Re:Germans, still outraged by NSA spying, learn their countr...
by meowface on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @09:14AM
(#9492255)
People also seem to forget about major French companies like VUPEN, who research and buy 0-day vulnerabiliies with the express purpose of selling them to French intelligence services (and intelligence services of allied countries).
I have no doubt France's intelligence services are just as bad as NSA.
> In a 2009 US diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks, an unnamed German CEO of a satellite manufacturer was quoted calling France “the evil empire, stealing technology, and Germany knows this”, adding that French industrial spying was doing as much damage as anything coming from Russia or China
> Colourful stories about the lengths the French secret services would go to emerged in the early 1990s, such as the bugging of seats on Air France planes to eavesdrop on American business leaders.
> At the time, then-CIA director Stansfield Turner qualified French intelligence as “the most predatory service in the world, now that the old Soviet Union is gone”
Every EU country has been playing this game for centuries. It's always stunning to me how much more faith Europeans have in their governments than Americans do, even though they get up to the same kind of shenanigans.