French regulators have said Skype could face prosecution for failing to register as an “electronic communications operator” with France’s telecom regulator. The agency, known by its French acronym ARCEP, wrote in an English-language statement on Tuesday that “failure to comply with this obligation does, however, constitute a criminal offense.”

Being an operator that provides telecom services to the public “also implies compliance with certain obligations, which include the routing of emergency calls and implementing the means required to perform legally ordered [wiretap] interceptions," according to ARCEP.

In its statement, ARCEP said it had requested that Skype go through this process “several times,” and the company has apparently failed to comply.

Ars reached out to Microsoft (Skype’s parent company), to current and former Skype employees, and to ARCEP but did not receive an immediate reply.

Spy vs. Skype

For years now, there have been questions about how much data and surveillance capability Skype provides in conjunction with local law enforcement.

“As was true before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype cooperates with law enforcement agencies as is legally required and technically feasible,” Skype told the Washington Post last year.

Audio and video calls, of course, can be cracked simply by hacking one end of the conversation, which the Germany-based Chaos Computer Club claimed that German authorities have done via a trojan as of last year. There are also numerous commercial intercept and spyware applications that make the same claim.

As Chris Sogohian, a tech policy analyst and privacy advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote last year:

Skype's strategy is genius - most journalists, even those that cover tech, know very little about the more granular aspects of cryptography. When Skype says it provides end to end call encryption, journalists then tell their readers that Skype is wiretapping proof, even though Skype never made that specific claim. Conveniently enough, Skype never bothers to correct the many people who have read a tad bit too much into the company's statements about security.

UPDATE: A Skype spokesperson, declining to respond to specific questions, sent Ars the following statement: