France Election Commission warns media against reporting on hacked data

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France Election Commission warns media against reporting on hacked data

May 7, 2017 01:03:08 pm

The National Control Commission for the Election Campaign for the Presidential Election (CNCCEP) [official website, in French] on Saturday cautioned [press release, in French] media outlets against sharing information leaked from an alleged hack of a presidential candidate. The hackers have claimed to have stolen an estimated 9 gigabytes of data from the Emmanuel Macron [official profile, in French] campaign and the Macron-backed En Marche Party [official website, in French], although this information is yet to be verified. The leak spread with “#MacronLeaks” on social media. The CNCCEP warning reminded that French law forbids interference into elections and that a journalist may face criminal charges if they release any report on the information to the public. The CNCCEP stated [French translation]:

On the eve of the most important election deadline for our institutions, it calls on all actors present on websites and social networks, first and foremost the media, but also all citizens, Of responsibility and not to relay these contents, in order not to alter the sincerity of the vote, not to break the prohibitions laid down by the law and not to expose oneself to the commission of criminal offenses.

Additionally, as the laws prevent continued campaigning, Macron is prohibited by law from speaking on the alleged hacking until the election is over.

The number of instances of hacking, specifically as it relates to the political and/or governmental spectrum, has increased substantially in recent years posing significant social and legal implications [JURIST backgrounder] that transcend international borders. Last month Roman Seleznev, the son of a member of the Russian Parliament, was sentenced [JURIST report] to 27 years in prison for hacking into more than 500 US businesses, and stealing and selling millions of credit card numbers. Earlier the same month the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced [JURIST report] that it had effectively disrupted the Kelihos botnet, a network of thousands of virus ridden computers used to glean personal information and login credentials by distributing malicious software through spam emails. The week before that announcement Peter Yuryevich Levashov, long thought to be the creator of the Kelihos botnet, was arrested [Reuters report] in Spain on charges purportedly related to US claims that Russia interfered with the November 2016 US election. In March the Senate held hearings [JURIST report] on seeking to determine the level of Russian involvement in the election, one week after the FBI Director James Comey [official profile] confirmed [JURIST report] it had begun investigating Russian interference. Earlier the same month the DOJ announced [JURIST report] indictments for four Russian hackers in March related to an email hacking incident.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.