warning on Saturday it could be a criminal offence to republish the data.
Macron's
team said a "massive" hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign
financing information online just before campaigning ended on Friday and France
entered a quiet period which forbids politicians from commenting on the leak.
The data
leak emerged as polls predicted Macron, a former investment banker and economy
minister, was on course for a comfortable victory over far-right leader Marine
Le Pen in Sunday's election, with the last surveys showing his lead widening to
around 62 percent to 38.
"On the
eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls
on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media,
but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content,
so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot," the French election
commission said in a statement on Saturday.
However, the
commission - which supervises the electoral process - may find it difficult to
enforce its rules in an era where people get much of their news online,
information flows freely across borders and many users are anonymous.
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.
Le Monde
newspaper said on its website it would not publish the content of any of the
leaked documents before the election, partly because the huge amount of data
meant there was not enough time to report on it properly, but also because the dossiers
had been published on purpose 48 hours before the election with the clear aim
of affecting the vote.
"If
these documents contain revelations, Le Monde will of course publish them after
having investigated them, respecting our journalistic and ethical rules, and
without allowing ourselves to be exploited by the publishing calendar of
anonymous actors," it said.
As the
#Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media on Friday night, Florian
Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen's National Front party, tweeted "Will
Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately
kept silent?"
DESTABILISATION
As much as 9
gigabytes of data purporting to be documents from the Macron campaign were
posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous
document sharing.
It was not
immediately clear who was responsible, but Macron's political movement said in
a statement the hack was an attempt to destabilize democracy and to damage the
party.
En Marche!
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."
Sunday'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.
Le Pen would
close borders and quit the euro currency, while Macron wants closer European
cooperation and an open economy.
Voters in some
French overseas territories and the Americas were due to cast their ballots on
Saturday, a day before voting in France itself. The first polling stations to
open at 1000 GMT were in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, islands off Canada.
Others in
French Guiana in South America; Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean; the
South Pacific islands of French Polynesia and French citizens living elsewhere
in the Americas were also due to vote on Saturday.
In France,
police union Alternative Police warned in a statement that there was a risk of
violence on election day by activists of the far-right or far-left.
Extreme-right
student activists burst into the office of Macron's political movement in the
southeastern city of Lyon on Friday evening, setting off smoke grenades and
scattering false bank notes bearing Macron's picture, police said.
France is
the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by allegations of
manipulation through cyber hacking after U.S. 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.
Vitali
Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm
Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicated that APT 28, a group tied to the
GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak.
Macron's
campaign has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming
Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.
The Kremlin
has denied it was behind any such attacks, although Macron's camp renewed
complaints against Russian media and a hackers' group operating in Ukraine.
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