Orange employee provided French jihadists with "hit list" of addresses, phone numbers

As Orange Telecom's CEO tries to limit the damage behind his anti-Israel statements in Egypt last week, it turns out that Orange has a bigger problem.

DW reports:

The trial of 15 members from the radical Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) got underway in Paris this week. The accused were arrested in 2012 amid a crackdown on radical Islamists following a shooting rampage in southern France.

Police had allegedly uncovered illegal weapons in a series of raids at group members' homes. They also found a document belonging to the group's leader, Mohamed Achamlane, which listed targets including Jewish supermarkets and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - which both became scenes of shootings in Paris in January that left 17 people dead.

Even though this group is not accused of the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks, they certainly considered them targets, along with a host of politicians and journalists.

Le Figaro is covering the trial, and they reported something astonishing: (English translation)

Accused of having wanted to perpetrate several attacks, the members of the small Islamist group had collected the personal details of several well-know personalities. 

In addition to three Jewish grocer's shops, a café in rue des Rosiers in Paris and five shops in the chain Hyper Cacher [kosher], the "Knights of Pride", as the members of Forsane Alizza called themselves, had two Lyonese judges in their target sights, one of whom had been chosen because of the Jewish sound of his name and a child protection order, based on mistreatment, applying to the children of one of the presumed Islamists. The members of the radical group, fifteen of whom are appearing in Paris starting from Monday, did not exclude attacking "enemies of Islam" such as Fabrice Robert, leader of the party Bloc Identitaire.

Thanks to "Dawoud", an acquaintance working for Orange, Mohamed Achamlane, the self-proclaimed "emir" of Forsane Alizza, also received a "small gift", specifically a list of names, addresses, landline and mobile telephone numbers of political personalities such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Roselyne Bachelot, Édouard Balladur, Jean-Louis Boorlo, Dominique de Villepin, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Jean-Louis Debré and even Philippe Douste-Blazy. Forsane Alizza also obtained details of media figures such as Éric Zemmour [Jewish anti-immigration commentator] or Silhem Hachbi of the movement "Ni pute, ni soumise" ["Neither bitch, nor submissive", a sort of brown women feminist movement]. Insatiable, Mohamed Achamlane had even demanded details of "cops, judges, MPs, etc., so we have a big database to have a means of exerting major pressure."

In a file called "UMP data.odt" [UMP was the major right-wing party in France, Sarkozy's party], the anti-terrorist judges also discovered that the Islamists had "personal data of members of the UMP, including MPs, former ministers and media personalities," including "addresses, telephone numbers, electronic messages, vehicles, number of children, professions".

Yes, an Orange employee who is sympathetic to Islamists provided confidential information for a group to intimidate or kill them.

Any modern company guards against the threat of insiders stealing data, and with European privacy laws being mush stricter than those in the US, it is a big deal that such a breach occurred.

Orange cannot guard its own databases from Islamist sympathizers.

(h/t Yoel)