Espionage: A Complaint in France Targeting American Companies

The International Federation for Human Rights filed a complaint Thursday morning at the High Court of Paris in the electronic communications espionage affair called PRISM carried out by U.S. security agencies. For if the complaint is against X, it is really the NSA and FBI that are actually targeted.

The complaint that Le Figaro found concerns five primary infractions: fraudulent access and retention in all or part of an automated data processing system—Article 323-1 of the Criminal Code; the collection of personal data by fraudulent, dishonest or illegal means—Article 226-18 of the Criminal Code; the deliberate attack on the privacy of others—Article 226-1 of the Criminal Code; the use and preservation of records and documents obtained by means of invading the privacy of others—Article 226-2 of the Criminal Code; and the breach of confidentiality from electronic correspondence.

For Mr. Emmanuel Daoud, one of the lawyers of the International Federation for Human Rights, this complaint seeks to determine the roles that companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Paltak, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple have played in this case.

Two Million Telecommunications Intercepted in France by the United States

“These documents classified as top secret (those disclosed by Edward Snowden, a former technician of the CIA, having worked at the NSA for four years) reveal that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have direct access to the servers of nine American companies operating in the Internet domain, including Microsoft (since 2007), Yahoo (since 2008), Google, Paltalk, and Facebook (since 2009), YouTube and Skype (since 2010), AOL (since 2011) and finally Apple (since 2012). The PRISM program allows them to collect physical data hosted by these companies’ servers including search histories in particular and connections made on the Internet, the content of e-mails, audio and video communications, photo files, transfer documents and the content of conversations online,” reports the complaint. “The U.S. has established a system for the interception of private data which concerns U.S. citizens as much as foreign individuals and associations. The very essence of this system, particularly using key words, is to understand not only the origin of a private message but also its destination and its contents, regardless of the technical means used for the transmission of this message.”

Between December 2012 and January 2013, two million telecommunications—telephone calls, SMS, emails—were intercepted in France by U.S. agencies through PRISM, Daoud estimates.

The problem: In order to arrive at a judicial investigation, a French judge should request judicial cooperation in the United States. Nothing is less certain.