France
Anti-disinformation agency Viginum seeks to move up a gear after a year in operation

France
French foreign ministry to set up 24/7 disinformation watch

The 2024 budget allocation of France's Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs provides additional funds to enable it to mount a permanent online disinformation watch and counterspeech response.

France
French foreign ministry sets up new anti-disinformation task force

The French foreign ministry has recently gained some ground in the fight against disinformation, while France's military and security aparatus already have their own structures in place.

France
French ministries battle for influence over online counterinterference effort

The French foreign and defence ministries are vying for leadership on strategic communication in response to foreign propaganda, while Viginum, an agency created to fight online interference, and the intelligence services are increasingly cooperating on its monitoring.

The Intelligence Gazette
Cofrex, Viginum, Uzbek SGB, US Captagon crackdown

Appointments, reforms and the issues at stake: every Monday, Intelligence Online serves up snippets big and small from the global intelligence community from London to Paris via Washington.

FranceCOFREX picks representative for its Expo 2025 Osaka presence.

FranceStéphane Bouillon discloses Viginum's annual report.

UzbekistanInternal Security Service adds another layer to border control.

WashingtonDNI to sniff out Assad-linked Captagon.

France
Paris seeks to grasp the fluid concept of lawfare

"Lawfare", defined as the instrumentalisation of the law by a state for strategic purposes, is currently the focus of France's SGDSN defence and national security secretariat, which is looking for ways to counter US and soon Chinese regulations imposed on French industry.

France
French military gets offensive again in its information warfare against Russia

The French government is once more deploying its inter-force environmental actions centre's (CIAE) digital operations group (GON) to conduct online influence operations against Russia.

Europe
European Commission pieces together its OSINT platform

The European Commission wants to help its member counties lacking in open source intelligence tools ramp up their capacities in the field but its protocols around contracting parties is slowing down the process.

France
Corporate intelligence firms Axis, Corexalys get into OSINT platform market

After developing a digital investigation and data aggregation platform for its own use, Axis is now moving into this marketplace, along with a growing number of companies keen to land contracts with private and public clients.

France
Ben Scott and Pierre Omidyar's anti-disinfo lobby monitoring French elections

Luminate and Reset are about to reveal the existence of their task force GVNIE, which is tracking fake news and hate speech in the run-up to the presidential election. Meanwhile, Viginum, the French agency dedicated to fighting foreign digital interference, is struggling to take off.

France
Viginum slots into France administrative counterintelligence landscape

President Emmanuel Macron's anti-fake news unit has joined a crowded landscape where various roles overlap.

France
Macron gets intelligence services battle ready to protect elections from potential foreign interference

Unlike previous presidential polls, the Elysée is mobilising intelligence services on an unprecedented scale to secure the next election. Behind France's dedicated new agency Viginum, the DGSE, the DGSI and Tracfin are actively trying to prevent new foreign interferences.

France
Viginum and DGSI consider partnering with defence-backed startups to fight fake news

With four months to go before the French presidential elections, Sahar and Storyzy, two start-ups backed in their early days by the French armed forces ministry, are leading the field for contracts to equip the DGSI and Viginum - the second on the advice of the first - with cyber systems to fight fake news.

France
France's SGDSN budget finances new anti-fake news technology for Viginum

France's new anti-fake news service Viginum has been allocated €4m to procure technology and hire 25 additional staff in signs which suggest the service is poised to work more closely with the French intelligence community.

France
French government's new Honfleur anti-fake news task force takes shape

Intelligence Online has the latest on Honfleur, the service being set up to tackle media and online disinformation.

France
Emmanuel Macron launches anti-fake news task force Honfleur

France's main intelligence services have been roped into a project coordinated by its Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security (SGDSN), which will identify private companies which could help tackle disinformation.