6 ms·

Revelations about the French Big Brother

acqq 13y ago
English translation: Revelations about the French Big Brother http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-sur-le-big-brother-francais_3441973_3224.html http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&...
agravier 13y ago
The summary: - ∃ a (centralized) data collection by the french secret services (DGSE) - almost all telecommunications are intercepted and stored (physically, at 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris) - They value metadata (social graph, etc) more than contents - Some parts of the Police force and some other agencies have access to some of the data - The DSGE assets that the law does not "cover" this operation. The CNIL (French commission for "computing and freedom") disagrees. There is some general consensus to pretend that this French PRISM does not exist.
steeve 13y ago
So I guess we are indeed posturing against the US.
jgrahamc 13y ago
So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the desire has been there for much longer. Anyone who reads the history of SIGINT will understand that the desire to capture all communications is perfectly normal in that environment. Snowden's "revelations" are completely unsurprising to anyone who has thought about this and the technology. I'm still waiting for him to reveal something actually surprising.
- motters 13y ago
  Just because it's unsurprising that doesn't make it ok.
- bnegreve 13y ago
  > So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring [...] USA, UK and France are not any contry the're all at the top of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e... It doesn't say much about other contries.
  - doktorn 13y ago
    Sweden does it as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
  - theboywho 13y ago
    All countries spy. USA, UK, France and the rest of the top produce. The rest buys.
- lucian1900 13y ago
  It is still very useful to have proof. It dispels the image of conspiracy theory.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    We are way past this now. If anything, we have the opposite problems of "apology theorists" and "coincidence theorists". People have been trained to think "conspiracy" is some BS endeavour that includes aliens in Roswell, mind control, illuminati etc. Fact is, most of history has seen covert action by governments and organisations. Those are also conspiracies (by definition), and it's totally wrong (and disingenuous) to lump them with BS conspiracy theories.
  - panacea 13y ago
    It's no big deal. We all suspected it. It's so unsurprising that the US forced a foreign president to touch down and have his plane searched in a foreign country to try and catch the whistleblower.
alan_cx 13y ago
It will be interesting to see how the French public react to this in comparison with Brits and Americans. Not to mention the Germans.
- astrobe_ 13y ago
  One of our former presidents, Mitterand in the 80ies, used intelligence services to eavedrop phone conversations for his own needs. You'd think people would revolt, but more recently in order to operate the "three strikes" law and HADOPI they delegated the monitoring of P2P/Interenet trafic (in order to check for IP rights violations) to a private company. We have laws about the privacy of communications too (like paper mail), but strangely nobody seem to realize they plainly apply to electronic communications.
- bsaul 13y ago
  I'm guessing, nobody will react. We already have the most impopular president of the last 50 years, one of the highest tax rates of modern country, highest unemployment rate, high abstention rate in elections, high immigration rates, high debt ratios, and the extremist political parties are on the verge of gaining massive support in the next european elections. That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous experiences of terrorists bombing our country, makes me think that we really have far bigger issues than the secret service spying everyone at the moment.
  - hbbio 13y ago
    I have to agree with many things you say, but I can't figure out why "high immigration rates" may be a problem. If you imagine a country as a giant shop, the more customers the best.
    - fchollet 13y ago
      Immigration can be a huge force for growth and prosperity as much as it can be destructive. You can think of a country as a company, and of immigration as recruitment. Recruitment will make, or kill, a company.
    - 13y ago
p4bl0 13y ago
Just as for the US, we've known that these intelligence programs exist for many years. If you can read French, see this post [1] about Frenchelon from 2010, I also highly recommend the Bug Brother blog [2], and Reflets.info [3]. [1] http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/02/frenchelon-la-dgse-est-en-1ere-division/ http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/02/frenchelon-la-d... [2] http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/ http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/ [3] http://reflets.info/ http://reflets.info/
antninja 13y ago
It looks like with the nuclear bomb: all countries want the world to know that they have it. Are secret attacks becoming the norm and governments are telling they have the means to uncover any hidden identity? Anyway, it would have been surprising if intelligence agencies didn't collect as much data as they can. What was the most scandalous with Prism is the methods of bullies used by civil servants against businessmen. It's fair if they can catch data discreetly, not if they threaten to imprison or kill to gain easier access to all databases.
monsterix 13y ago
In some ways I believe that Internet has now matured up to a level where it is able to impact the Government and its functionaries in a very serious manner (Avoiding the word disruptive here, because unlike Hollywood, Government people generally take this word with a more murderous rage). It's no longer okay to brush away stories as conspiracy theories because, well, you now know it could be true. Most likely. All this that has happened in past few weeks seems like a moment of truth to me. I have a strong feeling that the next level of impact of Internet on these Governments and arcane bureaucratic structures will be one to watch. [Edited for spelling.]
agilebyte 13y ago
Just like with small countries acting as offshore tax havens, is there a case for setting up a lot of cloud services in countries that neither have the technical capability or simply do not care what data is stored with them? Of course on the way there data pass through routers of at least one country that siphons the information and using satellite internet connection is costly :(.
neolithic 13y ago
Was this leaked by Snowden? If so, it might explain why France blocked the Bolivian president's plane from using French airspace.
- zumth 13y ago
  They do not mention sources, but I'd say it is some sort of open secret which is known by a lot of journalists. They mention that this officially does not exist, and from off-the-record talks, it does not exist because it's "secret défense".
- pivnicek 13y ago
  It is some coincidence for this to come out the day after the airspace fiasco.
- _djo_ 13y ago
  From what I've heard, no. This isn't a Snowden leak, it's the result of a journo sitting on information and having an opportune moment to publish. This isn't the first exposé of the French government's communication surveillance either. There have been quite a few articles on this over the past few years.
sentenza 13y ago
Ok, so it seems this thing that we call free society is rapidly going off the rails. In addition to GCHQ and this crap from France, Netzpolitik.org recently dug up some interesting info on the publically known activities of the German secret services, which include tapping sea cables[1] and listening in on 5% of DECIX traffic[2]. So we now know for a fact that, while the general populace was blissfully disinterested and the techie crowd was mostly playing with its new toys, the intelligence community started building an all-encompassing global surveillance infrastructure. If we don't manage to pull off a roll-back now, our children or grandchildren will live in an actual science fiction dystopia. My feeling is that we have a very small chance to achieve a roll-back in (continental) Europe, because the uncovered actions of secret services here are much more at odds with the societal consensus on the accepted powers of the executive. For the big five prospects are IMO more bleak. [1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Foperation-delikatesse-auch-der-bundesnachrichtendienst-zapft-unterseekabel-an%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre... [2] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Fbnd-hat-zugriff-auf-deutschen-internetknoten-de-cix%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...
- MisterWebz 13y ago
  I doubt the EU is going to dismantle their surveillance capabilities while knowing that the US and other nations are still doing it. That's less power for the EU and more power for everyone else.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Why does surveillance necessarily have to lead to "actual science fiction dystopia?"
  - sentenza 13y ago
    It is best to do the following thought experiment: What if all communications data was available to "somebody"? Well, sooner or later, this "somebody" would use it for things that for them are no-brainers: For example fighting terrorism in case of "somebody" = law enforcement. But then what? Unfortunately, a situation in which somebody has all the data and is allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes is not stable. There is just too much that you can do with it, making the temptation irresistible. It then really doesn't matter if the scope of usage is extended in a million small steps or a few giant leaps, because the end state of a system with humans and data is that the humans will use the data. But obviously, not everybody will have access to the data. We start (now) from a situation in which there is an information access asymmetry between the intelligence community and the general public and there is no indication that the intelligence community will ever be willing to give up this privileged position. So in the end, all the data is available and it is used for many purposes, but the number of those that have access to it is limited, and their access gives them certain advantages over everybody else. This is how, over the course of a few dozen decades, you arrive at a security-clearance based caste system.
lucb1e 13y ago
Merci, merci... now in English please? Can someone summarize it instead of having to try to read Google Translate's gibberish?
d0vs 13y ago
Here is an English translation: http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O
Zigurd 13y ago
There are two possible conclusions: Everyone does it, there is no hope, just resign yourself to surveillance. Or, one can conclude that no matter how much you trust your own government to treat surveillance data correctly, whatever that might mean to you, some other government is out to get your business data, etc. with no compunctions, so you better secure your systems and communications.
hbbio 13y ago
There is an official translation: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-on-the-french-big-brother_3442665_3224.html http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations...
stfp 13y ago
English version on lemonde.fr: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-on-the-french-big-brother_3442665_3224.html http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations...
liberte9 13y ago
Are there any initiatives to build a new internet with secure/anonymous transmissions in place from the ground up? Could such a thing even be possible?
morenoise 13y ago
everyone should start spamming themselves and all this will go nowhere quickly.
bane 13y ago
For fun, zoom in on google maps at the DGSE address https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier%2C+Paris%2C+France&data=!1m4!1m3!1d2518!2d2.4065259!3d48.8746018!2m1!1e3!4m11!1m10!2i21!4m8!1m3!1d23907!2d-77.5312646!3d38.9823075!3m2!1i1344!2i740!4f13.1&fid=7 https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier... Bing maps does it too, but Bing's Bird's eye view only does it for 3 of the 4 cardinal directions http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4wMjgzOTcmbHZsPTQmc3R5PXImcT0xNDElMjUyMEJvdWxldmFyZCUyNTIwTW9ydGllciUyNTJDJTI1MjBQYXJpcyUyNTJDJTI1MjBGcmFuY2U= http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4...

acqq 13y ago

English translation: Revelations about the French Big Brother http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-sur-le-big-brother-francais_3441973_3224.html http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&...

agravier 13y ago

The summary: - ∃ a (centralized) data collection by the french secret services (DGSE) - almost all telecommunications are intercepted and stored (physically, at 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris) - They value metadata (social graph, etc) more than contents - Some parts of the Police force and some other agencies have access to some of the data - The DSGE assets that the law does not "cover" this operation. The CNIL (French commission for "computing and freedom") disagrees. There is some general consensus to pretend that this French PRISM does not exist.

steeve 13y ago

So I guess we are indeed posturing against the US.

jgrahamc 13y ago

So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring all communications for at least metadata. Personally, I would not be the slightest bit surprised to learn that all phone calls are being recorded and as much Internet traffic as possible. I'm not surprised by this news at all. The technical means have been there for years and years. And the desire has been there for much longer. Anyone who reads the history of SIGINT will understand that the desire to capture all communications is perfectly normal in that environment. Snowden's "revelations" are completely unsurprising to anyone who has thought about this and the technology. I'm still waiting for him to reveal something actually surprising.

motters 13y ago
Just because it's unsurprising that doesn't make it ok.
bnegreve 13y ago
> So, let's see. The NSA does it, GCHQ does it, DGSE does it. The operating assumption should be that all countries are monitoring [...] USA, UK and France are not any contry the're all at the top of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e... It doesn't say much about other contries.
- doktorn 13y ago
  Sweden does it as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
- theboywho 13y ago
  All countries spy. USA, UK, France and the rest of the top produce. The rest buys.
lucian1900 13y ago
It is still very useful to have proof. It dispels the image of conspiracy theory.
- coldtea 13y ago
  We are way past this now. If anything, we have the opposite problems of "apology theorists" and "coincidence theorists". People have been trained to think "conspiracy" is some BS endeavour that includes aliens in Roswell, mind control, illuminati etc. Fact is, most of history has seen covert action by governments and organisations. Those are also conspiracies (by definition), and it's totally wrong (and disingenuous) to lump them with BS conspiracy theories.
- panacea 13y ago
  It's no big deal. We all suspected it. It's so unsurprising that the US forced a foreign president to touch down and have his plane searched in a foreign country to try and catch the whistleblower.

alan_cx 13y ago

It will be interesting to see how the French public react to this in comparison with Brits and Americans. Not to mention the Germans.

astrobe_ 13y ago
One of our former presidents, Mitterand in the 80ies, used intelligence services to eavedrop phone conversations for his own needs. You'd think people would revolt, but more recently in order to operate the "three strikes" law and HADOPI they delegated the monitoring of P2P/Interenet trafic (in order to check for IP rights violations) to a private company. We have laws about the privacy of communications too (like paper mail), but strangely nobody seem to realize they plainly apply to electronic communications.
bsaul 13y ago
I'm guessing, nobody will react. We already have the most impopular president of the last 50 years, one of the highest tax rates of modern country, highest unemployment rate, high abstention rate in elections, high immigration rates, high debt ratios, and the extremist political parties are on the verge of gaining massive support in the next european elections. That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous experiences of terrorists bombing our country, makes me think that we really have far bigger issues than the secret service spying everyone at the moment.
- hbbio 13y ago
  I have to agree with many things you say, but I can't figure out why "high immigration rates" may be a problem. If you imagine a country as a giant shop, the more customers the best.
  - fchollet 13y ago
    Immigration can be a huge force for growth and prosperity as much as it can be destructive. You can think of a country as a company, and of immigration as recruitment. Recruitment will make, or kill, a company.
  - 13y ago

p4bl0 13y ago

Just as for the US, we've known that these intelligence programs exist for many years. If you can read French, see this post [1] about Frenchelon from 2010, I also highly recommend the Bug Brother blog [2], and Reflets.info [3]. [1] http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/02/frenchelon-la-dgse-est-en-1ere-division/ http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/02/frenchelon-la-d... [2] http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/ http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/ [3] http://reflets.info/ http://reflets.info/

antninja 13y ago

It looks like with the nuclear bomb: all countries want the world to know that they have it. Are secret attacks becoming the norm and governments are telling they have the means to uncover any hidden identity? Anyway, it would have been surprising if intelligence agencies didn't collect as much data as they can. What was the most scandalous with Prism is the methods of bullies used by civil servants against businessmen. It's fair if they can catch data discreetly, not if they threaten to imprison or kill to gain easier access to all databases.

monsterix 13y ago

In some ways I believe that Internet has now matured up to a level where it is able to impact the Government and its functionaries in a very serious manner (Avoiding the word disruptive here, because unlike Hollywood, Government people generally take this word with a more murderous rage). It's no longer okay to brush away stories as conspiracy theories because, well, you now know it could be true. Most likely. All this that has happened in past few weeks seems like a moment of truth to me. I have a strong feeling that the next level of impact of Internet on these Governments and arcane bureaucratic structures will be one to watch. [Edited for spelling.]

agilebyte 13y ago

Just like with small countries acting as offshore tax havens, is there a case for setting up a lot of cloud services in countries that neither have the technical capability or simply do not care what data is stored with them? Of course on the way there data pass through routers of at least one country that siphons the information and using satellite internet connection is costly :(.

neolithic 13y ago

Was this leaked by Snowden? If so, it might explain why France blocked the Bolivian president's plane from using French airspace.

zumth 13y ago
They do not mention sources, but I'd say it is some sort of open secret which is known by a lot of journalists. They mention that this officially does not exist, and from off-the-record talks, it does not exist because it's "secret défense".
pivnicek 13y ago
It is some coincidence for this to come out the day after the airspace fiasco.
_djo_ 13y ago
From what I've heard, no. This isn't a Snowden leak, it's the result of a journo sitting on information and having an opportune moment to publish. This isn't the first exposé of the French government's communication surveillance either. There have been quite a few articles on this over the past few years.

sentenza 13y ago

Ok, so it seems this thing that we call free society is rapidly going off the rails. In addition to GCHQ and this crap from France, Netzpolitik.org recently dug up some interesting info on the publically known activities of the German secret services, which include tapping sea cables[1] and listening in on 5% of DECIX traffic[2]. So we now know for a fact that, while the general populace was blissfully disinterested and the techie crowd was mostly playing with its new toys, the intelligence community started building an all-encompassing global surveillance infrastructure. If we don't manage to pull off a roll-back now, our children or grandchildren will live in an actual science fiction dystopia. My feeling is that we have a very small chance to achieve a roll-back in (continental) Europe, because the uncovered actions of secret services here are much more at odds with the societal consensus on the accepted powers of the executive. For the big five prospects are IMO more bleak. [1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Foperation-delikatesse-auch-der-bundesnachrichtendienst-zapft-unterseekabel-an%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre... [2] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Fbnd-hat-zugriff-auf-deutschen-internetknoten-de-cix%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...

MisterWebz 13y ago
I doubt the EU is going to dismantle their surveillance capabilities while knowing that the US and other nations are still doing it. That's less power for the EU and more power for everyone else.
rayiner 13y ago
Why does surveillance necessarily have to lead to "actual science fiction dystopia?"
- sentenza 13y ago
  It is best to do the following thought experiment: What if all communications data was available to "somebody"? Well, sooner or later, this "somebody" would use it for things that for them are no-brainers: For example fighting terrorism in case of "somebody" = law enforcement. But then what? Unfortunately, a situation in which somebody has all the data and is allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes is not stable. There is just too much that you can do with it, making the temptation irresistible. It then really doesn't matter if the scope of usage is extended in a million small steps or a few giant leaps, because the end state of a system with humans and data is that the humans will use the data. But obviously, not everybody will have access to the data. We start (now) from a situation in which there is an information access asymmetry between the intelligence community and the general public and there is no indication that the intelligence community will ever be willing to give up this privileged position. So in the end, all the data is available and it is used for many purposes, but the number of those that have access to it is limited, and their access gives them certain advantages over everybody else. This is how, over the course of a few dozen decades, you arrive at a security-clearance based caste system.

lucb1e 13y ago

Merci, merci... now in English please? Can someone summarize it instead of having to try to read Google Translate's gibberish?

d0vs 13y ago

Here is an English translation: http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O

Zigurd 13y ago

There are two possible conclusions: Everyone does it, there is no hope, just resign yourself to surveillance. Or, one can conclude that no matter how much you trust your own government to treat surveillance data correctly, whatever that might mean to you, some other government is out to get your business data, etc. with no compunctions, so you better secure your systems and communications.

hbbio 13y ago

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

stfp 13y ago

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

liberte9 13y ago

Are there any initiatives to build a new internet with secure/anonymous transmissions in place from the ground up? Could such a thing even be possible?

morenoise 13y ago

everyone should start spamming themselves and all this will go nowhere quickly.

bane 13y ago

For fun, zoom in on google maps at the DGSE address https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier%2C+Paris%2C+France&data=!1m4!1m3!1d2518!2d2.4065259!3d48.8746018!2m1!1e3!4m11!1m10!2i21!4m8!1m3!1d23907!2d-77.5312646!3d38.9823075!3m2!1i1344!2i740!4f13.1&fid=7 https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier... Bing maps does it too, but Bing's Bird's eye view only does it for 3 of the 4 cardinal directions http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4wMjgzOTcmbHZsPTQmc3R5PXImcT0xNDElMjUyMEJvdWxldmFyZCUyNTIwTW9ydGllciUyNTJDJTI1MjBQYXJpcyUyNTJDJTI1MjBGcmFuY2U= http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4...