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France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report
- oelmekki 13y ago> Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data were recorded by the NSA between Dec 10, 2012 and Jan 8, 2013 Fun fact about that : this number is actually bigger than french population (~ 66M).
- jlengrand 13y agoMight still be possible, if you take the number of professional phones into account too. :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- eis 13y ago"pieces of telephone data" is not very specific but it could mean "x called Y at T for D seconds". And it's over a period of nearly a month. Many people do phone calls at least once a day. So 70M records for a population of 66M is not unrealistic for widescale surveillance. What the number makes clear though is that it can't be for targeted terrorism-suspect surveilance. Unless you have something like a million suspects in France. And in any case they should ask the french authorities/spies for help if they want to know something about french residents. I wonder how the USA would react if other governments started openly surveilling US citizens/companies/politicians. That'd be one fun thing to watch.
- mercurial 13y agoTo be faire, the "openly" part was entirely unfortunate as far as the NSA is concerned, they were really happy when "openly" was "secretly".
- eis 13y agoAbsolutely. But as a reaction the others could do it openly and then be astonished when the US government objects :) I think either this or getting as much seperated/independent from the US will have any kind of proper effect. Though I fear nothing really will change since the other countries have spy agencies as well which they want to keep. So a few "outrageous!" will be communicated to the media and business as usual continues.
- andyjohnson0 13y agoI read oelmekki's comment as putting the number of monitored calls in context, not questioning its correctness.
- eis 13y agoYea, I think one can read it either way. What I was trying to point out, is that the number makes it clear what the surveillance is about (and that's nothing related to terrorists).
- oelmekki 13y agoIndeed, it was purely factual. Of course, I'm not implying every french was spied on - it won't make sense since a good part are just kids. But when your records count for a country exceed their population, you can't be expected to only watch a few bad guys, that's a sign of massive surveillance - or strategic surveillance over tactical surveillance, as Assange would put it.
- hbbio 13y agoIt's pretty hilarious situation after France denied fly-zone to the Bolivian Presidential aircraft this summer when they "feared" that Snowden might be inside... Voltaire said something like: "God, please protect me from my friends. I take care of my enemies."
- mercurial 13y agoYes, cry me a river. Supposedly "allied" governments have no qualms spying on each other, or engaging in "economic intelligence" for the military-industrial lobby. Would the French DGSE (or other western intelligence agencies) engage in large-scale surveillance of their own citizens, let alone foreigners, if they believed they could get away with it? You bet.
- p4bl0 13y agoThey do. If you can read French, check out http://reflets.info/ http://reflets.info/.
- Sagat 13y agoReally suspicious looking site, bro.
- nraynaud 13y agoit's actually serious, one of the guys got published in the Canard Enchaîné and for example revealed some FBI files on US citizens 8 years before the Washington Post did.
- bobwaycott 13y agoWhat exactly do you find suspicious?
- p4bl0 13y agoIt's understandable, and it's something that Reflets.info editors acknoledge: use of memes (lolcats for instance) does not look "pro", and there are opinion and rant posts along with very profound and detailed in-depth investigation articles. You know, don't judge a blog by its cover ;-).
- jbogp 13y agoWe should have stuck to our beloved Minitel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
- gelnior 13y agoFrenches don't really worry about that, they are already building the next generation of personal cloud ;) http://cozy.io http://cozy.io
- k-mcgrady 13y agoFirst time I've seen cozy. Looks quite useful.
- Create 13y agohttp://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/
- pgeorgi 13y agoI find it hard to take a security related project seriously that installs with: $ curl http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh | HOST=root@ip sh # sudoer required Edit: even more annoying is that this script is only supposed to run on Debian/Ubuntu - so this script isn't even any more portable than .deb packages Edit2 to be more constructive: would you accept contributions to build packages? Apart from this annoyance the project looks interesting!
- gelnior 13y agoHow do you install new stuff on your machine without super user rights ? Do you have a specific user to run apt-get ?
- ihsw 13y agoI think it might have to do with http vs https.
- colanderman 13y agoapt-get doesn't run unsigned, unvetted shell scripts downloaded over unprotected channels.
- rtpg 13y agoSlightly off topic, but what frustrates me about all this is that there is absolutely no outrage in France about the DGSE's absolutely heinous practices in this domain. Complete domestic surveillance without ANY legal framework whatsoever, not even some stage court like FISA court.
- Sagat 13y agoThere's a huge difference between being spied upon by your own government and being spied upon by some manifest-destiny-following foreigner.
- Loughla 13y agoAnd that would be?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- r00fus 13y agoOne ostensibly controls (through the ballot box) a domestic outfit. Ostensibly being the operative word. Plus, it's hard to storm the Bastille if it happens to be overseas.
- Loughla 13y agoMaybe I'm too cynical, but I call your bluff on both of those. At this point, it appears that our elected representatives all have the same means in mind, regardless of the ends they seek (I would also argue that the sought-ends are the same, too, but I get into a tin-foil hatty area with that). That is across all nations and all parties. Whether it is a domestic or foreign outfit, the means are the same, and I would argue that fact outweighs whatever the theoretical end would be. Also, with the military might of modern 1st world countries, I don't really believe that it matters if you have to cross an ocean first if you are going to literally storm the Bastille; and with the internet age, the distance doesn't really matter for a figurative storm, either.
- ajays 13y agoTo paraphrase a famous line: I'm shocked, shocked that there's spying going on! Snark aside: what may have riled French feathers is the fact that NSA spied on politicians too. I bet they have lots of blackmail stuff.
- gadders 13y agoPossibly given how French politicians behave...
- Sagat 13y agoPlease don't apply american fundamentalist puritan standards to everyone, please.
- gadders 13y agoYes, you're right. I don't know why I ever thought raping hotel maids, attempting to rape journalists, or going on trial for pimping would ever reflect badly on a politician [1] Clearly only a fundamentalist puritan would object to those things. I'm so old fashioned. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn#New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn_and_later_allegations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn#New_York...
- Sagat 13y ago1. Those are all allegations. In fact, the whole DSK mess is extremely unclear and the case presented against him is highly suspicious, although it is clear that he is a bit seedy. Some believe it to be a political machination for a number of reasons. 2. One politician's behavior means ALL politicians of that country behave wrongly?
- jusben1369 13y agoThe whole thing's just awkward. All of these agencies understand and know that this is going on. But when concrete evidence is given to the public they have to call in ambassador's and do this whole "this is terrible!" song and dance. Then it's back to normal.
- harryf 13y agoYou do have love "trying to play it down" reporting like this though... > The NSA's targets appeared to be individuals suspected of links to terrorism, as well as those tied to French business or politics, Le Monde wrote. ...setting up the "we accidentally all your powerful people while hunting terrorists honest" defense.
- p4bl0 13y agoIt would be quite ironic (but sadly, not impossible) if the technologies (like 0days, massive traffic analysis tools, DPI tools, etc.) used by the NSA to spy on France were some of the numerous that are sold to them by French companies like Vupen, Amesys, Qosmos…
- walshemj 13y agoFrench foreign minster "I'm shocked, shocked to find that spying is going on in here!" NSA spook in black shades hands a usb stick to the Minister "your info on Angles strategy for the next eu summit" French foreign minster (sote voce) "Oh, thank you very much."