The Financial Times is reporting today that the new French Cabinet is forbidden from using Blackberries because of fears that the US could intercept state secrets.
The French government national security organization has banned the use of PDAs by ANYONE in the President’s or Prime Minister’s offices based on “a very real risk of interception” by third parties.
Is seems the paranoia is based on the fact that the Blackberry servers are located in the US and UK and strategic and sensitive information could fall into foreign hands. The repost cites a confidential study done 2 years ago by a civil servant in charge of economic intelligence. Earlier ban of Blackberries on other French government departments made officials in government use them secretly.
I though the US government would be too busy these spying on its own citizens and “outing” their own spies to have time to worry about the French. And why would they care about French “intelligence” since they refused to participate in Bush’s War of Terror in Iraq.
The concern of France is realistic.
ReplyDeleteI realize you are tongue in cheek when you say the US only spies on its citizens but it is clear that the US spies on it allies and pursues information operations against allies too.
Nor is spying only related to Iraq.
The question is why does the Canada not show more concern for our security?