French online surveillance programme revealed

Emails, satellite and even fax communications scooped up by French secret services

France has been outed as the latest democratic country to be operating a vast online surveillance apparatus in apparent contravention of the law.

Revealed today in Le Monde newspaper in a report into "Big Brother France", the French programme is run by the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), the French equivalent of MI6.

Connections both inside France and between France and other countries are all monitored, according to Le Monde. "All our communications are spied upon. All emails, text messages, telephone records, access to Facebook, Twitter, are then stored for years," claims Le Monde.

It encompasses digital communications on fibre optic cables running through French territory, as well as mobile phone data, emails, text messages and even faxes, as well as data gleaned from satellite communications, too.

Like Prism in the US, the French surveillance system records metadata rather than content - that is to say, the data about communications, such as who called who and when, rather than the content of the communications.

At least seven different government agencies are able to access the digital information - including the interior ministry, Customs and Excise, the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), and military police, all the way down to regional police in Paris.

The system is supposedly designed to help identify terrorist cells, but its scale means that "anyone can be spied on, any time", according to Le Monde.

Officials in France has so far refused to comment on the allegations, which follow on from French government criticisms of the US and, in particular, the UK programmes, which were revealed by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.

While illegal under French law, the system has been tacitly acknowledged by the French state, claims Le Monde. "This French Big Brother, brother of US services, is illegal. However, its existence appears discreetly in parliamentary documents," states the newspaper.

The system has been running since 2008.