French intelligence services are increasingly using “intrusive” techniques for citizens. A trend set to accelerate and in the face of which control must be strengthened, estimates an independent commission.
Microphones, computer espionage, booby-trapped telephones: spies, particularly internal and external services (DGSI and DGSE), are multiplying the forms of intrusion, according to the annual report published on Thursday by the National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR).
24,000 people monitored in France in 2023
The document notes that 24,000 people were monitored in France in 2023, or 29% more than in 2022 and 9% more than in 2019, before the covid epidemic. And, for the first time, “prevention of delinquency and organized crime becomes the primary reason for surveillance”. The fight against terrorism observed a slight increase (7.5%).
But beyond the numbers, “more significant […] “is the ever-increasing use of the most intrusive techniques,” the report notes. “Installing microphones in private places, collecting all of the person’s computer data, trapping telephones and computers: we are thus trying to compensate for the now small contribution of telephone tapping,” it adds.
AI in the service of intelligence
Unlike telephone tapping, which is centralized under the authority of the Prime Minister, “these particularly intrusive techniques are directly implemented by the requesting services. Their product is stored and used in the systems of these same services,” writes Serge Lasvignes, president of the CNCTR.
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The report also points to the development of artificial intelligence which profoundly affects intelligence and the military domain. AI is thus simultaneously “a tool that intelligence cannot do without. And a challenge for the regulator who is already wondering whether the surveillance of a person will come to be decided according to criteria of which no human will know either the content or the weighting with certainty…”, points out the CNCTR report.
