to have been buried in a line parallel to the initially identified graves, about 66 feet away.

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French Government Tries to Ban Major Muslim Gathering in Paris for Security Risks, But Court Decision Confirms the Event

The Islamization of France is a fact, with 2,5 million Muslims in Paris and the metropolitan area alone.

Back on Thursday, the French government announced the ban of a major gathering of Muslims planned for the country’s capital.​

The head of police said it ‌represented ‘a security risk’, but the decision was later overturned by a French court.

Reuters reported:

“’At the request of the Interior ​Minister Laurent Nunez, I have issued an ​order prohibiting the 40th edition of the ⁠Annual Meeting of Muslims of France, from April ​3 to April 6 at the Paris–Le Bourget ​Exhibition Centre’, the Paris police chief Patrice Faure said in a post on X.

‘This decision is set within ​a national and international context marked by ​heightened tensions and an increased level of terrorist alert, risks ‌of ⁠public disorder, and the large police presence on the streets in the coming days’, he said.”

The attempt at a ban came after ⁠a foiled bomb attack on Bank of America building in Paris.

But the gathering is happening as planned, after a French court overturned the government’s bid to ban it.

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Israel Halts All Arms Purchases From France, Citing Anti-Semitism

A dramatic rupture between Israel and France is sending shockwaves through Europe’s political and defense establishment, exposing what critics describe as the consequences of globalist leadership detached from strategic reality. The decision by Israel to halt all defense procurement from Paris marks not just a diplomatic dispute, but a deeper fracture in the Western alliance.

According to a report from POLITICO EUROPE, at the center of the move is Amir Baram, who ordered an immediate end to government-to-government defense purchases from France. The directive reflects what Israeli officials describe as a long-building loss of trust in French leadership.

“Israel will reduce all defense procurement from France to zero,” the Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed, signaling a decisive pivot away from Paris. Instead, Israel will prioritize domestic production and cooperation with “friendly” nations.

The message is clear: reliability now matters more than tradition. For Jerusalem, France no longer qualifies as a dependable partner. The breakdown did not happen overnight. Israeli officials point to a pattern of increasingly hostile actions by the government of Emmanuel Macron over the past two years. Among the most controversial incidents was France’s decision to block Israeli participation at major defense exhibitions. At the 2025 Paris Air Show, French authorities physically partitioned Israeli booths, restricting access to key systems.

Baram described the move in blunt terms, calling it “absolutely, bluntly anti-Semitic.” He accused Paris of using political justifications to shield its own industries from Israeli competition.
This was not an isolated case. Earlier attempts were made to exclude Israeli companies from events like Eurosatory, one of Europe’s largest defense exhibitions.

Although a French court overturned one such ban in 2024, the pattern of obstruction continued. Israeli officials saw it as evidence of deliberate economic and political discrimination.
The situation escalated further during the ongoing conflict with Iran. France blocked the transfer of military supplies to Israel by refusing to allow aircraft carrying munitions to cross its airspace.

For Israeli leadership, this crossed a red line. One official described it as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

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