France also spy on social networks

Widespread surveillance of telecommunications is also a reality in France. Le Monde published a survey on Thursday showing that French intelligence intercept all telephone calls in France, but also those carried out on the Internet, and store everything in huge servers located in the basement of the headquarters of the DGSE, Boulevard Mortier, in the twentieth arrondissement of Paris.
The purpose of this monitoring is not listening or reading private exchanges, but to determine who talks to whom, when, how long and where. DGSE has access to the titles of emails sent to France, the Google queries, interactions on Facebook ... The accumulation of data over time, can map the social interactions of every citizen. If an individual is suspected, for example, be part of a terrorist group, the French information could easily end up with the person who sent the last few years, and find possible accomplices. Dependent then investigators launch real listening, requiring the approval of the authorities.
Le Monde reveals that this massive database is accessible to the DGSE (foreign) but also Homeland Security (DCRI), the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), the Department for the Protection and Security defense (DPSD), the National Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation (DNRED) and even TRACFIN (fight against illegal financial channels) or the police. The existence of this sharing of information is denied by the authorities.
A revealed in 2010 by the DGSE system

This widespread Internet surveillance was revealed by the DGSE itself in 2010, at the Symposium on Safety of information technology and communications. Bernard Barbier, the technical director of the DGSE, it explained the functioning of this system, as had been reported then the blogger Jean-Marc Manach. "All these metadata are stores, over years and years. When we look at an IP address or a phone number, we will search our database. We find the list of matching (the suspect) for years. It happens to reconstitute its entire network, "explained Bernard Barbier. Why look to the Internet and public services such as email or Facebook? "Because public networks are used by terrorists," who drowned in the mass of conventional Internet exchanges, hoping not to be detected.
These ads were placed completely unnoticed at the time. But the scandal broke Prism in the United States, based on the same method may change. The only difference is size, with the United States: French surveillance based on any legal framework. French law does not provide for anything about the legality of mass storage data connection. A legal vacuum in which were engulfed intelligence agencies.