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Revelations about the French Big Brother

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Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#3
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.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#5
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.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#7
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-d...

[2] http://bugbrother.blog.lemonde.fr/

[3] http://reflets.info/

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#8
post #5

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…

Just because it's unsurprising that doesn't make it ok.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#9
post #5

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…

> 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_e...

It doesn't say much about other contries.

Re: Revelations about the French Big Brother

#10
post #5

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…

It is still very useful to have proof. It dispels the image of conspiracy theory.
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