The future will tell, perhaps, one day, why Paris has remained so quiet, compared to Rio or Berlin after the revelations about the U.S. electronic spying programs worldwide. Because France was equally focused and now has tangible evidence that its interests are covered daily.
According to documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) obtained by Le Monde, telephone communications are French citizens, in fact, intercepted a ma**ive way. These pieces, unveiled in June by former consultant agency, Edward Snowden, describe the techniques used to capture the secrets illegally or simple privacy of French. Some items were discussed by the German weekly Der Spiegel and the British newspaper The Guardian . Others are new.
To know more about the context of the revelations of the World, the editorial read: Fight Big Brother
Among the thousands of documents removed from the NSA by the former employee is a graph that describes the extent of telephone surveillance carried out in France. It was found that over a period of thirty days, from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70.3 million recordings of telephone French data were performed by the NSA.
The Three Parties
The agency has several collection methods. When telephone numbers are used in France, they activate a signal that automatically starts recording some conversations. This monitoring also recovers SMS and content based on keywords. Finally, in a systematic way, the NSA keeps a history of connections each target.
This espionage appears as the US-985d program. The exact explanation of this symbol has not been provided to date by Snowden documents or by former members of the NSA. A way of comparison, the acronyms used by the NSA for the same type of interception to Germany are US-987LA and US-987LB. This series of numbers correspond to qualified by the United States of third party which France, the circle belong Germany but also the Austria , the Poland or even Belgium . The second part for the Anglo-Saxon countries historically near Washington, the United Kingdom , the Canada , the Australia and New Zealand , known as the "Five Eyes" . The first part for it, the sixteen services U.S. secrets.
The techniques used for these interceptions codes appear "DRTBOX" and "WHITEBOX". Their characteristics are not known. But we know that with the first code, 62.5 million telephone data collected in France on 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013 and the second allows you to record over the same period 7.8 million items. The documents provide sufficient explanation for thinking that the target of the NSA concern both suspected links to terrorist activities that targeted individuals for their mere membership in the world of business, politics or the French administration.
The graph shows the NSA intercepts averaging 3 million data per day with peaks of almost 7 million to 24 December 2012 and 7 January 2013. But from 28 to 31 December, no interceptions seems to have been made. This apparent cessation of activity could explain , inter alia, the time required for renewal at the end of December 2012, by the U.S. Congress of section 702 of the law governing wiretapping abroad. Similarly, nothing appears on 3, 5 and 6 January 2013 no one can, this time, advancing plausible reason. Many questions remain to begin the precise identity of the target and the justifications for such a ma**ive collection of data on foreign territory and sovereign ally.
Requested the U.S. authorities did not wish to comment on these documents which they consider "cla**ified." However, they refer to the statement made on June 8, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence: "For those targeted outside our borders, we can not aim without grounds legally based, such as the terrorist threat , computer or proliferation nuclear."
Universal Informant
France is not the country where the NSA intercepts more digital or telephone connections. The system "Boundless Informant" (Universal informant), revealed in June by Edward Snowden at Guardian , has to have an overall vision and real-time information collected around the world through different tapping systems the NSA. "Boundless Informant" collection not only telephone data (DNR), but also those related to the digital world (DNI).
One of these documents, as Le Monde could see , notes that between February 8 and March 8, NSA has collected 124.8 billion and 97.1 billion DNR DNI in the world which, of course, war zones such as Afghanistan , as well as Russia or China . In Europe , only Germany and the United Kingdom beyond France in terms of number of interceptions. But for the British, this was done with the consent of their government