Revelations On the French Big Brother

Wrath0fb0b writes "Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France. The report notes that 'our email messages, SMS messages, itemized phone bills and connections to FaceBook and Twitter are then stored for years.' For those Slashdot readers that grok Français, you can read the original at Le Monde or the translated version from LM."

Comments

I'm not French

[Frosty Piss]

Well, you know, spying on you own people and spying on other countries are two different things.

Here in the United States, spying on your own is generally held to be distasteful, and very often illegal. But while we project our own ideas of law on other countries, often they have no such squeamishness about domestic spying.

As to American spying on it's own:

* First the Obama Administration said "Weâ(TM)re not doing this."

* Than they said "Weâ(TM)re doing it to ferret out Terrorists!"

* And now they justify what Snowden and others have revealed by saying "Well, EVERYONE ELSE is doing itâ¦"

As an American, while in an abstract way I care what the French are doing to their people, my opinions are really only applicable to my own country - in other words, as far as NSA spying, what the French are doing is not relevant.

Re:I'm not French

[phayes]

Completely ridiculous. French politicians are soo afraid of the public that they voted global amnesty laws forgiving the whole lot of themselves for the corruption they used to finance their political parties -- without having most of them get voted out of office in the subsequent elections.

French politicians have coined phrases like "I was responsible for the deaths of hundreds in continuing to use contaminated blood, but I'm not guily of breaking any laws".

Only the ignorant believe that politics in France is any different than anywhere else.

Re:I'm not French

[SirGarlon]

But while we project our own ideas of law on other countries, often they have no such squeamishness about domestic spying.

I thought that, too, but in this case Le Monde called this program "perfectly illegal". I'm inclined to believe its editors understand French law better than I (an American) do.

Re:I'm not French

[godrik]

Well, it is politically interesting in France. There is a large movement there to have more openness (called "transparency") in what the government and congress do and how they reach these conclusions. It was a proposition of the runner up to the presidential elections 6 years ago to put video tapes of the council of minister as public records. It was a proposal by Segolene Royal, supported by the socialist party, in order to cleanse public politics. Now we have Francois Hollande as president who was supported by the socialist party; and he was strongly advocating against prism a week ago.

There are in France many law that restrict what you can or can not store about people in databases (would they be public or private). This is supposed to be taken care of by the CNIL (National Comitee for Internet and Liberty). CNIL is supposed to be the one that prevents electronic wiretaping and electronic spying... But in the recent years the role of CNIL has weaken a lot.

Re:I'm not French

[icebike]

s an American, while in an abstract way I care what the French are doing to their people, my opinions are really only applicable to my own country - in other words, as far as NSA spying, what the French are doing is not relevant.

When the French spy on US citizens and feed it to the NSA, how is that different, or some how not relevant? I'm sure the NSA returns the favor. Each side claiming they are protecting their citizens from the Rest of the World.

Perhaps we as Americans, still clinging desperately to tatters of our Constitution, which, in our hearts, we know is already a joke, have a harder time than the rest of the world getting our head around one single question:
          Where did this entire Idea that Governments were authorized to spy on its citizens come from?

Perhaps the German, the French and the Russian never even thought to ask that question, having never had a time in their memory (if not their entire history) where they were ever free of such government snooping, because Government was always a Right excersized over citizens, and citizens were never in control of government.

Interesting irony there

[Pluvius]

Though not quite as interesting as when the article was posted yesterday.

Rob

Tinfoil time

[PsychicX]

It's almost as if every country of note is running massive internet surveillance programs, is aware of everybody else's program, and is only using the leaks as an excuse to publicly complain about something everyone knows everyone else is doing.

Nah, that would just be paranoid.

Re:Tinfoil time

[Charliemopps]

Except for, you know, the public. The general public had no idea how ridiculous the surveillance was. I think everyone assumed there was some surveillance going on... but capturing everything? Really? At the tune of 80 billion a year? That money could go towards curing cancer or heart disease and they'd save a lot more lives than they ever will preventing the occasional terrorist attack, and it's doubtful they've actually prevented anything give that in most cases the perpetrators couldn't even find weapons or explosives without the undercover FBI agents offering to sell them the stuff.

It's also telling the as soon as a government starts complaining about what the US is doing, their own surveillance programs are revealed. The US is clearly involved in a heavy game of public distraction. The medias pretty much dropped this story, likely at their request, and can conveniently cover what all the other countries are doing. It's staggering that these actions are being presented in any way that is even remotely considered acceptable. All of this is completely unconstitutional, government officials including the president (past and present) should be facing prison time.

Re:Tinfoil time

[sl4shd0rk]

It's almost as if every country of note is running massive internet surveillance programs

Maybe that's why Snowden is having such a hard time finding asylum. Everyone's doing it, nobody wants it public knowledge.

En Français .. Espion!

[ackthpt]

Where we get Espionage from. Seems almost like they invented it, non?

Spy program? I told them we already got one, it's verra nice!

Re:Speak French?

[ackthpt]

What is French for "only a fool would be remotely surprised that any technologically advanced nation would be collecting this data"?

Le proper Nelsoning: "Le ha-ha!"

I only want to know one thing...

[3seas]

... what is everyone talking about that is so important for government to know about?

Or is this just a part of a manipulation of the people feedback loop where government controlled media is the other part?

Everyone is spying on everyone

[Presto Vivace]

Private companies have set up their own spying operations. Bloomberg Financial is spying on Goldman Sachs. and Murdoch is running saboteur operations against his competitors. And these same people keep calling to tougher measures against hackers.It is as if the entire international power structure walked out of a Vladimir Voinovich novel. Sigh.

Re:Speak French?

[phayes]

So, idiots are surprised from afar, are they? Google translate doesn't get the nuances right.

Seul un idiot pourrait être un tant soit peu surpris que tous les pays avancés espionnent leur populations.

Small differences

[gmuslera]

They do only with what comes in and out of France. In the other hand, US hacks foreign companies to get information on everyone, no matter where. And probably in France https worth something, but for US services the information must be given to the government in a silver plate by the companies (that is what PRISM is all about, after all) . And, of course, is US who defines hacking as act of war.

So this is a mostly unilateral war, and you could see the monitoring that could do some other countries mostly as self-defense.

The point is that people from all the world should care about what the US is doing (because affects everyone) while French (and a small fraction of other countries) people should care also about what they government do. Also, I don't see France putting in jail or doing a massive international manhunt for the people working for Le Monde, violating every international treaty and convention doing so, as US is doing (and forcing their allies to do) with Assange and Snowden, we are just past the point of absolute corruption, and seeing the first hints of what is coming in the next years.

Re:Speak French?

[phayes]

Of course, doing a dumb word to word substitution from English into French & then back again will give a closer match to the original than a translation where one uses expressions that better convey the meaning. But hey, if mind you do not like Yoda you wish to speak, by all means, stick with the substitutions & ignore the snickering from those who actually speak both languages.

Show me show you

[davmoo]

You show me someone who says their country does not spy on its citizens, and I'll show you a fool. And you show me someone who says their country does not spy on other countries, and I'll show you another fool.

Governments have been spying on their own citizens since the day "governments" were born. And that first government started spying on other governments the day the second one was born nearby.

Does this make it right? No, of course not. Two wrongs, as they say, do not make a right (but three rights make a left). But I'm getting a bit tired of all this "My country is better than yours because it doesn't spy" bullshit. Grow up. Your country spies just like mine does.