The probe is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant.
rench prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.”
Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement Friday that prosecutors had launched the probe on Wednesday and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.
The criminal investigation comes on the heels of an inquiry launched in January, and is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant, Beccuau said.
A complaint that sparked the initial January inquiry accused X of spreading “an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”
POLITICO has reached out to X for comment.
The investigation lands as X is increasingly under fire from regulators in Paris and Brussels.
Two French parliamentarians referred the platform to France’s digital regulator Arcom on Thursday following anti-Semitic and racist posts by Grok, the artificial-intelligence chatbot that answers questions from X users.
The European Commission has separately been investigating the Musk-owned platform for almost two years now, on suspicion of breaching its landmark platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act.
Dramatic revelations shed fresh light on investigation into whether Chinese tech firm tried to buy influence in EU politics.
Belgian security agents bugged a corporate box at the RSC Anderlecht football stadium that was being used by Chinese tech giant Huawei to schmooze members of the European Parliament.
They also listened into other conversations involving one of Huawei’s leading lobbyists, including in his car. The surveillance operations, confirmed by three people with close knowledge of the investigation, formed part of a wide-ranging probe into allegations of corruption that was first revealed in March. They contributed to the Belgian prosecutor’s decision, reported by POLITICO on Monday, to request that a group of MEPs have their immunities lifted so they can be investigated.
The extraordinary revelations are the latest chapter in a saga that combines concerns about the reach of China in European politics and how susceptible EU lawmakers are to bribery and shady lobbying practices, even after a string of similar scandals.
Hannah Neumann was targeted in a cyber-espionage operation by an infamous Iranian hacking group earlier this year, she said.
A prominent European Parliament member was the victim of what is believed to be a cyber-espionage operation tied to her role as chair of the chamber's Iran delegation, she told POLITICO.
The office of Hannah Neumann, a member of the German Greens and head of the delegation spearheading work on European Union-Iran relations, was targeted by a hacking campaign that started in January, she said. Her staff was contacted with messages, phone calls and emails by hackers impersonating a legitimate contact. They eventually managed to target a laptop with malicious software.
"It was a very sophisticated attempt using various ways to manage that someone accidentally opens a link, including putting personal pressure on them," Neumann said.
The campaign suggested Iran was to blame. POLITICO has not independently verified the identity of the hacker or their motivation.
One day at the dawn of the 1980s, an FBI agent in his 30s named Rick Smith walked into the Balboa Café, an ornate, historic watering hole in San Francisco’s leafy Cow Hollow neighborhood. Smith, who was single at the time, lived nearby and regularly frequented the spot.
As he approached the oak wood bar to order a drink he suddenly spotted a familiar face — someone Smith had met about a year before, after the man had walked into the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. He was Austrian by birth, but a denizen of Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur who operated as a middleman between American tech companies and European countries hungry for the latest hi-tech goods.
A recent Chinese-linked hack of U.S. government emails detected in June may have gone unnoticed for much longer were it not for an enterprising government IT analyst.
A State Department cybersecurity expert spearheaded an effort to implant a custom warning mechanism into the agency’s network more than two years ago in anticipation of future hacks, the officials said, shedding new light on how they spotted the breach, top State Department officials told POLITICO.