France spies on itself

Scandal over the antics of police spies are a regular feature of French elections. The air is once again thick with malicious leaks and charges of dirty tricks by the Renseignements Généraux, the police intelligence service. Unusually, though, this time the boss of the shadowy RG has emerged to explain why France needs to keep secret tabs on its citizens. 

Let's look at this old exception française: the way that France considers it normal that 4,000 agents and many more thousands of part-time informers, are busy in their midst reporting on them. Even in these times of "homeland security" (awful expression) and wars on terror, no other democracy runs a domestic spying service on this scale and few would tolerate it. The RG, which dates back two centuries to the Revolution and acquired its modern form during the world war two Nazi occupation, is still in large part a political police. It operates in addition to the external intelligence and counter-intelligence services, the DGSE and DST (like Britain's MI6 and MI5) 

Joel Bouchité, the chief of the RG who reports to Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and centre-right presidential favourite, has come out to defend his service over its investigation of an aide to Ségolène Royal, Sarkozy's Socialist adversary.

[RG agent to Sarkozy: Is it for leaking to the press or for your own use, Mr Minister? ] 

Bruno Rebelle, the staffer, was a former head of Greenpeace France. Since Greenpeace was cranking up protests again, it was natural that the RG took an interest in him, said Bouchité. 

Since Rebelle's file was leaked 10 days ago, Sarkozy's team have been making the same point with some success. Greenpeace has been a troublemaker for the French state (and vice-versa) for years, so it seems reasonable that national security is involved. Rebelle was allowed a glimpse of his dossier under the freedom of information law last weekened and he says that it was incomplete.

More interesting,  Bouchité confirmed that the RG had been watching Antoine Royal, Ségo's brother. The local RG officer, a woman, was naturally interested in Antoine because he is a local business leader.  "When Mr Royal had financial difficulties, the agent went to see him to update his file," said Bouchité.

Antoine Royal said: "She had been told by her superiors to file a report on me. They said to themselves in the RG: we don't know anything about this person. What does he do? What does he know?"

Royal's camp also blames the RG for the report that circulated on the internet and then emerged last month that she and François Hollande, her partner and party leader, were allegedly evading the wealth tax.

The RG chief said his service held files on 800,000 people. These included staffers on political parties -- "people who might disturb public order and must therefore be identified."  Nearly a million citizens out of a population of 60 million is quite substantial.

As the eyes and ears of the state, the RG has a broad brief. It's job is to keep the government informed on the life of the nation and alert it to potential trouble. The biggest HUMINT operation of any western state, RG gathers gossip from bars and tips from paid hotel informers (Henri Paul, the Ritz hotel driver of Princess Diana was one). It watches unions, work places and political parties and it can intercept the communications of "personalities" in whom it is interested.

For the past decade the RG has entered the troubled banlieue, listening the the grievances of the immigrant population and infiltrating religious groups. Its success in penetrating radical Muslim circles has averted trouble and earned the admiration of other European intelligence agencies. An RG report last year also concluded that the autumn 2005 youth riots were the symptom of individual grievance and not a co-ordinated uprising. 

But the RG still spends huge resources on mundane surveillance of the population and "persons of interest". Like East Germany's Stasi and the Soviet KGB of communist days, its zeal for compiling raw data far exceeds its analytical skill. A couple of years ago, a group of dissident former officers complained that the RG was wasting time filling dossiers on such things as charities and humanitarian organisations.  "No one is monitoring what the Government does with the intelligence that we provide," they said.

The RG has been famously obsessed with cultural stars. It spied on suspected radicals who included Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Yves Montand, Victor Hugo, Gustave Eiffel and Emile Zola. One un-schooled agent reported on Sartre's suspicious enthusiasm for "the Dane, Kirkgaord" (Kierkegaard). The RG once filed the student Jacques Chirac as a suspected communist when he signed a petition. A 1995 RG report on a political manoeuvre against Sarkozy misspelled the then budget minister's name.

The RG is supposed to have stopped spying inside political parties, but the media have leaked ample evidence that the practice continues. After a year's absence in 2005, Sarkozy told colleagues in 2005 that he had decided to accept the Interior Ministry again because he would be able to take the RG and the DST in hand again to put an end to dirty tricks against him. Sarkozy had suspected that the RG was involved in compiling an anonymous dossier on his private life that fell into the hands of Cécilia, his wife, in 2004, according to media reports. She left for a year.

Sarkozy receives an RG briefing every day. His senior ministerial staff are also his campaign lieutenants. This amounts to a powerful political tool even if Sarkozy is not using the service for nefarious purposes. It is not surprising that Royal's camp say this gives him an unfair advantage and are demanding that he resign as Minister to fight the April election. On TV last night, he said that he would step down, but not for another month. 

Update: Le Monde has just this afternoon published a good analysis of the RG and the campaign (in French here)

PS: I apologise for the garbled text, which results from the relaunch of our site. The cropping on the edges will be resolved but we would be grateful for feedback on the new layout. 

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

Charles - the first few letters on the LHS of every line are cropped out of the full version of your blog - making it virtually illegible. Any chance you could get your tech boys (or girls) to sort it out?

[Frank Schnittger]

The problem with the cropping of text appears to have been sorted Charles. Thanks!

I find it amazing that any western democracy should accept such intrusion into the private lives of such a large number of its citizens. The opportunities for the abuse of such information for personal vendettas, political subterfuge, or commercial advantage are legion. It would put the Stazi to shame.

There's something profoundly sick in a society which pays people to pry into the private affairs of anyone who have come to public notice. I thought there were strict privacy laws in France? It seems these are only for public show. The reality is the state appears to have the means to destroy the reputation of anyone they do not like. Is this the legacy of Nazism?

[Tom Livingston]

Well, the comment from Frank is clear but the front's missing from each line of the article!

[luludi]

To Frank Shnittger:

I find the reaction a litlle bit exaggerated for the least. As said in the article, the system is a pervert legacy from the times of the revolution. And since then france remained a democracy, most of the time.

What a country is ready to accept - or not - from the will of a state to control its citizen is a huge historical and political subject. And I remember to have seen several recent british articles about a fear that british society would become a "big brother society". France has so far rejected the system of camera in the streets to spy citizen; and french DNA data files are really less developped than british ones (dna data about 200 000 individuals in France vs. 2 000 000 in Great Britain) and are moreover facing great internal opposition in France.

And a last factor that has not been included in your comment is the society by itself. I don't see a society as a static and passive object in front of an active, even eventually totalitarian or big brother, state taking all the initiatives and making the opinion. For example, an established totalitarian policy can only work, and LAST, if the majority of its citizen cooperate (may it be actively or not...). Nazism, sovietism, Vichy, are very good example of that kind of cooperation. But I agree that the issue is more delicate when we speak about the only surveillance of citizen : we have nowadays such technologies, that human and civil cooperations are much less needed in the matter.

French state has always been very intrusive; but (maybe because of that) there is a great and longlasting propensity to civil desobedience and mistrust towards state (it is maybe even greater nowadays after the vichy and nazi episode). If you would make a poll actually I am quite sure that France would have the top level of mistrust towards its politicians within western democracies. It shows that societies are not toys and are beware of such manipulations ... until it is too late. It is an important factor, even if it may be probably not enough...

I think we need a more complex and articulate analysis on the subject... Analogy between RG in french republic, stasi and nazism is a very cheap one ... I think most of historians would have an heart attack, and I don't speak about the numerous victims of nazism, stasi, or whatever totalitarian state, who could find your comment very disrespectful.

[The Grumpy Oldman]

Mince, I actually loved the seriously looking sober lines of the old Times website. The new style is disconcerting: GREEN title !?! Let alone I'll get astigmatic from the moving ads jumping in all directions.
Oh well.
We'll soon end up with a Metro kind of press, small, green, thin and jumpy.
The world is going worse and worse.

[Nick Parker]

Hint: if the beginning of each line is missing (in IE6 ou IE7). Hit the "back" button of the browse and then the "next". All the text will be present !

[Michael Morgan]

Apologies to anyone who has experienced problems with text being cut off within the posts in this or any of the other Times Online blogs.

The issue is a result of us using a new stylesheet for the blogs. The problem you are experiencing is because your individual browser is probably still using the old stylesheet.

This can be easily rectified by pressing CTRL and F5 at the same time which will force your browser to download the new stylesheet and the cropping issue will be rectified.

[RG]

Interesting piece. You might want to think about going back to the old photo.

Best Wishes

RG

Taos, NM, USA

[christopher muir]

Regarding the relaunch of the site. My Mac OSX 3.9 system (Safari browser) adjusted to the new format perfectly without any technical prompts. A plus for the 7% Mac users, I suppose, but I feel that the old layout was more elegant, and crisper.

[Paula]

Fascinating piece.
But regarding the layout, the old one was indeed more elegant and crisper.

[Tom Livingston]

Pressing the Post button on a blank message gets the problem sorted too.

[john gregory Flinn]

"Like East Germany's Stasi and the Soviet KGB of communist days, its zeal for compiling raw data far exceeds its analytical skill."

I hope this comparison to France's RG is not as prescient for the French State as their activities were!

What or who are the RG worried about?
Greenpeace are obvious oxymorons.
Militant Islam?
The Far right?
The Far left?
Animal rights activists?
Should'nt we know?
Perhaps the establishment are worried that their hold on the broadly centre ground is slipping - I hope so!

Your new format is rubbish.
Clearly there are too many employees at 'The Times' if you can afford to re-design and re-format something that was perfectly OK.
Expect a takeover bid!

[LN]

The old format was much more pleasant to read. All those blue titles blind my poor eyes!
Very interesting article about the RG: given that a lot of their information is inaccurate, or obtained from unreliable and unchecked sources. People don't even have a change to contest the judgements passed on them, unlike, say, if a journalist writes something about them which they're unhappy about, they can prosecute him. Here's there's no trial, no jury: the informer is the only judge, and I don't think that the RG can assess the quality of the 'material' they've got.

[kerstin]

Why is it that every Anglo-American loves to report just the silliest things of France taking very good care to keep quiet about
the criticism in France itself of the phenomenons brought up for attention. Brenner is a good example of how a journalist can adapt into a propagandist against the country he is out to report
on knowing full well the attitude is essential if he is to keep his job.
JOurnalism is a despicable trade

[PJB]

Love the new format. The real problem with the intelligence services is (as in the US) there are two: presenting a moving target, much more difficult to pin down (one day it's the DST, the next the RG, so everyone forgets about the DST for a while). As for surveillance, well answered by Lulu. You can't seriously claim (well done FS!) that no other nation would stand for police interference in civil society.