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French Gov't Runs Vast Electronic Spying Operation of Its Own

Posted by timothy on from the but-it's-only-wafer-thin-metadata dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes with this news (quoting The Guardian): "France runs a vast electronic surveillance operation, intercepting and stocking data from citizens' phone and internet activity, using similar methods to the U.S. National Security Agency's Prism programme exposed by Edward Snowden, Le Monde has reported. An investigation by the French daily [en français; Google translation] found that the DGSE, France's external intelligence agency, had spied on the French public's phone calls, emails and internet activity. The agency intercepted signals from computers and phones in France as well as between France and other countries, looking not so much at content but to create a map of 'who is talking to whom,' the paper said."

12 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Now taking bets... by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now taking bets on which country will be implicated next in sketchy and/or illegal domestic monitoring.

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    1. Re:Now taking bets... by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As long as they do not look into the content of our emails/phone calls, we couldn't care less if they check 'who is talking to whom'.

      That's presumably why you're posting anonymously.

    2. Re:Now taking bets... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > we couldn't care less if they check 'who is talking to whom'.
      > we
      I think you meant "I".

      Are you 100% sure you know what the people you call do in their free time?

      You might be calling a terrorist/pedophile/drug dealer without knowing it.

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    3. Re:Now taking bets... by geoskd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't care if they see I'm talking to a divorce lawyer or AIDS doctor. Really, the whole world can see this. The websites I visit ? Public knowledge and in no way shameful or compromising. My friends ? All of them ordinary, upstanding guys with no political interests or inclination for subversive activities. It's not like I'm one of those Muslims who are all at 5 degrees of separation to a known terrorist. My day to day location and CCTV images ? Public. My full financial data ? No problem there, I'm 100% free of any tax related problem - I have the tax code memorized (all it's 14K pages). I have nothing to hide !

      I have some bad news for you, you are almost certainly within 5 degrees of separation from some "person of interest". Pretty much everyone is. Otherwise why would they have to gather data on everyone.

      The problem isn't that this particular set of collected data is or isn't a danger to all of our freedoms. The problem isn't whether or not there is proper oversight for the people conducting the spying. The problem is that this amount of power will inherently lead to corruptions and abuses, and as such, no government can be trusted with it. The very fact that the government felt the need to conduct this spying in secret is ample evidence that their intentions are not on the up and up. If you tell everyone that you are monitoring who they communicate with, then the paranoid people will act to prevent the eavesdropping, but their behavior alone will single them out, giving the would-be-eavesdroppers just as much useful intelligence as having all of that metadata. The idea that the spying has to be secret to be effective is absurd in practice. Since the given reason for the secrecy is false, the only remaining explanations are far more sinister. We now hear that the french are partaking of this level of spying? Is foreign terrorism that big of a threat in France? I suspect that the biggest terrorist threat in France is the same as the US: good old fashioned homegrown whackjobs. No amount of communication surveillance is going to help find and catch the lone bomber, or the dedicated pair of crazies. There are only two uses for that level of survailance: Post-incident investigation (they already admitted that no one looks at the data in real time). And oppression. Just because it makes the investigators jobs easier for the first option doesn't mean its worth risking the second option.

      -=Geoskd

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  2. See!!? by FriendlyLurker · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Everyone is doing it. It must be ok then... so move along, "don't rock the boat - keep your head down Just another fool in the crowd"...

    /sarcasm

  3. Oh for the love of fuck... by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This has been known publicly since the release of the book the Sword and the Shield in the 1990s, and well-known by most larger companies since well before that even. We're persecuting Snowden for being the Captain Obvious of the intelligence community. "Oh noes! The french are spying on us!" Dude. Fucking duh. The french have been spying on everyone since the dark ages. Hell, where do you think the word sabateur comes from? The french pretty much invented industrial espionage.

    In other news... why are we threatening the lives of other countries leaders and going on a mad witch hunt for Snowden, wheeling and dealing in backroom deals reminiscent of the cold war era again? Oh right... because he came forward and confirmed what everyone either already suspected, or knew. Which was only necessary because so many people are living in a level of denial that makes the comment "Windows 8 is the best operating system ever!" look like criticism. -_-

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    1. Re:Oh for the love of fuck... by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Saboteur" refers to the practice of ruining the innards of weaving machines by throwing in your shoes - a type of wooden clog called a "sabot". It has no espionage connotations at all.

      And it probably originates in the Netherlands.

  4. Yes and no by silviuc · · Score: 5, Informative

    Al EU nations have to abide by an EU directive that requires telecom companies and internet service providers to record and store the meta-data.

    Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

    The article is worded such that I don't yet understand whether the data was stocked for years (because the directive does impose time limits) or if the program has been going for years which is accurate since the directive was issued in 2006.

  5. France banned crypto for years by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, duh. Of course they do - this is France, the country that made cryptography illegal until it was pointed out to them that this was destroying their ability to participate in electronic commerce.

  6. iNSAption by knotprawn · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is not unexpected, but each revelation just makes the whole situation seem more and more hilarious. The following scenario is probably playing itself out somewhere right now.

    NSA Agent 1: "Sir, we've intercepted a French transmission that I think you should take a look at"

    NSA Agent 2: "Why, what does it say?"

    (Transcript of translated Transmission reads) "Sir, we've intercepted an American transmission that I think you should take a look at"

  7. English Version from Le Monde by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's their own English Translation, just the graphics are only in the french version.

    http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-on-the-french-big-brother_3442665_3224.html

  8. Re:It's understandable. by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Informative

    France does have some pretty hardcore racists, the National Front party is quite popular. The rioters however are usually second or third generation who complain they aren't being given equal opportunities in employment or education. How true this is I don't know, but having lived in France for quite a while I'd say it's entirely possible.