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

[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.

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

[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.