Microphones, computer espionage, booby-trapped phones: French spies are increasing their “intrusions”, warns the national intelligence watchdog, who recommends adapting the control of services to their technological revolution. Some 24,000 people were monitored in France in 2023, 15% more than in 2022 and 9% more than in 2019, before the Covid-19 epidemic, points out the National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR) in its annual report published on Thursday, June 27.
For the first time, “the prevention of delinquency and organized crime has become the primary reason for surveillance.” The fight against terrorism has seen a slight increase (7.5%). But beyond the figures, “more significant (…) is the ever-increasing use of the most intrusive techniques,” the report notes.
Strengthen the legislative framework for spies
Faced with threats from all sides and investments from their foreign competitors, the internal and external intelligence services (DGSI and DGSE) are increasingly better equipped. “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 low contribution of telephone tapping,” lists the CNCTR.
But unlike wiretapping, centralized under the authority of the Prime Minister, these “specially intrusive techniques are directly implemented by the requesting services”, then preserved and exploited by them, writes Serge Lasvignes, president of the CNCTR. An independent body responsible for monitoring the use of technical tools by French services, the CNCTR has been calling for years to both strengthen the legislative framework for spies and increase control of their activities. “This form of escalation seems difficult to resist (…). It is therefore appropriate to strictly regulate it,” warns the senior official. Otherwise “the risk is that of a progressive weakening of control.”
There is total tension over the “sovereignty files”, the memory of the DGSE and DGSI, in which human intelligence, that resulting from technical tools but also the very sensitive exchanges with foreign services are stored. “We haven’t made any progress at all,” Serge Lasvignes told AFP. “It has become a question of principle.” The memory of agencies is therefore almost a black box. “These are areas to which we do not have access,” regrets the senior official. Only the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (Cnil) is authorized, but only if contacted by an applicant. “It is rare for people followed by the services to complain,” he quips. As a result, when services become more efficient, control stalls. “There is no power issue” for the CNCTR, assures its president, but it is essential to ensure “coherent and coordinated control”.
The challenge of AI and facial recognition
The report also highlights the development of artificial intelligence (AI), which affects intelligence as much as the military and social life. AI constitutes “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…”, the report points out. And this is all the more so since no authority exhaustively lists all the uses of AI.
However, this is also present in social control, via so-called “intelligent” or “augmented” cameras, equipped with tools for detecting anomalies, suspicious behavior and risky situations. The report also mentions “biometric recognition processes, particularly facial recognition” which “already have significant uses in terms of security and the preservation of public order in a number of countries (China and the United States in particular)”. A law adopted in 2023 authorized the implementation, on an experimental basis, of algorithmic video surveillance (VSA) during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
(With AFP)
