Le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Laurent Fabius et le secrétaire d'Etat américain, John Kerry, au Quai d'Orsay, à Paris, mardi 22 octobre. Jean-Claude Coutausse/french-politics pour Le Monde

Lire la version française : La diplomatie française sur écoute aux Etats-Unis

Washington wiretapped French embassies. The documents revealed by Edward Snowden, the ex-consultant from the NSA (National Security Agency) have not lifted the veil on the extent of the electronic espionage by the United States throughout the world. Certain pieces show that the American secret services have developed very innovative programmes to carry out the same missions as before. Internal memos obtained by Le Monde give details about the wholesale use of cookies by the NSA to spy on French diplomatic interests at the United Nations in New York and Washington.

There is a two page memo dated 10 September 2010. It is an internal technical document classified as ‘top secret', intended for NSA operators who use the interception tools of the powerful American agency on a daily basis. It enables technicians not to get lost in the maze of codes and acronyms in use in the biggest intelligence agency in the country. But hidden behind the apparently harmless line-up of figures and abbreviations we find the centre of the electronic war.

We discover here the proof of the existence of the GENIE programme, one of the most topical in the NSA: the remote delivery of spyware to computers. On American soil, this mode of interception is called US-3136, for targets outside American it is known as US-3137. The memo refers to the surveillance of the French Embassy in Washington which appears under the code name, ‘Wabash' and of the French delegation to the UNO under the code name ‘Blackfoot'.

The document specifies the techniques used to spy on the communications of the French diplomats: ‘Highlands' for pirating computers using remotely delivered cookies; ‘Vagrant' for capturing information from screens; and finally PBX which is the equivalent of eavesdropping on the discussion of the French diplomatic service as if one was participating in a conference call - as the Spiegel first reported. Some of the techniques developed are known to other secret services but like all the major secret services in the world, the NSA also creates its own tools which do not exist anywhere else.

In 2011, the American budget reports which include, in particular, part of the financing of the NSA, stated that 652 million dollars had been devoted to the ‘spyware' project alone. Thus we learn that in the same year ‘tens of millions of computers' were attacked in this way and the plan is to extend this figure to several millions via the TURBINE programme. The NSA's flagship product for these projects is the TAO (Tailored Access Operation) in charge of aggressive operations. According to the Washington Post, by the end of 2013, the GENIE programme will have remote control of 85,000 spyware devices in computers throughout the world.

IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM



A document dated August 2010, sheds light more specifically on the centres of interest of the United States through this remote espionage. Issued by the Signal Intelligence Directorate (SID), it states that the confidential information thus stolen from foreign chanceries, and in particular from France, played a major role in obtaining the vote, on 9 June 2010, of a resolution imposing new sanctions on Iran for not respecting its obligations concerning its nuclear programme.

This sanction resolution was hotly defended by Washington which feared, at this point, opposition from the emerging countries, Russia and China having already intimated their agreement. Effectively, Brazil and Turkey were opposed, arguing that, in liaison with Teheran, they were proposing an alternative to these sanctions. Lebanon, where the government included members from Hezbollah, supported by Iran, preferred to abstain.

For a while, France was a source of concern for the United States after having informed them on 18 May 2010 of ‘its recognition' and ‘total support of France for President Lula for the efforts which he has made' in favour of an agreement with Iran. But these French declarations seem to be primarily motivated by Franco-Brazilian commercial considerations linked to the sale of Rafale fighter planes. In the words of a diplomat, a participant at the time in the discussions: ‘Washington knew perfectly well that we were aligned on their position; we had met delegations from the American Treasury in Paris on the content of the sanctions. I don't see what they could have learned they did not already know.' Moreover, Paris was to vote in favour of this resolution.

This espionage operation was described in the NSA memo, as a ‘silent success in which SIGINT helped to shape U.S. foreign policy.' To vaunt its merits, the intelligence agency even quoted the American ambassadress to the United Nations, Susan Rice, about the work carried out on this occasion by the NSA: ‘helped me to know ….. the truth … revealed their real position on sanctions … gave us an upper hand in the negotiations ..'.

Translation by Kristin Couper - Lire notre article en Français



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