Courtesy of Mish.
It did not take too long to discover that France operates its own “Big Brother” network gathering systems after demanding explanations from the US.
The Financial Times reports Veil lifted on France’s ‘Big Brother’ Network.
France operates an “immense” surveillance system of telephone, email and internet traffic similar to the US operation revealed last month by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Le Monde newspaper reported on Thursday.
Like the systems apparently operated by the National Security Agency in the US, the DGSE surveillance covers the identity, place, date, duration and “weight” of telephone calls, but not the content.
Similarly, the “metadata” of text messages, faxes, emails and “all internet activity” on networks run by companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo are collected, Le Monde said.
President François Hollande reacted sharply to Mr Snowden’s allegations that the NSA had spied on EU and European offices, including the French embassy in Washington.
He said such activities were “unacceptable” and should “cease immediately”. He has called for a full explanation from the US government, linking any progress on key EU-US trade talks due to start next week to full disclosure from Washington.
Paris insisted it does not spy on its allies, but Mr Hollande’s outburst raised some sceptical eyebrows among the diplomatic community in the French capital.
Le Monde said the DGSE system was conducted with “complete discretion, at the margins of legality and outside all serious control”.
It quoted Bernard Barbier, technical director of the DGSE, as saying at public seminars that France “probably has the biggest information centre in Europe after the English”.
“Margins of Legality”
Let’s turn our attention to a Google translation from Le Monde Révélations sur le Big Brother français.
If the revelations about the U.S. spying program Prism led a chorus of indignation in Europe , France, she did minor quibbles. For two good reasons: Paris already knew. And does the same thing.
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