France evicted from moral high ground over spying revelations
France has joined the US and UK on an ignoble list of countries intercepting international communications, according to a report from L'Observateur. The news follows a Wikileaks article detailing how the NSA recorded highly sensitive calls placed by three different French Presidents. The paper noted that since France was allegedly doing something similar, it may explain why President Francois Hollande had a muted response to the earlier revelation, calling it merely "unacceptable." Meanwhile, it's getting hard to keep track of who's spying on who without a cheat sheet -- not even counting spying done by nations on their own citizens.
The Wikileaks documents detailing US spying on France were pretty bad. They showed that the NSA had not only recorded the sensitive conversations of French officials, including the President, but also attempted to intercept "every French company contract or negotiation valued at more than $200 million," according to Julian Assange. US spies then turned around and shared that information with key allies, including the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
The NSA attempted to intercept "every French company contract or negotiation valued at more than $200 million," according to Julian Assange.
The French government reportedly didn't freak out more because it's own program was pretty extensive, according to L'Observateur. The French spy agency DGSE tapped up to five major undersea fiber cables with the cooperation of French operator Orange and telecom supplier Alcatel-Lucent. Ironically, France was reportedly sharing information it retrieved over the cables with the UK's GCHQ security agency via a previous arrangement -- meaning Britain was playing both sides, if true. We'd take the new allegations with a grain of salt without more proof, but it's not the first time we've heard reports of widespread French spying.
