The Paris Lawyer Who Gives Google Nightmares

Dan Shefet is an unlikely tech revolutionary. He's not a young math geek who builds driverless cars, nor does he promise to make a tech product for the masses. His crusade is different. The 63-year-old year old Shefet has staged an astonishingly effective campaign in Europe to thwart the torrent of fake news and damaging personal attacks that course through the Internet by taking on the tech giants.

The Paris-based Shefet packs a lot of energy into his compact frame of 5 feet 7 inches, and one can even find him sprinting across the streets as he gets from one meeting to the next in the city. He is on a mission to kill free speech — at least the way the United States understands it. He has one aim, and it is directed squarely at a select few in Silicon Valley.

"A handful of corporations have been raised to a level of legal untouchability hitherto only bestowed upon certain diplomatic missions and royalty," he says.

These might sound like the perishable musings of an armchair critic or an op-ed columnist. But Shefet has legal street cred.

He battled long and hard against Google in court in Paris. And surprisingly, in a defining moment in the battle over digital rights, Shefet came out the victor.

Now he is attracting attention in the United States, and his timing is