France is seeking to keep a computer hack of front-runner Emmanuel Macron's campaign emails from influencing the outcome of the country's presidential election with a warning today it could be a criminal offence to republish the data.
Mr Macron's team said a "massive" hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign financing information online just before campaigning ended yesterday and France entered a quiet period which forbids politicians from commenting on the leak.
The data leak emerged as polls predicted Mr Macron was on course for a comfortable victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in tomorrow's election, with the last surveys showing his lead widening to around 62% to 38.
The commission, which supervises the electoral process, said after a hastily called meeting today that the data had been fraudulently obtained and could be mixed with false information.
However, its rules may be difficult to enforce in an era where people get much of their news online, information flows freely across borders and many users are anonymous.
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French media covered the hack in various ways, with left-leading Liberation giving it prominence on its website, but television news channels opting not to mention it.
As much as nine gigabytes of data were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing, late yesterday.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but Mr Macron's political movement said in a statement the hack was an attempt to destabilise democracy and to damage the party.
Mr Macron's En Marche! (Onwards!) movement said the leaked documents dealt with the normal operations of a campaign and included some information on campaign accounts.
It said the hackers had mixed false documents with authentic ones to "sow doubt and disinformation".
France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by allegations of manipulation through cyber hacking after US intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican Donald Trump.
The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, although Mr Macron's camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers' group operating in Ukraine.
Tomorrow's election is seen as the most important in France for decades, with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and the country's place in the world at stake.
The Front National's Le Pen would close borders and quit the euro currency, while independent Mr Macron wants closer European co-operation and an open economy.
