Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli's Bodyguard, Part II: Fishing Expedition for Sources in the Alexandre Benalla 'Underworld' Scandal

Protecting criminals from those who expose them

Control Risks



Investigation Unit



Summary: An utter lack of respect for the privacy of the media and of its sources, in the name of protecting the privacy of those convicted of crimes, as seen in France just like the European Patent Office

THIS is the second part of a series of 5 (part one here) regarding the Benalla affair. Benalla had worked clandestinely at the European Patent Office (EPO) before the so-called 'Benallagate' broke out.



As it turns out, France is now mimicking the EPO modus operandi. The EPO hired a dodgy private firm to help spy on the staff, as we noted in:



The next translation comes from a reader, who read "Mediapart s'oppose à une perquisition de ses locaux dans l'affaire Benalla" and put it all in English as follows:

Mediapart opposes a search of its premises in the Benalla case



The leaders of the information site say they refused a search conducted in the context of an investigation for a restriction of Benalla's privacy.

The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into "restriction of privacy" and the conditions for recording a conversation between Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase in late July, after its broadcast last week by Mediapart, it was reported on Monday from a judicial source.

The online media reported that on Monday morning it refused a search of its premises, where two prosecutors and investigators who wanted to seize the recordings in question as part of this procedure came forward. "There are diligences to find our sources, it is a particularly worrying situation," denounced Fabrice Arfi, co-responsible for the online newspaper's surveys, to AFP.

Mediapart had published on Thursday excerpts from a recording of a conversation between Alexandre Benalla, Emmanuel Macron's former advisor, and Vincent Crase, former LREM employee and reservist gendarme.

According to the news website, this conversation took place on 26 July, a few days after the two men were indicted for violence against demonstrators on 1 May 2018 and in violation of their judicial control.

The judicial source specified that the opening of the preliminary investigation, which also concerns the "unlawful possession of devices or technical devices likely to enable the interception of telecommunications or conversations", took place following the receipt by the Paris prosecutor's office of "elements", the nature of which has not been specified.

A source close to the investigation added that it was not triggered following a complaint from Alexandre Benalla.

"As we are in the context of a preliminary investigation, we have the right to refuse a search and we have therefore obviously refused it, allowing us to comment on this unprecedented situation in the history of the newspaper, and which we consider particularly serious for the newspaper," also explained Fabrice Arfi.



Previously in the Benalla affair in relation to the EPO:

  1. Alexandre Benalla, Macron's Violent Bodyguard, Was Also Battistelli's Bodyguard
  2. It Wasn't Judges With Weapons in Their Office, It Was Benoît Battistelli Who Brought Firearms to the European Patent Office (EPO)
  3. Benoît Battistelli Refuses to Talk to the Media About Bringing Firearms to the EPO
  4. Guest Post on Ronan Le Gleut and Benalla at the French Senate (in Light of Battistelli's Epic Abuses)
  5. The Man Whose Actions Could Potentially Land Team Battistelli in Jail
  6. French Media Confirms Alexandre Benalla Just One of Six Battistelli Bodyguards, Employed at the Cost of €8,000-€10,000 Per Month (for Benalla Alone!)
  7. Corrupt Battistelli Paid a Fortune (EPO Budget) for Outlaw/Rogue 'Bodyguards' From Firm Linked to Russian Oligarch Iskander Makhmudov


The next part will be published either later today or tomorrow.

Recent Techrights' Posts

How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day