France’s foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.The operation is “outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision”, Le Monde says.Other French intelligence agencies allegedly access the data secretly.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23178284Also see:France ‘runs vast electronic spying operation using NSA-style methods’
France runs a vast electronic surveillance operation, intercepting and stocking data from citizens’ phone and internet activity, using similar methods to the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme exposed by Edward Snowden, Le Monde has reported.An investigation by the French daily found that the DGSE, France’s external intelligence agency, had spied on the French public’s phone calls, emails and internet activity. The agency intercepted signals from computers and phones in France as well as between France and other countries, looking not so much at content but to create a map of “who is talking to whom”, the paper said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/04/france-electronic-spying-operation-nsaFrance, Too, Is Sweeping Up Data, Newspaper Reveals
Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France.Le Monde reported that the General Directorate for External Security does the same kind of data collection as the American National Security Agency and the British GCHQ, but does so without clear legal authority.
www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/world/europe/france-too-is-collecting-data-newspaper-reveals.html