

France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report - stfu
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-france-nsa-idUSBRE99K04920131021

======
hbbio
It's pretty hilarious situation after France denied fly-zone to the Bolivian
Presidential aircraft this summer when they "feared" that Snowden might be
inside...

Voltaire said something like: "God, please protect me from my friends. I take
care of my enemies."

~~~
mercurial
Yes, cry me a river. Supposedly "allied" governments have no qualms spying on
each other, or engaging in "economic intelligence" for the military-industrial
lobby. Would the French DGSE (or other western intelligence agencies) engage
in large-scale surveillance of their own citizens, let alone foreigners, if
they believed they could get away with it? You bet.

~~~
p4bl0
They do. If you can read French, check out
[http://reflets.info/](http://reflets.info/).

~~~
Sagat
Really suspicious looking site, bro.

~~~
bobwaycott
What exactly do you find suspicious?

~~~
p4bl0
It's understandable, and it's something that Reflets.info editors acknoledge:
use of memes (lolcats for instance) does not look "pro", and there are opinion
and rant posts along with very profound and detailed in-depth investigation
articles.

You know, don't judge a blog by its cover ;-).

~~~
Sagat
What he said.

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rtpg
Slightly off topic, but what frustrates me about all this is that there is
absolutely no outrage in France about the DGSE's absolutely heinous practices
in this domain. Complete domestic surveillance without ANY legal framework
whatsoever, not even some stage court like FISA court.

~~~
Sagat
There's a huge difference between being spied upon by your own government and
being spied upon by some manifest-destiny-following foreigner.

~~~
Loughla
And that would be?

~~~
r00fus
One ostensibly controls (through the ballot box) a domestic outfit. Ostensibly
being the operative word.

Plus, it's hard to storm the Bastille if it happens to be overseas.

~~~
Loughla
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I call your bluff on both of those.

At this point, it appears that our elected representatives all have the same
means in mind, regardless of the ends they seek (I would also argue that the
sought-ends are the same, too, but I get into a tin-foil hatty area with
that). That is across all nations and all parties. Whether it is a domestic or
foreign outfit, the means are the same, and I would argue that fact outweighs
whatever the theoretical end would be.

Also, with the military might of modern 1st world countries, I don't really
believe that it matters if you have to cross an ocean first if you are going
to literally storm the Bastille; and with the internet age, the distance
doesn't really matter for a figurative storm, either.

~~~
r00fus
> Also, with the military might of modern 1st world countries, I don't really
> believe that it matters if you have to cross an ocean first if you are going
> to literally storm the Bastille; and with the internet age, the distance
> doesn't really matter for a figurative storm, either.

A history lesson - storming the bastille [1] is not done by a military, but by
pitchfork wielding mobs. Yes, it's going to be tougher to "throw out the bums"
if they happen to be a distant country with modern armaments.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille)

------
jusben1369
The whole thing's just awkward. All of these agencies understand and know that
this is going on. But when concrete evidence is given to the public they have
to call in ambassador's and do this whole "this is terrible!" song and dance.
Then it's back to normal.

~~~
harryf
You do have love "trying to play it down" reporting like this though...

> The NSA's targets appeared to be individuals suspected of links to
> terrorism, as well as those tied to French business or politics, Le Monde
> wrote.

...setting up the "we accidentally all your powerful people while hunting
terrorists honest" defense.

------
jbogp
We should have stuck to our beloved Minitel

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel)

------
oelmekki
> Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data
> were recorded by the NSA between Dec 10, 2012 and Jan 8, 2013

Fun fact about that : this number is actually bigger than french population (~
66M).

~~~
eis
"pieces of telephone data" is not very specific but it could mean "x called Y
at T for D seconds". And it's over a period of nearly a month. Many people do
phone calls at least once a day. So 70M records for a population of 66M is not
unrealistic for widescale surveillance.

What the number makes clear though is that it can't be for targeted terrorism-
suspect surveilance. Unless you have something like a million suspects in
France.

And in any case they should ask the french authorities/spies for help if they
want to know something about french residents.

I wonder how the USA would react if other governments started openly
surveilling US citizens/companies/politicians. That'd be one fun thing to
watch.

~~~
andyjohnson0
I read oelmekki's comment as putting the number of monitored calls in context,
not questioning its correctness.

~~~
oelmekki
Indeed, it was purely factual.

Of course, I'm not implying every french was spied on - it won't make sense
since a good part are just kids.

But when your records count for a country exceed their population, you can't
be expected to only watch a few bad guys, that's a sign of massive
surveillance - or strategic surveillance over tactical surveillance, as
Assange would put it.

------
walshemj
French foreign minster "I'm shocked, shocked to find that spying is going on
in here!"

NSA spook in black shades hands a usb stick to the Minister "your info on
Angles strategy for the next eu summit"

French foreign minster (sote voce) "Oh, thank you very much."

------
p4bl0
It would be quite ironic (but sadly, not impossible) if the technologies (like
0days, massive traffic analysis tools, DPI tools, etc.) used by the NSA to spy
on France were some of the numerous that are sold to them by French companies
like Vupen, Amesys, Qosmos…

------
ajays
To paraphrase a famous line: I'm shocked, shocked that there's spying going
on!

Snark aside: what may have riled French feathers is the fact that NSA spied on
politicians too. I bet they have lots of blackmail stuff.

~~~
gadders
Possibly given how French politicians behave...

~~~
Sagat
Please don't apply american fundamentalist puritan standards to everyone,
please.

~~~
gadders
Yes, you're right. I don't know why I ever thought raping hotel maids,
attempting to rape journalists, or going on trial for pimping would ever
reflect badly on a politician [1]

Clearly only a fundamentalist puritan would object to those things. I'm so old
fashioned.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-
Kahn#New_York...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-
Kahn#New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn_and_later_allegations)

~~~
Sagat
1\. Those are all allegations. In fact, the whole DSK mess is extremely
unclear and the case presented against him is highly suspicious, although it
is clear that he is a bit seedy. Some believe it to be a political machination
for a number of reasons.

2\. One politician's behavior means ALL politicians of that country behave
wrongly?

------
gelnior
Frenches don't really worry about that, they are already building the next
generation of personal cloud ;) [http://cozy.io](http://cozy.io)

~~~
pgeorgi
I find it hard to take a security related project seriously that installs
with:

$ curl [http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh](http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh) |
HOST=root@ip sh # sudoer required

Edit: even more annoying is that this script is only supposed to run on
Debian/Ubuntu - so this script isn't even any more portable than .deb packages

Edit2 to be more constructive: would you accept contributions to build
packages? Apart from this annoyance the project looks interesting!

~~~
gelnior
How do you install new stuff on your machine without super user rights ? Do
you have a specific user to run apt-get ?

~~~
colanderman
apt-get doesn't run unsigned, unvetted shell scripts downloaded over
unprotected channels.

~~~
gelnior
About the signing part, we definitely have to improve that. Thank you for
mentioning.

About the channel, the (real) install script is based on Fabric and use SSH.
So you can refer directly to this:
[http://cozy.io/host/install.html](http://cozy.io/host/install.html)

~~~
afreak
You also should be using HTTPS for these sort of situations.

Not that what you are suggesting is good in the first place.

