‘French secret service and Orange work closely together’

The French secret service and Orange, the largest telecom and internet provider in that country, are working closely together. The secret service will have full access to all information sent through Orange’s network, a French newspaper claims.

This means that the cooperation between the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French secret service, and Orange goes further than the cooperation between telecom providers and secret services in other countries, Le Monde writes. Orange not only has access to all metadata, but also to the content of the communication, the newspaper states. This is based on sources from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his own sources.

Employees of the secret service and Orange would even work together intensively to be able to intercept more data and, for example, crack encryption. The partnership would last for at least thirty years, and employees would commute between the Secret Service and Orange.

Last summer it already emerged that France has a program that is comparable to Prism, a controversial program of the American secret service NSA. The DGSE, which, like the NSA, mainly focuses on collecting intelligence and data abroad, is said to systematically intercept electronic traffic in both France and the countries with which it communicates.