France uses tough, untested cybercrime law to target Telegram’s Durov

Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime groups who are increasingly operating online. (REUTERS/File)
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime groups who are increasingly operating online. (REUTERS/File)
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Updated 17 September 2024
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France uses tough, untested cybercrime law to target Telegram’s Durov

France uses tough, untested cybercrime law to target Telegram’s Durov
  • France uses new law to prosecute Telegram’s Pavel Durov
  • Durov denies Telegram is an ‘anarchic paradise’

PARIS: When French prosecutors took aim at Telegram boss Pavel Durov, they had a trump card to wield — a tough new law with no international equivalent that criminalizes tech titans whose platforms allow illegal products or activities.
The so-called LOPMI law, enacted in January 2023, has placed France at the forefront of a group of nations taking a sterner stance on crime-ridden websites. But the law is so recent that prosecutors have yet to secure a conviction.
With the law still untested in court, France’s pioneering push to prosecute figures like Durov could backfire if its judges balk at penalizing tech bosses for alleged criminality on their platforms.
A French judge placed Durov under formal investigation last month, charging him with various crimes, including the 2023 offense: “Complicity in the administration of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction, in an organized gang,” which carries a maximum 10-year sentence and a 500,000 euro ($556,300) fine.
Being under formal investigation does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges think there’s enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped.
Durov, out on bail, denies Telegram was an “anarchic paradise.” Telegram has said it “abides by EU laws,” and that it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”
In a radio interview last week, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime groups who are increasingly operating online.
The law appears to be unique. Eight lawyers and academics told Reuters they were unaware of any other country with a similar statute.
“There is no crime in US law directly analogous to that and none that I’m aware of in the Western world,” said Adam Hickey, a former US deputy assistant attorney general who established the Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security cyber program.
Hickey, now at US law firm Mayer Brown, said US prosecutors could charge a tech boss as a “co-conspirator or an aider and abettor of the crimes committed by users” but only if there was evidence the “operator intends that its users engage in, and himself facilitates, criminal activities.”
He cited the 2015 conviction of Ross Ulbricht, whose Silk Road website hosted drug sales. US prosecutors argued Ulbricht “deliberately operated Silk Road as an online criminal marketplace ... outside the reach of law enforcement,” according to the DOJ. Ulbricht got a life sentence.
Timothy Howard, a former US federal prosecutor who put Ulbricht behind bars, was “skeptical” Durov could be convicted in the United States without proof he knew about the crimes on Telegram, and actively facilitated them — especially given Telegram’s vast, mainly law-abiding user base.
“Coming from my experience of the US legal system,” he said, the French law appears “an aggressive theory.”
Michel Séjean, a French professor of cyber law, said the toughened legislation in France came after authorities grew exasperated with companies like Telegram.
“It’s not a nuclear weapon,” he said. “It’s a weapon to prevent you from being impotent when faced with platforms that don’t cooperate.”

TOUGHER LAWS
The 2023 law traces its origins to a 2020 French interior ministry white paper, which called for major investment in technology to tackle growing cyber threats.
It was followed by a similar law in November 2023, which included a measure for the real-time geolocation of people suspected of serious crimes by remotely activating their devices. A proposal to turn on their devices’ cameras and mouthpieces so that investigators could watch or listen in was shot down by France’s Constitutional Council.
These new laws have given France some of the world’s toughest tools for tackling cybercrime, with the proof being the arrest of Durov on French soil, said Sadry Porlon, a French lawyer specialized in communication technology law.
Tom Holt, a cybercrime professor at Michigan State University, said LOPMI “is a potentially powerful and effective tool if used properly,” particularly in probes into child sexual abuse images, credit card trafficking and distributed denial of service attacks, which target businesses or governments.
Armed with fresh legislative powers, the ambitious J3 cybercrime unit at the Paris prosecutor’s office, which is overseeing the Durov probe, is now involved in some of France’s most high-profile cases.
In June, the J3 unit shut down Coco, an anonymized chat forum cited in over 23,000 legal proceedings since 2021 for crimes including prostitution, rape and homicide.
Coco played a central role in a current trial that has shocked France.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, is accused of recruiting dozens of men on Coco to rape his wife, whom he had knocked out with drugs. Pelicot on Tuesday testified in court, admitting to his guilt and asking his family for forgiveness. Meanwhile, 50 other men are also on trial for rape.
Coco’s owner, Isaac Steidel, is suspected of a similar crime as Durov: “Provision of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction by an organized gang.”
Steidel’s lawyer, Julien Zanatta, declined to comment.


Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre

Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre
Updated 10 March 2025
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Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre

Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre
  • Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day

PARIS: A prominent French journalist on Sunday announced he was stepping down from his role as an expert analyst for broadcaster RTL after provoking an uproar by comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a World War II massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.
Jean-Michel Aphatie, a veteran reporter and broadcaster, insisted that while he would not be returning to RTL he wholly stood by his comments made on the radio station in late February equating atrocities committed by France in Algeria with those of Nazi Germany in occupied France.
“I will not return to RTL. It is my decision,” the journalist wrote on the X, after he was suspended from air for a week by the radio station.
On February 25 he said on air: “Every year in France, we commemorate what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane — the massacre of an entire village. But we have committed hundreds of these, in Algeria. Are we aware of this?“
He was referring to the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, where an SS unit returning to the front in Normandy massacred 642 residents on June 10, 1944. Leaving a chilling memorial for future generations, the village was never rebuilt.
Challenged by the anchor over whether “we (the French) behaved like the Nazis,” Aphatie replied: “The Nazis behaved like us.”
On X, he acknowledged his comments had created a “debate” but said it was of great importance to understand the full story over France’s 1830-1962 presence in Algeria, saying he was “horrified” by what he had read in history books.
After being suspended for a week by the channel it means that “if I come back to RTL I validate this and admit to making a mistake. This is a line that cannot be crossed.”
His comments had prompted a flurry of complaints to audio-visual regulator Arcom which has opened an investigation.
France’s conduct in Algeria during the 1954-1962 war that led to independence and previous decades remain the subject of often painful debate in both countries.
Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day.
The far-right in France has long defended French policies in those years with Algeria War veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the National Front (FN) party and died earlier this year, drawing much support from French settlers who had to return after independence.

 


Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji

Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji
Updated 08 March 2025
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Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji

Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji
  • New flag is part of latest iOS, macOS updates

DUBAI: Apple has added the new flag of the Syrian Arab Republic to its emoji keyboard in the latest beta update to its operating system, replacing the one used by former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The new flag emoji is part of Apple’s iOS and macOS 18.4 beta 2 update and is therefore unavailable to those who have not signed up for beta updates.

Apple will roll out the new updates to users in April, according to a company statement.

The old flag featured three stripes: red at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with two green stars.

The new flag features green at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with three red stars.

For many Syrians the new flag represents freedom and independence from Assad’s dictatorial regime.

The country has a long history with the current flag, which was first adopted when Syria gained independence from France in 1946.

It was replaced in 1958 by the flag of the United Arab Republic to represent the political union between Egypt and Syria.

It was adopted again for a short time when Syria left the United Arab Republic in 1961, only to be replaced in 1963 when the Baath Party took control of the country.


Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime

Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime
Updated 07 March 2025
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Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime

Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime
  • Media organization hails ‘victory for free journalism’

DUBAI: The Syrian newspaper Enab Baladi has resumed distribution in the streets of Damascus and its suburbs after more than a decade-long ban under Bashar Assad’s regime.

The newspaper, which dubs itself as “an independent Syrian media organization,” documented the Syrian regime’s violations during the revolution when it launched in 2012.

The newspaper’s distribution was limited to opposition-controlled northern areas until 2020 after Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent.

Its editorial stance led to the arrest of many staff members, while others were tortured to death in prisons or killed by shelling and military operations in Daraya.

The media organization said: “The first copies were printed through self-funding and the efforts of its founding staff using a home printer, distributed secretly by volunteers in the neighborhoods of Daraya and Damascus.”

The organization relied on expanding its digital and visual content to reach audiences online, or through printed copies that were smuggled within Syria.

With the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 8 last year after a 12-day blistering campaign led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Enab Baladi resumed distribution in Damascus after a newsroom was established in the capital.

It said the move was aimed at “ensuring freedom of expression during an ambiguous transitional phase.”

The media organization added: “The return of printing inside Syria represents a victory for free journalism and an opportunity to reconnect with the audience inside Syria.”


Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation

Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
Updated 07 March 2025
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Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation

Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
  • Tool being built by Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare unit 

DUBAI: Israel’s military is developing an advanced artificial intelligence tool, similar to ChatGPT, by training it on Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians living under occupation.

These are the findings of a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

The tool is being built by the Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare Unit 8200. The division is programming the AI tool to understand colloquial Arabic by feeding it vast amounts of phone calls and text messages between Palestinians, obtained through surveillance.

Three Israeli security sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed the existence of the AI tool to the outlets conducting the investigation.

The model was still undergoing training last year and it is unclear if it has been deployed and to what end. However, sources said that the tool’s ability to rapidly process large quantities of surveillance material in order to “answer questions” about specific individuals would be a huge benefit to the Israeli army.

During the investigation, several sources highlighted that Unit 8200 had used smaller-scale machine learning models in recent years.

One source said: “AI amplifies power; it’s not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C (of the West Bank). I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to respond to The Guardian’s question about the new AI tool, but said the military “deploys various intelligence methods to identify and thwart terrorist activity by hostile organizations in the Middle East.”

Unit 8200’s previous AI tools, such as The Gospel and Lavender, were among those used during the war on Hamas. These tools played a key role in identifying potential targets for strikes and bombardments.

Moreover, for nearly a decade, the unit has used AI to analyze the communications it intercepts and stores, sort information into categories, learn to recognize patterns and make predictions.

When ChatGPT’s large language model was made available to the public in November 2022, the Israeli army set up a dedicated intelligence team to explore how generative AI could be adapted for military purposes, according to former intelligence officer Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff.

However, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI rejected Unit 8200’s request for direct access to its LLM and refused to allow its integration into the unit’s system.

Sayedoff highlighted another problem: existing language models could only process standard Arabic, not spoken Arabic in different dialects, resulting in Unit 8200 needing to develop its own program.

One source said: “There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model.”

Unit 8200 started recruiting experts from private tech companies in October 2023 as reservists. Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of the Israeli tech company AI21 Labs, confirmed that his employees participated in the project during their reserve duty.

The challenge for Unit 8200 was to “collect all the (spoken Arabic) text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralized place,” a source said, adding that the model’s training data eventually consisted of about 100 billion words.

Another source familiar with the project said the communications analyzed and fed to the training model included conversations in Lebanese and Palestinian dialects.

Goshen explained the benefits of LLMs for intelligence agencies but added that “these are probabilistic models — you give them a prompt or a question, and they generate something that looks like magic, but often the answer makes no sense.”

Zach Campbell, a senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch, called such AI tools “guessing machines.”

He said: “Ultimately, these guesses can end up being used to incriminate people.”

Campbell and Nadim Nashif, director and founder of the Palestinian digital rights and advocacy group 7amleh, also raised concerns about the collection of data and its use in training the AI tool.

Campbell said: “We are talking about highly personal information, taken from people who are not suspected of any crime, to train a tool that could later help establish suspicion.”

Nashif said: “Palestinians have become subjects in Israel’s laboratory to develop these techniques and weaponize AI, all for the purpose of maintaining (an) apartheid and occupation regime where these technologies are being used to dominate a people, to control their lives.

“This is a grave and continuous violation of Palestinian digital rights, which are human rights.”


IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts

IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts
Updated 06 March 2025
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IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts

IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts
  • Move comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Turkiye sparking speculation about the former’s motive

DUBAI: The Israeli army has created new Turkish-language accounts on social media platforms X and Telegram.

Israeli military official Arye Sharuz Shalicar acted as the spokesperson of the account on X welcoming Turkish users.

 

 

The account on X has drawn criticism and speculation about Israel’s motives and Shalicar’s history as a gang member in Germany.

Media reports suggest that the decision to open Turkish-language accounts comes after Turkiye’s emergence as a key player in the region, particularly in Syria.  

“Israel has identified Turkiye as becoming a stronger player in the region, following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,” said a report by The Times of Israel. 

In January, the Nagel Committee, formed by the Israeli government, said that the country must prepare for a potential war with Turkiye.

It released a report saying that “the threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat” and that Turkish-backed forces could act as proxies further threatening Israel’s “security,” according to Israeli media reports.

Following Israel’s attacks in southwestern Syria, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement on Monday. 

Although he did not name Israel, he said: “Those seeking to benefit from Syria’s instability will not succeed. We will not allow them to divide Syria as they imagine.”