Public defender of privacy, the former boss of the French search engine now directs a company collecting personal information.
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Eric Léandri, the co-founder and former president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Qwant company (known for its search engine, in particular used by the website of the world.fr), was pinned in a long survey of the politico site For the economic intelligence activities of its new company, Altrnativ. Politico has had access to several thousand documents relating to Altrnativ which depict service offers that are not very respectful of privacy.
While the French entrepreneur has long built an image of protector of personal data, and defender of privacy, the information site reveals that he is today at the head of a company Marketing apparently economic intelligence activities in contradiction with this portrait.
Reports on Dassault Aviation employees
According to Politico, Altrnativ has, in fact, accomplished several missions for very large French companies, on behalf of which she peeled social networks and collected public information. According to internal documents consulted by the information site, Altrnativ a, for example, made in 2021 a report on a candidate of North African origin at a position at Dassault Aviation on behalf of ‘French company, by analyzing the information left, among other things, on the young woman’s Facebook account. The report contained elements on its alleged political ideas and its relationship to Islam.
Many companies specialize in what is called the OSINT (abbreviation of open source intelligence), research in open sources, selling very variable quality services based essentially on the aggregation of information found more or less freely online. Politico Mention of another report from Altrativ, intended for a crisis communication company, and interested in personalities who criticized the company LVMH on social networks, including MEP France Insoumise Manon Aubry. The latter reacted after the publication Politico investigation, denouncing “unacceptable practices that do not have their place in democracy”.
Among the internal documents consulted by Politico, some raise, according to the media, questions about potential links between Altrnativ and companies specializing in the sale of espionage equipment. The survey published on Wednesday reports in particular of presentations for several African governments including the logo of Altrnativ and mention listening devices and digital and telephone surveillance, including one of them was developed by Nexa Technologies, indicted in 2021 for “complicity of acts of torture and forced disappearances”. Eric Léandri denied any collaboration of this kind with politico, and said that Altrnativ was not at the origin of these documents promoting spy software.