France in the NSA's crosshair : phone networks under surveillance
Source: Le Monde
The future will perhaps tell us one day why France has remained so discreet in comparison with Germany or Brazil, for example, after the first revelations about the extent of the American electronic espionage programmes in the world as revealed by Edward Snowden, the ex-employee of an NSA (National Security Agency) sub-contractor. France was also concerned and today has at its disposition tangible proof that its interests are targeted on a daily basis.
According to the documents retrieved from the NSA database by its ex-analyst, telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale. Le Monde has been able to obtain access to documents which describe the techniques used to violate the secrets or simply the private life of French people. Some elements of information about this espionage have been referred to by Der Speigel and The Guardian, but others are, to date, unpublished.
Amongst the thousands of documents extracted from the NSA by its ex-employee there is a graph which describes the extent of telephone monitoring and tapping (DNR – Dial Number Recognition) carried out in France. It can be seen that over a period of thirty days – from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70,3 million recordings of French citizens' telephone data were made by the NSA. This agency has several methods of data collection. According to the elements obtained by Le Monde, when a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target – or the meta-data.
This espionage is listed under the programme US-985D. The precise explanation of this acronym has not been provided, to date, by the Snowden documents nor by the former members of the NSA. By way of comparison, the acronyms used by the NSA for the same type of interception targeting Germany are US-987LA and US-987LB. According to some sources, this series of numbers corresponds to the circle referred to by the United States as the 'third party', to which belong France, Germany but also Austria, Poland or again Belgium. 'The second party' concerns the English-speaking countries historically close to Washington: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – this group is known by the name the 'five eyes'. 'The first party' concerns the sixteen American secret services of which today the NSA has become the most important, according to a senior official from the French Intelligence community.
Read more: http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/21/france-in-the-nsa-s-crosshair-phone-networks-under-surveillance_3499741_651865.html
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to carry out unsavory operations, including whacking political rivals while they were on the US soil. L'affaire DSK comes to mind but that same spring there was also an influential socialist prof, Richard Desoings, who died under dubious circumstances in a NYC hotel:
Adam Taylor Apr. 4, 2012, 5:04 AM
AP - Richard Descoings, a well-known French academic, has been found dead in a New York hotel room on Tuesday afternoon, Reuters reports.
53-year-old Descoings, director of the prestigious Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (aka "Sciences Po"
and a member of France's Council of State, had been due to attend a Columbia University conference but never appeared. Staff at midtown's Michelangelo Hotel were alerted by members of the conference, and went to the room twice, first leaving after believing they heard snoring.
http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-descoings-dead-new-york-science-po-2012-4
Yes, this is speculation, and I have no proof that Sarko was behind this or any other crime, and there were several, but the crazy cloud mysteriously lifted once Sarko left the scene. Until SoS Kerry turned up in Paris with a Middle East peace plan in his portfolio, that is.
