Surveillance : la DGSE a transmis des données à la NSA américaine

Une semaine après les manifestations d’indignation exprimées par les autorités politiques françaises après les révélations du Monde sur l’ampleur des interceptions électroniques réalisées, en France, par l’Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) américaine, de nouveaux éléments montrent que cette émotion pouvait être, en partie, feinte.

Mardi 29 octobre, devant la commission du renseignement de la Chambre des représentants, le chef de la NSA, le général Keith Alexander, a juré que les informations du Monde ainsi que celles d’El Mundo, en Espagne, et de L’Espresso, en Italie, sur l’interception de communications de citoyens européens par la NSA étaient « complètement fausses ». Il a précisé qu’il s’agissait de « données fournies à la NSA » par ces mêmes partenaires européens.

Quelques heures plus tôt, le quotidien américain The Wall Street Journal, s’appuyant sur des sources anonymes, affirmait que les 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques collectées en France, par la NSA, entre le 10 décembre 2012 et le 8 janvier 2013, ont été communiquées par les services français eux-mêmes. Ces éléments auraient été transmis, selon ce journal, conformément à un accord de coopération en matière de renseignement entre les Etats-Unis et la France.

UN ACCORD DE COOPÉRATION CONNU SOUS LE NOM DE « LUSTRE »

Ces informations, qui tendent à dédouaner la NSA de toute intrusion, ne permettent de progresser dans la compréhension de l’espionnage américain dans le monde qu’à condition de les mettre en résonance avec l’éclairage apporté, le 28 octobre, par la Süddeutsche Zeitung. La presse allemande a signalé, grâce à une note dévoilée par l’ex-consultant de la NSA Edward Snowden, l’existence d’un accord de coopération sur la surveillance entre la France et les Etats-Unis connu sous le nom de « Lustre ».

Selon nos informations, recueillies auprès d’un haut responsable de la communauté du renseignement en France, la direction des services extérieurs français, la DGSE, a, en effet, établi, à partir de la fin 2011 et début 2012, un protocole d’échange de données avec les Etats-Unis.

La France bénéficie d’un positionnement stratégique en matière de transport de données électroniques. Les câbles sous-marins par lesquels transitent la plupart des données provenant d’Afrique et d’Afghanistan atterrissent à Marseille et à Penmarc’h, en Bretagne. Ces zones stratégiques sont à la portée de la DGSE française, qui intercepte et stocke l’essentiel de ce flux entre l’étranger et la France.

“UN TROC ENTRE LA DIRECTION DE LA NSA ET CELLE DE LA DGSE”

« C’est un troc qui s’est institué entre la direction de la NSA et celle de la DGSE, explique la même source. On donne des blocs entiers sur ces zones et ils nous donnent, en contrepartie, des parties du monde où nous sommes absents, mais la négociation ne s’est pas effectuée en une fois, le périmètre du partage s’élargit au fil des discussions qui se prolongent encore aujourd’hui. »

Il paraît donc, a priori, en partie exact, qu’une partie des données téléphoniques transitant sur le sol français soit transmise, conformément aux accords de coopération, et sans tri préalable, par la DGSE à la NSA. Il s’agit donc de données concernant aussi bien des citoyens français recevant des communications de ces zones géographiques que d’étrangers utilisant ces canaux.

Il paraît peu probable que le gouvernement français, qui supervise le financement des infrastructures d’interception et de stockage de la DGSE, ne soit pas au courant de ces pratiques. Ce qui relativise la sincérité des récriminations françaises après l’annonce, par Le Monde, de ces interceptions américaines.

GÉOGRAPHIE SOUS-MARINE

L’absence de statut juridique clair des métadonnées en France et l’étrange discrétion de la Commission nationale de contrôle des interceptions de sécurité (CNCIS) paraissent, de plus, avoir facilité la transmission à la NSA par la DGSE de millions de données relevant de la vie privée de millions de Français.

Au regard de la quantité des interceptions réalisées en un seul mois, la justification avancée par les services de renseignement concernant des questions liées à la lutte contre le terrorisme peut également être sujette à caution.

D’après un responsable à Matignon, la France n’est pas la seule à « troquer » ainsi les données passant sur son territoire. Elle appartiendrait à « une amicale » qui comprend des pays tels qu’Israël, la Suède ou l’Italie, vers lesquels convergent également des câbles sous-marins stratégiques pour les Américains. Depuis 2011, une nouvelle redistribution des cartes de la coopération en matière de renseignement s’est ainsi réalisée sur le seul fondement de cette géographie sous-marine.

RESPONSABILITÉ DES AUTORITÉS POLITIQUES FRANÇAISES

Ces informations viennent donc préciser celles déjà publiées par Le Monde concernant la collecte, en un mois, par la NSA, de 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques concernant la France. Qu’une partie de ces informations soient transmises avec l’assentiment de la DGSE ne change en rien son caractère attentatoire aux libertés. Ce nouvel éclairage pose avant tout la responsabilité des autorités politiques françaises. Sollicitée sur cette coopération, la DGSE s’est refusée à tout commentaire.

Par ailleurs, Le Monde maintient, sur la base des documents dévoilés par Edward Snowden permettant de décrypter les tableaux d’interceptions de données téléphoniques et numériques à travers le monde, qu’il s’agit d’opérations « contre » un pays nommé. Dans ce cas précis, la France.

Un haut responsable du renseignement français, joint, mercredi matin, a admis, sous couvert d’anonymat, l’existence de « ces échanges de données ». Il a néanmoins démenti « catégoriquement » que la DGSE puisse transférer « 70,3 millions de données à la NSA ».

LE MONDE | 30.10.2013 à 12h51
Par Jacques Follorou

Find this story at 30 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Que dit le document sur la surveillance téléphonique de la NSA en France ?

Le général Keith Alexander, le chef de la NSA, a mis en cause, mardi 29 octobre lors d’une audition devant la Chambre des représentants, les informations publiées par plusieurs journaux européens, dont Le Monde, sur la surveillance exercée par l’agence de renseignement dans leurs pays respectifs.

Que disent les autorités américaines ?

Selon Keith Alexander, les informations publiées par plusieurs journaux européens sont fondées sur des documents qui n’ont pas été “compris”.

A l’instar du général américain, des sources anonymes ont affirmé au Wall Street Journal que ces documents, sur lesquels se sont appuyés les journaux européens, ne montrent pas des données interceptées par la NSA au sein de ces pays, mais des informations captées par les services de renseignement européens eux-mêmes, à l’extérieur de leurs frontières.

D’où vient ce document ?

DOCUMENT

Le document sur lequel Le Monde s’est appuyé pour ses révélations fait partie des documents exfiltrés de la NSA par l’ancien sous-traitant de l’agence Edward Snowden, auxquels nous a donné accès notre collaboration avec Glenn Greenwald.

Il est issu d’un logiciel, Boundless Informant, qui agrège et organise les données contenues dans les innombrables bases de données de la NSA et permet aux analystes de l’agence d’en avoir un aperçu en quelques clics. Son existence, ainsi que la carte du monde qui en est tirée et montre l’ampleur des données collectées pour chaque pays, a été révélée par le Guardian en juin.

Ce logiciel permet aussi d’afficher un récapitulatif par pays des données le concernant. C’est le cas du document reproduit par Le Monde, sur lequel nous nous sommes fondés pour évoquer le chiffre de près de 70,3 millions de données téléphoniques interceptées.

C’est également ce type de document que El Mundo en Espagne, L’Espresso en Italie et, avant eux, Der Spiegel en Allemagne ont utilisé pour étayer leurs révélations sur la surveillance.

Que montre-t-il ?

Le document montre clairement que 70 271 990 données téléphoniques concernant la France ont été incorporées dans les bases de données de l’agence entre le 10 décembre 2012 et le 8 janvier 2013.

Pour s’y retrouver dans les nombreux “tuyaux” qui lui fournissent les données, la NSA utilise une nomenclature spécifique. Ainsi, au bas du document que nous reproduisons, on apprend que le “canal” “US-985D” – celui qui fournit l’ensemble des 70 millions de données françaises – est alimenté via deux outils techniques : “DRTBOX” et “WHITEBOX”. Le premier se taille la part du lion en récoltant près de 89 % des données affichées sur le document.

Extratit du document obtenu par “Le Monde”

Qu’est-ce qui reste flou ?

Selon la version défendue par les sources anonymes du Wall Street Journal et par Keith Alexander, ce document ne montre pas des données de Français interceptées par la NSA, mais des informations collectées par la France et ses services, en dehors du territoire hexagonal et visant avant tout des cibles non françaises. Autrement dit, les données sont-elles fournies par la France, ou sont-elles issues d’une surveillance de la France ? L’intitulé du document – “France, 30 derniers jours” – ne permet pas de trancher.

Extrait d’un document obtenu par “Le Monde”

L’existence des deux techniques d’interception “DRTBOX” et “WHITEBOX” pourrait accréditer l’existence d’un partenariat avec les services français, dont les informations du Monde fournissent la preuve.

Mais un document d’aide destiné aux analystes de la NSA répondant à leurs questions sur Boundless Informant permet, sinon de contredire, au moins de fortement nuancer l’hypothèse de la NSA, accréditant les informations du Monde. Publié par le site du Guardian en juin, il précise à plusieurs reprises que les informations qui y sont affichées sont issues de collecte “contre” les pays spécifiés.

Le document explique par exemple qu'”un clic sur un pays [depuis la carte] montre la posture de collecte (…) contre ce pays en particulier”.

Extrait d’un document publié par le “Guardian”. Le surlignage a été effectué par le “Monde”.

Ailleurs, le document précise que “l’outil [Boundless Informant] permet à ses utilisateurs de selectionner un pays [ainsi que] les détails de la collecte contre ce pays”, est-il ainsi écrit. La question “combien de données sont collectées contre un pays en particulier ?” figure, elle, dans les exemples de requêtes que peuvent formuler les analystes dans le logiciel. Enfin, il est fait mention des “capacités de collecte de la NSA” que les analystes peuvent évaluer grâce à Boundless Informant.

Extrait d’un document publié par le “Guardian”. Le surlignage a été effectué par le “Monde”.

Comme Le Monde l’a écrit lors de ses révélations, les modalités techniques précises et le périmètre de cette surveillance sont inconnus.

Pourquoi les autorités américaines démentent-elles aujourd’hui ?
Il y a plusieurs semaines déjà, des médias partenaires de M. Greenwald ont utilisé des documents similaires à celui reproduit par Le Monde. Lorsque le Spiegel annonce que 500 millions de communications de citoyens allemands sont surveillées, il le fait en se fondant notamment sur un document issu de Boundless Informant. A l’époque, la NSA n’a ni commenté ni démenti ces informations.

De fait, ce démenti public formulé par Keith Alexander intervient alors que la pression politique, domestique et internationale, s’est considérablement accrue sur son agence.

Notons enfin que les informations concernant la surveillance d’intérêts économiques hexagonaux, tout comme celle d’importants diplomates, n’a pas été démentie par le chef de l’agence de renseignement américaine.

Le Monde.fr | 30.10.2013 à 18h39
Par Martin Untersinger

Find this story at 30 October 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Codename “Lustre”; Frankreich liefert Informationen an britische und US-Geheimdienste

Während Hollande den jüngsten Lauschangriff heftig kritisiert, arbeitet Frankreich längst mit amerikanischen und britischen Geheimdiensten zusammen. Unter dem Codenamen “Lustre” hat die Regierung vor einiger Zeit einen Kooperationsvertrag geschlossen – sie ist damit nicht alleine.

Hollande kritisiert den Lauschangriff der US-Dienste und rückt näher an Merkel. Doch der Geheimdienst seines Landes arbeitet indes unter dem Codenamen “Lustre” mit dem Geheimdienstbündnis “Five Eyes” zusammen, dem neben den USA und Großbritannien auch Neuseeland, Kanada und Australien angehören. Paris liefert ihnen systematisch Informationen.

Frankreich hat ein entsprechendes Kooperationsabkommen – ein sogenanntes Drittparteiabkommen – geschlossen, wie aus Dokumenten des Whistleblowers Edward Snowden hervorgeht, die der Norddeutsche Rundfunk und die Süddeutsche Zeitung einsehen konnten.

Demnach kooperieren auch Israel (Codename Ruffle), Schweden (Codename Sardine) und Italien mit dem britischen und amerikanischen Geheimdienst. Die “Five Eyes”-Mitglieder sollen sich versprochen haben, sich nicht gegenseitig auszuspionieren. Das italienische Magazin L’Espresso berichtete unterdessen, dass Italiens Regierung ebenfalls von der NSA ausgespäht worden sein soll.

Süddeutsche Zeitung
26. Oktober 2013
Von John Goetz und Frederik Obermaier

Find this story at 26 October 2013

© Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

The U.S. Has Been Spying on France Since Before the NSA Existed

On Monday, the news broke that the National Security Agency has been actively intercepting French telephone calls and email traffic — collecting over 70 million French calls in a single month, according to Le Monde.

Turns out this is only the latest surveillance operation in a long, long history of America spying on France. A newly declassified intelligence document reveals that the NSA and its antecedents have been intercepting French communications and breaking French codes and ciphers for more than 70 years.

Monday’s Le Monde report may have generated enormous controversy in France, leading the French foreign minister to call in the U.S. ambassador and read him the riot act. But it’s hardly a new development. American eavesdroppers began listening on France during World War II. They continued doing so during the Cold War. The NSA even spied on France during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A 1947 top-secret code-word NSA document, titled “The General Cryptanalytic Problems,” reveals that in April 1941, eight months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a small U.S. Army code-breaking unit, headed by French linguist Herrick F. Bearce, began trying to solve the diplomatic codes and ciphers of the Vichy French regime headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, which had actively collaborated with Nazi Germany since the fall of France in 1940. A few months earlier, in January 1941, U.S. Army and Navy listening posts had begun intercepting Vichy diplomatic radio traffic between France and its colonies in North and West Africa, Martinique, Madagascar, Indochina, French Guiana, Djibouti, and St. Pierre et Miquelon off the Canadian coast.

Success quickly followed, indicating that the French codes and ciphers were not particularly secure. The report shows that Bearce’s cryptanalysts broke their first Vichy French code, designated FBT, shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack in mid-December 1941. The size of Bearce’s section grew by leaps and bounds as his cryptanalysts, with considerable help from their counterparts in Britain and Canada, solved several dozen Vichy encryption systems with increasing ease. The Army continued to read all of the Vichy French codes and ciphers being used until Pétain’s regime collapsed following the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. Within a matter of weeks, Vichy communications traffic disappeared from the airwaves except for occasional cables to the sole French colony controlled by Vichy in French Indochina (in what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).

After Pétain’s Vichy government collapsed, in April 1943 the U.S. Army code breakers turned their attention to the diplomatic codes and ciphers then being used by America’s nominal ally, Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s Free French government in exile, which was based in London but maintained embassies in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The report shows that in October 1943, the U.S. Army’s French code-breaking specialists, then headed by Maj. William F. Edgerton, solved the first of de Gaulle’s most important diplomatic cipher systems, designated FMD. In the months that followed, a half dozen other Free French diplomatic ciphers were solved.

With the solutions of these systems, decrypted French diplomatic traffic became the single most important source of intelligence information being produced by the U.S. Army’s code-breaking unit after Germany and Japan. By the time Japan surrendered in August 1945, the U.S. Army’s code breakers had broken or were working on the solution to 60 French diplomatic or military code and cipher systems, including nearly all of the high-level encryption systems used by de Gaulle and his top ministers to communicate with French diplomats and generals around the world.

The amount of intelligence information produced from decrypted French diplomatic traffic was enormous and incredibly valuable. For example, the French FMT diplomatic code, which the U.S. Army broke in February 1945, proved to be an intelligence bonanza for the United States since the messages encrypted in the system contained all of the high-level diplomatic traffic between Paris and the French delegation at an April 1945 conference in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations. In other words, the State Department officials at the San Francisco conference knew everything about the French negotiating positions even before the conference began.

But that is not the extent of the surprises contained in the newly declassified report. Buried all the way at the back of the document is a nine-page chapter titled simply “Assistance From Espionage,” which describes in some detail how the FBI and the predecessor to the CIA, then known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), stole countless foreign code books and cipher materials in order to help the Army’s code breakers at their work.

It turns out that much of the success enjoyed by the Army’s code breakers against the French codes and ciphers during World War II was because FBI and OSS burglars repeatedly broke into French embassies in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere around the world to steal French cryptographic materials. These “black-bag jobs” proved to be enormously useful in allowing the Army to break French codes and ciphers. The report states (p. 302) that “The French Section has been the recipient of more compromised [stolen] material than any other language group [within the Army code-breaking organization],” with the document showing that FBI and OSS burglars surreptitiously copied at least nine French codes and ciphers between 1941 and 1945.

But this is only the beginning of a story that has yet to be told. It might surprise people to learn that the NSA and its partners in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have never stopped intercepting French diplomatic and military communications, or trying to break French codes and ciphers, since the day Japan surrendered on Aug. 14, 1945. The NSA’s intercept operators monitored French military communications in Indochina in the 1950s, as well as French military and diplomatic traffic during the Algerian insurgency in the 1960s. Much of what the U.S. intelligence community knew about the Israeli nuclear weapons program in the late 1950s and early 1960s came from intercepted French communications. And when the French government led the fight in the United Nations against the U.S. government’s plans to invade Iraq in 2002 and 2003, the NSA was listening then as well.

France may be a friend and ally of the United States, but that means very little in the U.S. intelligence community, where spying on America’s friends is as much a fact of life as spying on America’s enemies. As senior U.S. intelligence officials are fond of saying, “We have no friends, only targets.”

Matthew M. Aid is the author of Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror and The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency.

Posted By Matthew M. Aid
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 – 5:32 PM

Find this story at 22 October 2013

©2013 The Slate Group, LLC.

US National Security Agency ‘spied on French diplomats’

The US National Security Agency has spied on French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, according to the latest claims in Le Monde newspaper.

NSA internal memos obtained by Le Monde detailed the use of a sophisticated surveillance programme, known as Genie.

US spies allegedly hacked foreign networks, introducing the spyware into the software, routers and firewalls of millions of machines.

It comes a day after claims the NSA tapped millions of phones in France.

The details in the latest Le Monde article are based on leaks from ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, through Glen Greenwald, the outgoing Guardian journalist, who is feeding the material from Brazil, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris.

It comes on the day the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is in London meeting foreign counterparts to discuss Syria.
‘Spy implants’

The Le Monde report sets out details of Genie, an NSA surveillance programme in which spyware implants were introduced remotely to overseas computers, including foreign embassies.

It claims bugs were introduced to the French Embassy in Washington (under a code name “Wabash”) and to the computers of the French delegation at the UN, codenamed “Blackfoot”.

The article suggests that in 2011, the US allocated $652m (£402m) in funding for the programme, which was spent on “spy implants”. Tens of millions of computers were reported to have been hacked that year.

A document dated August 2010 suggests intelligence stolen from foreign embassy computers ensured the US knew ahead of time the positions of other Security Council members, before a UN vote for a resolution imposing new sanctions on Iran.

The US was worried the French were drifting to the Brazilian side – who were opposed to implementing sanctions – when in truth they were always aligned to the US position, says our correspondent.

The intelligence agency quotes Susan Rice, then-US ambassador to the UN, who praises the work done by the NSA: “It helped me know… the truth, and reveal other [countries’] positions on sanctions, allowing us to keep one step ahead in the negotiations.”

On Monday, Le Monde alleged that the NSA spied on 70.3 million phone calls in France between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013.

At a breakfast meeting with the US secretary of state on Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius demanded a full explanation.

Referring to a telephone call between the French and US presidents, Mr Fabius told reporters: “I said again to John Kerry what Francois Hollande told Barack Obama, that this kind of spying conducted on a large scale by the Americans on its allies is something that is unacceptable.”

Asked if France was considering reprisals against the US, government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem replied: “It is up to Foreign Minister Fabius to decide what line we take but I don’t think there is any need for an escalation.

“We have to have a respectful relationship between partners, between allies. Our confidence in that has been hit but it is after all a very close, individual relationship that we have.”

Both French officials made their comments before the latest revelations appeared in Le Monde.

Mr Snowden, a former NSA worker, went public with revelations about US spying operations in June.

The information he leaked led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale.

Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as well as allies like the EU and Brazil.

The NSA was also forced to admit it had captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.

Mr Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted a year-long visa after making an asylum application.

The US wants him extradited to face trial on criminal charges.

22 October 2013 Last updated at 13:36 ET

Find this story at 22 October 2013

© 2013 The BBC

NSA leaks: France summons US ambassador over phone surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden

Latest leaks from Edward Snowden say American agents recorded more than 70 million French phone calls in just 30 days – including those of politicians and businessmen

The French government has summoned the US ambassador in Paris to provide an explanation for fresh Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA.

According to reports this morning in Le Monde, the American National Security Agency recorded more than 70 million phone calls made France over the course of just 30 days.

If accurate, the reports are the latest indicator of the extraordinary reaching of US electronic spying, and come alongside the news that agents also hacked the email account of former Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, told reporters at an EU meet in Luxembourg: “I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d’Orsay [French Foreign Ministry].”

“Rules are obviously needed when it comes to new communication technologies, and that’s something that concerns every country,” he the Europe-1 radio station. “If a friendly country – an ally – spies on France or other European countries, that is completely unacceptable.”

Le Monde’s story, which included the byline of the outgoing Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, said that the communications of prominent businessmen and politicians were spied on alongside those of suspected security threats.

It said the NSA had targeted Orange and Alcatel-Lucent – two of the biggest network operators in France – and that it used keyword technology and lists of certain types of numbers to automatically pick up millions of records a day.

The 70.3 million pieces of data came from 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, and it was not made clear whether they included the full content of conversations or just the metadata – the information of who, when and where the call was made.

The programme of surveillance, codenamed US-985D, also reportedly stored millions of intercepted text messages.

The article followed reports in the German weekly Der Spiegel that the NSA accessed the email account of Felipe Calderon, the former Mexican president. Mexico said it would be seeking an explanation from US officials “as soon as possible”.

Mr Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA who first went public about US surveillance techniques in June, warned then that he had gigabytes of data full of other revelations, to be released over time.

He is currently a refugee at an unknown location in Russia, after he was granted one year’s asylum on the condition, president Vladimir Putin said, that he stop leaking US secrets.

It is not known whether today’s revelations come straight from Mr Snowden himself, or if they are part of a large stock of data given in bulk to journalists at an earlier date.

The US has, as with other Snowden stories, refused to comment on what it calls confidential information.

Officials nonetheless referred Le Monde to a statement made in June, in which US director of national intelligence James Clapper defended the NSA’s programmes.

“They are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorised by Congress,” he said. “Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber-attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Adam Withnall
Monday, 21 October 2013

Find this story at 21 October 2013

© independent.co.uk

Was ISRAEL behind the hacking of millions of French phones and NOT the U.S.? Extraordinary twist in spying saga revealed

Agents said to have intercepted 70 million calls and text messages a month
France had previously blamed the United States of America
U.S. was first suspected of hacking into Nicolas Sarkozy’s phone in 2012
Americans insisted they have never been behind hacking in France
Comes after it emerged German officials are planning trip to U.S. to discuss allegations Angela Merkel’s phone was hack by the NSA
The German Chancellor said President Obama’s reputation has been shattered on an international scale because of espionage scandal

Israel and not America was behind the hacking of millions of French phones, it was claimed today.

In the latest extraordinary twist in the global eavesdropping scandal, Israeli agents are said to have intercepted more than 70 million calls and text messages a month.

Up until now the French have been blaming the U.S., even summoning the country’s Paris ambassador to provide an explanation.

Scroll down for video

France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012

But today’s Le Monde newspaper provides evidence that it was in fact Israeli agents who were listening in.

France first suspected the U.S. of hacking into former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s communications network when he was unsuccessfully trying for re-election in 2012.

Intelligence officials Bernard Barbier and Patrick Pailloux travelled from Paris to Washington to demand an explanation, but the Americans hinted that the Israelis were to blame.

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Teenager, 18, sentenced for biting officer while being arrested for wearing a niqab appears in French appeal court…in full burkha
Cameron attacks ‘lah-di-dah, airy-fairy’ ideas about spy agencies, as he reveals his own mobile was NOT targeted by the US

The Americans insisted they have never been behind any hacking in France, and were always keen to get on with the French, whom they viewed as some of their closest allies.

They were so determined to be friends with the French, that U.S. briefing notes included details of how to pronounce the names of the Gallic officials.

A note published in Le Monde shows that the Americans refused to rule out Mossad, Israel’s notoriously uncompromising intelligence agency, or the ISNU, Israel’s cyber-intelligence unit.

Today’s newspaper report was co-written by Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (pictured)

Tailored Access Operations (TAO), the branch of the US National Security Agency (NSA) which deals with cyber-attacks, is referred to throughout the note.

It reads: ‘TAO intentionally did not ask either Mossad or ISNU whether they were involved as France is not an approved target for joint discussions.’

Le Monde’s article, co-authored by U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose main contact is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, however, hints that the Israelis were doing the spying.

Both US and French intelligence work closely with Mossad, but there is known to be a great deal of suspicion between all the agencies.

A 2008 NSA note says that the Israelis are ‘excellent partners in terms of sharing information’, but it also says that Mossad is ‘the third most aggressive intelligence service in the world against the United States’.

A spokesman for the Israeli government told Le Monde: ‘Israel is a country which is a friend, ally and partner of France and does not carry out any hostile activity which could pose a threat to its security.’

France has complained in the past about Mossad’s use of its soil to plan so called black operations including the 2010 assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh of the Palestinian movement Hamas.

The revelation comes after senior German officials said they would be travelling to the U.S. ‘shortly’ to talk about allegations the NSA bugged Angela Merkel’s phone.
Obama orders review of surveillance activities

Anger: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (right) have both voiced concerns over the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners

The heads of Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies will participate in high-level discussions with the White House and National Security Agency, government spokesman Georg Streiter said.

News of the talks signals an escalation in the diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and its allies after it was claimed the NSA had monitored the calls of 35 world leaders.

Brazil and Germany have joined forces in an attempt to pile pressure on the United Nations to rein in the snooping activities. They want a UN General Resolution that promotes the right to online privacy.

This step, the first major international response to the NSA’s infiltration of the online communications of foreigners, comes after German Chancellor Merkel said the recent U.S. espionage scandal has shattered international trust in Barack Obama.

Angela Merkel said the recent espionage scandal has shattered international trust in President Obama

Not hacked: The White House has denied that David Cameron’s communications were ever monitored

A month earlier Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff branded the NSA’s clandestine activities ‘a breach of international law’ in a speech to the UN General Assembly and demanded steps be made to stop ‘cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war’.

Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York yesterday to thrash out a draft resolution demanding the strengthening of privacy rights in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights.

While the UN has no real power to reign in the NSA, there are fears among security experts that the effort alone could signal a growing consensus to freeze the US out of future international security dialogues.

By Nabila Ramdani

PUBLISHED: 16:32 GMT, 25 October 2013 | UPDATED: 20:46 GMT, 25 October 2013

Find this story at 25 October 2013

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NSA Targeted French Foreign Ministry

Espionage by the US on France has already strained relations between the two countries, threatening a trans-Atlantic trade agreement. Now a document seen by SPIEGEL reveals that the NSA also spied on the French Foreign Ministry.

America’s National Security Agency (NSA) targeted France’s Foreign Ministry for surveillance, according to an internal document seen by SPIEGEL.

Dated June 2010, the “top secret” NSA document reveals that the intelligence agency was particularly interested in the diplomats’ computer network. All of the country’s embassies and consulates are connected with the Paris headquarters via a virtual private network (VPN), technology that is generally considered to be secure.

Accessing the Foreign Ministry’s network was considered a “success story,” and there were a number of incidents of “sensitive access,” the document states.

An overview lists different web addresses tapped into by the NSA, among them “diplomatie.gouv.fr,” which was run from the Foreign Ministry’s server. A list from September 2010 says that French diplomatic offices in Washington and at the United Nations in New York were also targeted, and given the codenames “Wabash” and “Blackfoot,” respectively. NSA technicians installed bugs in both locations and conducted a “collection of computer screens” at the one at the UN.

A priority list also names France as an official target for the intelligence agency. In particular, the NSA was interested in the country’s foreign policy objectives, especially the weapons trade, and economic stability.

US-French relations are being strained by such espionage activities. In early July, French President François Hollande threatened to suspend negotiations for a trans-Atlantic free trade agreement, demanding a guarantee from the US that it would cease spying after it was revealed that the French embassy in Washington had been targeted by the NSA.

“There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union, for all partners of the United States,” he said at the time.

The NSA declined to comment to SPIEGEL on the matter. As details about the scope of the agency’s international spying operations continue to emerge, Washington has come under increasing pressure from its trans-Atlantic partners. Officials in Europe have expressed concern that negotiations for the trade agreement would be poisoned by a lack of trust.

09/01/2013 09:32 AM

Find this story at 1 September 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013