Revelations about the French Big Brother

So, let&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;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.<p>Snowden&#x27;s &quot;revelations&quot; are completely unsurprising to anyone who has thought about this and the technology. I&#x27;m still waiting for him to reveal something actually surprising.

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

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].<p>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&#x27;t manage to pull off a roll-back now, our children or grandchildren will live in an actual science fiction dystopia.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Foperation-delikatesse-auch-der-bundesnachrichtendienst-zapft-unterseekabel-an%2F" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;translate.google.com&#x2F;translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;pre...</a> [2] <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2013%2Fbnd-hat-zugriff-auf-deutschen-internetknoten-de-cix%2F" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;translate.google.com&#x2F;translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=n&amp;pre...</a>

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 :(.

English translation: Revelations about the French Big Brother<p><a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;u=http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-sur-le-big-brother-francais_3441973_3224.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;translate.google.com&#x2F;translate?hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;sl=auto&amp;...</a>

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

So I guess we are indeed posturing against the US.

Just as for the US, we&#x27;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].<p>[1] <a href="http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/02/frenchelon-la-dgse-est-en-1ere-division/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr&#x2F;2010&#x2F;10&#x2F;02&#x2F;frenchelon-la-d...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="http://reflets.info/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;reflets.info&#x2F;</a>

For fun, zoom in on google maps at the DGSE address<p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier%2C+Paris%2C+France&amp;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&amp;fid=7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;preview#!q=141+Boulevard+Mortier...</a><p>Bing maps does it too, but Bing&#x27;s Bird&#x27;s eye view only does it for 3 of the 4 cardinal directions<p><a href="http://www.bing.com/maps/?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4wMjgzOTcmbHZsPTQmc3R5PXImcT0xNDElMjUyMEJvdWxldmFyZCUyNTIwTW9ydGllciUyNTJDJTI1MjBQYXJpcyUyNTJDJTI1MjBGcmFuY2U=" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bing.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;?FORM=Z9LH2#Y3A9MzguOTA2ODk4fi03Ny4...</a>

English version on lemonde.fr: <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-on-the-french-big-brother_3442665_3224.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lemonde.fr&#x2F;societe&#x2F;article&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;04&#x2F;revelations...</a>

There is an official translation:<p><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/07/04/revelations-on-the-french-big-brother_3442665_3224.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lemonde.fr&#x2F;societe&#x2F;article&#x2F;2013&#x2F;07&#x2F;04&#x2F;revelations...</a>

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?<p>Anyway, it would have been surprising if intelligence agencies didn&#x27;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&#x27;s fair if they can catch data discreetly, not if they threaten to imprison or kill to gain easier access to all databases.

Here is an English translation: <a href="http://beta.etherpad.org/p/AHZlGj2g6O" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;beta.etherpad.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;AHZlGj2g6O</a>

Are there any initiatives to build a new internet with secure&#x2F;anonymous transmissions in place from the ground up? Could such a thing even be possible?

Was this leaked by Snowden? If so, it might explain why France blocked the Bolivian president&#x27;s plane from using French airspace.

Merci, merci... now in English please? Can someone summarize it instead of having to try to read Google Translate&#x27;s gibberish?

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

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.

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 <i>serious</i> manner (Avoiding the word disruptive here, because unlike Hollywood, Government people generally take this word with a more murderous rage).<p>It&#x27;s no longer okay to brush away stories <i>as conspiracy theories</i> because, well, you now know it could be true. Most likely. All this that has happened in past few weeks seems like a <i>moment of truth</i> 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.<p>[Edited for spelling.]