Listening in on Libya: communication breakdown

The involvement of a French company, Amesys (purchased by Bull in 2010) in the Libyan telecommunications surveillance scandal was successfully proven by OWNI last June, then, this week, by the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and finally, the Figaro. But Amesys and Bull head honchos refuse to respond to our calls and still haven’t officially reacted. Last Tuesday, the day after the WSJ published its article, Amesys‘ website abruptly shut down.

Bull’s personalities, who would normally be aware of the subject, are accustomed to using the silent treatment. Tiphaine Hecketsweiler, hired as Communications Director for Bull group in January 2011, is in fact the daughter of Gérard Longuet, himself named Defense Minister in February 2011… She was previously associated with Image7, Anne Méaux’s famous communications consulting firm, herself close to Gérard Longuet, who she met in the 70s in the Defense Union Group (GUD, Extreme Right organization particularly active in the 70s), then in the Republican Party (which allows extreme right solders to enter into the political arena).

Bull’s CEO Philippe Vannier was Crescendo Technologies’ Director-in-Chief, the holding that bought up I2E and that became Amesys. At the time of the sale (for a sum of about 105 million euros), the company’s gains were about 25% over 5 years. That’s only about 100 million euros, which is 11 times less that what Bull makes. But the acquisition of Amesys lead to a substantial increase in Crescendo Industries’ capital, somewhere in the ball park of 20% of Bull’s shares, which places Philippe Vannier at the head of Bull as majority shareholder.

While announcing Amesys’ purchase, Bull declared their ambition “to construct the European leader in high security critical communication and information treatment systems,” while praising Amesys’ value due to their position and know-how regarding certain technological niches which they enumerated: “strategic intelligence in interception and signal analysis,” electronic warfare, “counter-terrorism and interior security solutions,” subway video surveillance, and “infotainment” such as video diffusion in trains (both use the same cables and technologies).

Hoping to keep their hands clean, the Elysée and the Defense minister went so far as to create a Sovereign France Strategy. Last August, the FSI or Strategic Investment Fund (created in 2008 to help companies deemed strategic) announced its investment in Bull, at more than 5%. What a coincidence.

Bull, at the center of French military industrialism

At the end of May, the website reflets.info began to ask questions about the uses and clients of Amesys’ Eagle/Glint system, a “nationwide” wiretapping product that, coupled with a petaoctet archiving system, was able to intercept and stock incredible volumes of data…:

What sort of country is interested in being able to listen to everyone. Isn’t this just the kind of product that dictators want? And if that’s the case… Is it possible the French authorities would not be aware of the sale of such equipment? Of course not.

Last June, OWNI revealed that Amesys had sold its “electronic interception system allowing a government to monitor all communication entering and leaving its country” to Libyan authorities. This has been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal and by this BBC video which shows a telecommunications interception center in Libya.

The Figaro then revealed that the French DRM had started working with Amesys engineers as early as July 2008 in order to train Libyan police and military agents for the installation of the Eagle system in their country:

Libya was an interesting laboratory because it allowed Bull to test its system without any limits, in a country of millions of inhabitants. “We’re listening to the whole country,” explains our interview, “We’re archiving everything: all Internet data: e-mails, chats, internet navigation registries, IP conversations.”

The Figaro doesn’t neglect to mention that the negotiator between the French military and Bull executives was none other than Abdallah Senoussi, Kadhafi’s brother-in-law and head of Libyan secret services. He is also known for his condemnation of the attack on UTA flight 772 in which 170 people died in 1989.

Bizarrely, the Figaro ends its article by saying that “a version of Eagle software, conforming to federal law, has been in use in France since 2009.” We know that the French spy and surveillance networks are capable of telecommunication interception, particularly with the Frenchelon system created by the DRM and DGSE. But the “conforming to federal law” expression isn’t quite clear. Especially seeing as spy networks have the ability to do things that laws do not necessarily authorize…

Stranger still, Amesys had previously sold an encryption system to Libya in 2006, Cryptowall, so as to escape the “big ears” of Echelon, the American telecommunication interception system. This detail was revealed at the end of August by Mediapart, who described the sale as having been authorized by the ministry of the Interior when Nicolas Sarkozy and Claude Guéant were ministers there. And was also authorized by the president himself! Ziad Takkiedine earned, in violation of the law, 4,5 million euros in commissions for making it all happen.

According to our sources, the software’s source code was in fact modified by someone in the ministry of Defense so that the encryption algorithm would be weakened. Objective: allow French secret services to decode messages supposedly resistant to American ears… We still don’t know to what extent the installation of the Eagle/Glint system helped France listen on Libyans and whether or not this surveillance helped OTAN military operations in the hopes of liberating Libya.

We also still don’t know, as Reflets.info and Christian Paul highlighted repeatedly, on what legal basis French authorities were authorized to export these tools. According the Socialist deputy, they should be “submitted to tests and be authorized by French authorities, because they are highly similar to technological weapons.”

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Update: In a statement put online this Thursday at 8PM, Amesys asserted that “Analysis materials” that it delivered to Libyan authorities in 2008 treated only “a fraction of the existing internet connections, about a few thousand” and that they did not treat “internet communication via satellite – used in cybercafés – nor encrypted data – used by Skype – nor website filtering and that the material used didn’t allow for monitoring telephones lines, be they mobile or landlines:”

All of Amesys’ activities strictly abide international, European, and French laws. Amesys does not operate a single telephone or internet wire tapping center anywhere on the globe.

OWNI never said that Amesys monitored fixed or mobile telephone calls anymore than satellite connections or even operated a surveillance center. Contacted by OWNI, the General Secretary of Defense and National Security (SGDSN) confirmed that it is necessary to obtain an authorization from the Interministry Commission for the Export of War Materails (CIEEMG) for tools used to wage electronic war, while insisting its awareness of this affair…

For years, encryption software has been considered a weapon in France and, therefore, barred from exportation. We still don’t know, however, which rules govern the export of surveillance, analysis and telecommunication interception tools.

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Update 02/09 : Amesys’ statement disappeared… you can find a copy here.

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Illustrations: Flickr CC binnyva.