No Ethics In Big Tech — Jurisdiction Series, Part Two of Four
Published 22 August 2026 · ForeverPeaceNow.com / NoEthicsInBigTech.com
I cannot travel to four countries. So I am publishing the legal argument for each of them and giving it away to any lawyer who wants it.
France is the second in this series. It is not the strongest venue on the facts. It is the most important one on the law — because a French court has already answered the defence that every technology company will run.
The defence, and the answer
The objection is always the same. We sold a product. We sold it commercially, to a customer, at a price. We had no wish to facilitate anything. Intent is missing, so complicity fails.
In September 2021 the Cour de cassation rejected exactly that reasoning in the Lafarge case. The investigating chamber had annulled the company’s mise en examen for complicity in crimes against humanity, reasoning that it had only wanted to keep trading in Syria. The Cour de cassation quashed the annulment and held that an accomplice need not belong to the organisation committing the crime, need not adhere to its plan, and need not approve the underlying crimes. It is necessary and sufficient that the accomplice knew the principal perpetrators were committing or about to commit such a crime and that his aid facilitated it. And it is irrelevant that he acted in pursuit of a commercial activity — that goes to motive, not to intent.
The Paris investigating chamber confirmed the mise en examen in May 2022. The investigation is still running.
That is the most useful paragraph in European law for this entire subject. Commercial motive is not a defence. Knowledge plus facilitation is enough. It should be cited in every filing in every country in this series — as persuasive authority where it is not binding, and never dressed up as more than that.
Where France is weaker, and I am not going to hide it
The Netherlands has something France does not: a published statement by the company placing the conduct on Dutch soil. On 25 September 2025 Microsoft said its review had found evidence of Israeli Ministry of Defence consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands.
It said nothing about France. So a French complaint cannot lean on an admission. It has to ask an investigating judge to find out what was contracted, engineered, supported or routed through France — which is precisely the kind of question no journalist and no campaigner can answer, and a juge d’instruction can.
The procedural decision that decides everything
France offers two doors and they are not equivalent.
Frame the complaint territorially, under Article 113-2 of the Code pénal, and the plainte avec constitution de partie civile stays open — which compels an investigating judge to open a case. The decision is taken out of the prosecutor’s hands.
Frame it extraterritorially, under Article 689-11 of the Code de procédure pénale, and the ministère public holds a monopoly. A victim cannot trigger proceedings at all. You have handed away the one advantage France offers.
Get that choice wrong in the opening paragraphs and nothing that follows matters.
The problem I have not solved
A constitution de partie civile needs a partie civile — someone who personally suffered damage caused by the offence, or an association meeting the statutory conditions.
I want to be precise about what I have and what I do not. ParentsPlea.com is a casualty documentation resource built from Palestinian Ministry of Health data and independent research by my own team. It can support the identification of victims, incidents and dates. It does not by itself give anyone legal standing.
Lafarge shows the association route working: Sherpa and ECCHR were parties civiles alongside eleven former Syrian employees. Which French associations satisfy the statutory conditions for these particular offences is a question for French counsel, not for me.
One thing I should say plainly about who I am
I am a United States person. In September 2025 the US Treasury designated three Palestinian human rights organisations on the SDN list under Executive Order 14203, blocking their property in US jurisdiction and prohibiting transactions by US persons. I therefore do not engage with those organisations and this project does not.
That is a constraint on me. It is not a constraint on French lawyers, and I am not asking anyone to adopt it. I mention it because you should know what shaped these documents, and because everything in them is built from published court decisions and published journalism.
How to get the memorandum
The full memorandum — statutory basis, the Lafarge holding in detail, the two procedural routes, the honest weaknesses, every source with a live link — is not posted publicly.
Use the contact form at NoEthicsInBigTech.com and ask for the France memorandum. I will send it. I would rather it reached people who intend to use it than sat where anyone can scrape it.
The three things behind this work
The petition to the Spanish Government and Prosecutor’s Office — a record of global demand for investigation, and a separate instrument from the legal arguments in this series. Available via actionnetwork.org or on ForeverPeaceNow.com/Petition
ParentsPlea.com — the casualty record, compiled from Palestinian Ministry of Health data and my team’s own research.
NoEthicsInBigTech.com — the book, the company fact sheets, and the underlying research corpus.
As of 5 August 2026 the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 73,381 people killed and 174,231 injured in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, including 1,254 killed since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025, with an unknown number of victims remaining beneath rubble or in areas emergency responders have been unable to reach. Independent peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet Global Health indicates that figure is a conservative floor rather than an overcount. Every one of those people had a name. That is the only reason any of this exists.
Research credit: legal research, source verification and drafting support by Claude (Anthropic). All sources checked 22 August 2026. This post is not legal advice and I am not a lawyer. It is research offered to people who are.