[Infowarrior] - France in the NSA's crosshair : phone networks under surveillance

[Richard Forno]

France in the NSA's crosshair : phone networks under surveillance

Le Monde.fr | 21.10.2013 à 06h08 • Mis à jour le 21.10.2013 à 10h25 | 
Par Jacques Follorou et Glenn Greenwald (Journaliste)

http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/21/france-in-the-nsa-s-crosshair-phone-networks-under-surveillance_3499741_651865.html

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others are, to date, unpublished.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.

The techniques used for these interceptions appear under the codenames 
'DRTBOX' and 'WHITEBOX'. Their characteristics are not known either. But 
we do know that, thanks to DRTBOX, 62.5 million data were collected in 
France and that WHITEBOX enables the recording of 7.8 million elements. 
The documents which Le Monde has been able to see have not enabled the 
provision of further details on these methods. But they give sufficient 
explanation to lead us to think that the NSA targets concerned both 
people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as 
people targeted simply because they belong to the worlds of business, 
politics or French state administration.

The NSA graph shows an average of 3 million data intercepts per day with 
peaks at almost 7 million on 24 December 2012 and 7 January 2013. But 
between 28 and 31 December no interception seems to have taken place. 
This apparent stoppage of activity could be explained, in particular, by 
the time required at the end of December 2012, for the American Congress 
to renew section 702 of the law dealing with electronic espionage 
abroad. Similarly nothing appears on the 3, 5 and 6 January 2013; this 
time we cannot suggest any plausible reason. Many questions are still 
posed by this diagram – to start with the precise identity of the 
targets and the justifications for such a large-scale collection of data 
in a foreign country which is both sovereign and an ally.

When questioned, the American authorities did not wish to comment on 
these documents which they considered to be 'classified'. Nevertheless, 
they do refer to the statement made on 8 June 2013 by the Director of 
National Intelligence according to which, 'the government cannot target 
anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection 
unless there is an appropriate, and document foreign intelligence 
purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, 
hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign 
target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot 
target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign 
intelligence purpose.

France is not the country in which the NSA intercepts the most digital 
or telephone connections. The 'Boundless Informant' system, revealed in 
June by Edward Snowden to the British daily The Guardian, enabled an 
overall vision and in real time of the information gathered throughout 
the world, by means of the various NSA wire-tapping systems. This system 
gathers not only telephone data (DNR) but also digital data (DNI Digital 
Network Intelligence). One of the documents which Le Monde was able to 
consult notes that between 8 February and 8 March 2013, the NSA 
collected, throughout the world, 124,8 billion telephone data items and 
97,1 billion computer data items. In Europe, only Germany and the United 
Kingdom exceed France in terms of numbers of interceptions.
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