From the AP:
BlackBerry handhelds have been called addictive, invasive, wonderful  and now, a threat to French state secrets.
That, at least, is the fear of French government defense experts, who have advised against their use by officials in France’s corridors of power, reportedly to avoid snooping by U.S. intelligence agencies.
“It’s not a question of trust,” French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. “We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it’s economic war.”
Translation: “it’s not a matter of trust, you understand. It’s just that, well, you bourgeois McDullards can’t be relied upon to not be untrustworthy — an important semantic difference that one can’t fully understand until one has fully immersed himself in Sartre and unfiltered cigarettes.”
Evidently, the French are worried that the NSA might finally nail down the secret to making a truly spectacular sourdough bread base, or else unearth the methods used by pseudo-intellectual Frenchman for years to inexplicably convince French women to sleep with them in pairs.
In the list of things France is scared of, Blackberries came in 5th behind 1) showers, 2) German chocolate, 3) conflict, and 4) their own shadow.
I thought the method was lots of alcohol and an application bee-ess to the point that the subject’s I.Q drops lower than Congress’ rating.
To be fair, when you have only two secrets worth stealing, you’re going to get a little paranoid about keeping them.
OTOH, we Americans have so many really cool secrets that we don’t even prosecute the people who leak them.
…and the first is, "Where did that stoopeeeed Jean-Louis hide the dieu-damned toilet papaire!?" …
Crackberry hackberry? Hahahaha! There’s nobody at the NSA who speaks Frog.
“It’s not a question of trust,†French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. “We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it’s economic war.â€Â
Yeah, like where Dassault or Thompson defense materials end up – in the hands of our enemies perhaps? Might be economics to you, but it’s knowing the Threat’s gear to me.
“Anglo-Saxon” is the French way of saying “low-lifes”.
These are the same French peoples who lobbied the Turks not to allow us to invade from the north of Iraq which meant that the Iraqi forces stationed north of Baghdad mostly dispersed and became insurgents that killed American soldiers and innocent Iraqis? I think I agree with Pierre that it is definitely not a question of trust.
Coulda stopped right there…
Seriously, though: you don’t carry on secure conversations using unsecure networks, nor do you store secure information on unsecured devices. Anyone with the least bit of experience in information security could tell you that.
JD, you left out Lance Armstrong.
And, by the way: they’re right, in principle. Sometime in the 1990s, according to the folks briefing National Industrial Security at the time, the Soviet Union (the whole, or the sum of its parts) stopped being the most aggressive spying entity, and (of all laces) Israel started to top the list. Furthermore, spying was broadening from acquisition of defense secrets to acquisition of industrial (read: trade) secrets in general.
So what they’re doing is not really out of line. But pointing us out as their primary threat is. I really, really doubt that if any country wants to learn what the French are up to, that it’s us. Maybe when they can build a decent car, or an aircraft carrier that works more often than it doesn’t.
I have to wonder how much of their paranoia is based in a "well, hell, that’s what we would do if we had the American’s traffic running through servers here in France" mindset.
Jeff – This post is the equivalent of Brad Lidge throwing a 94 mph heater right down central. You had to know the result was inevitable.
I’m not sure that France deserves to be scorched – this one time. In the end, the guy quoted in the paper only talked about what everyone knows but pretends otherwise – that the normal state of affairs in international relations is to collaborate on some issues and screw each other on others.
The French want to live in a world of industrial espionage cause it justifies all sorts of economic exceptionalisms.
"These are the same French peoples who lobbied the Turks not to allow us to invade from the north of Iraq which meant that the Iraqi forces stationed north of Baghdad mostly dispersed and became insurgents that killed American soldiers and innocent Iraqis…"
Never forgive, never forget.
Curses! Foiled again!…
I’d say that if anyone can lose an economic war worse than they already are, it’s the French. At least they have finally acknowledged it – but with Kyoto The Elephant still standing. Eh, Gunga?
Old British proverb: "Wogs begin at Calais"
They have a new design they stole from someone else, they are trying to keep it on ice.
It is called projection. Of course the French spy on businessmen so they expect everyone else to do it as well.
Haha french are not afraid of showers JD they are afraid of deodorant.