French journalist "hacks" govt by inputting correct URL, later fined $4,000+
In 2012, French blogger, activist, and businessman Olivier Laurelli sat down at his computer. It automatically connected to his VPN on boot (he owns a small security services company, called Toonux, which was providing a connection via a Panamanian IP address) and began surfing the Web.
Laurelli, who goes by the alias “Bluetouff” in most circles (including on Ars Technica), is something of a presence among the French tech-savvy community. Besides managing Toonux, he also co-founded the French-language activist news site Reflets.info, which describes itself as a “community project to connect journalists and computer networking specialists.” As such, Laurelli initiated a Google search on other subjects, but what he stumbled on was perhaps more interesting: a link that led to 7.7 Gb of internal documents from the French National Agency for Food Safety, Environment, and Labor (the acronym is ANSES in French).
Although the documents were openly indexed by Google, Laurelli would soon be in the French government’s crosshairs for publishing them. He eventually faced criminal charges, though he was later acquitted of those. However, a separate government agency pursued a civil appeal. And last Tuesday, a French appeals court fined Laurelli 3,000 Euros (or a little over $4,000), meaning he likely made one of the more expensive Google searches to date.
