MOSCOW: Russia’s supreme court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by prominent investigative journalist Ivan Safronov against his 22-year prison sentence for high treason.
The 33-year-old was convicted last year of giving Russian military information to Czech intelligence and a Russian-German political scientist, charges he denies.
The appeal hearing was held in private and journalists were only invited to hear the court’s decision, which left his sentence unchanged, Russian news agencies said.
The sentence has been criticized by human rights groups and former colleagues, who argue he was targeted for writing about embarrassing incidents in the Russian army.
He had worked as a special correspondent for Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, where he wrote about Russian defense contracts and arms deliveries.
“You always hope, even though you know very well that most likely the (court’s decision) will stand,” Safronov’s sister Irina Kovyazina said.
Safronov’s lawyer told AFP he hoped the sentence would be reduced.
“We were counting on a slightly different outcome today,” he said.
After coming under increased pressure from management, Safronov left the paper in 2019 and briefly worked at state space agency Roscosmos in an advisory role before his arrest in 2020.
Since launching full-scale hostilities against Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has ramped up efforts to stamp out independent journalism.
Dozens of journalists have left the country and reporting on sensitive issues like the conflict in Ukraine and the Russian military has become increasingly difficult.
Safronov is considered an expert on the Russian military. His father also wrote about military issues before he died in a fall from his Moscow apartment in 2007.
Russian reporter loses appeal against 22-year jail term
https://arab.news/pyx2y
Russian reporter loses appeal against 22-year jail term
- The 33-year-old was convicted last year of giving Russian military information to Czech intelligence
- The appeal hearing was held in private and journalists were only invited to hear the court’s decision
Grok faces more scrutiny over deepfakes as Irish regulator opens EU privacy investigation
- The regulator says Grok has created and shared sexualized images of real people, including children. Researchers say some examples appear to involve minors
- X also faces other probes in Europe over illegal content and user safety
LONDON: Elon Musk’s social media platform X faces a European Union privacy investigation after its Grok AI chatbot started spitting out nonconsensual deepfake images, Ireland’s data privacy regulator said Tuesday.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said it notified X on Monday that it was opening the inquiry under the 27-nation EU’s strict data privacy regulations, adding to the scrutiny X is facing in Europe and other parts of the world over Grok’s behavior.
Grok sparked a global backlash last month after it started granting requests from X users to undress people with its AI image generation and editing capabilities, including putting females in transparent bikinis or revealing clothing. Researchers said some images appeared to include children. The company later introduced some restrictions on Grok, though authorities in Europe weren’t satisfied.
The Irish watchdog said its investigation focuses on the apparent creation and posting on X of “potentially harmful” nonconsensual intimate or sexualized images containing or involving personal data from Europeans, including children.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Grok was built by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI and is available through X, where its responses to user requests are publicly visible.
The watchdog said the investigation will seek to determine whether X complied with the EU data privacy rules known as GDPR, or the General Data Protection Regulation. Under the rules, the Irish regulator takes the lead on enforcing the bloc’s privacy rules because X’s European headquarters is in Dublin. Violations can result in hefty fines.
The regulator “has been engaging” with X since media reports started circulating weeks earlier about “the alleged ability of X users to prompt the @Grok account on X to generate sexualized images of real people, including children,” Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a press statement.
Spain’s government has ordered prosecutors to investigate X, Meta and TikTok for alleged crimes related to the creation and proliferation of AI-generated child sex abuse material on their platforms, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday.
“These platforms are attacking the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters,” Sánchez wrote on X.
Spain announced earlier this month that it was pursuing a ban on access to social media platforms for under-16s.
Earlier this month, French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices and summoned Musk for questioning. Meanwhile, the data privacy and media regulators in Britain, which has left the EU, have opened their own investigations into X.
The platform is already facing a separate EU investigation from Brussels over whether it has been complying with the bloc’s digital rulebook for protecting social media users that requires platforms to curb the spread of illegal content such as child sexual abuse material.
