The French Secret Defense companies that supplied surveillance material to the dictatorships of Assad and Kadhafi
Updated, April, 2015| Paris
In December 2012, I was fired two weeks before Christmas...
My crime ? I had publicly denounced the fact that Qosmos, the French hi-tech company I had worked for since 2005, was involved in contracts to supply surveillance material to the Syrian regime of Bachar El-Assad.
And that my employer Qosmos had also been involved via another French company Amesys (now part of the Bull group), in a contract to supply mass surveillance technology to the Libyan regime of Colonel Kadhafi.
Six months after I was fired for publicly mentioning and criticizing these contracts, and one week after I testified in the Paris courts, Edward Snowden revealed to the world just how tentacular such surveillance programs are, and that not only are the dissidents of dictatorships targeted but also most everyone in our western democracies.
Details of these contracts and others can be found in the article run by the Parisian newspaper Le Monde, 29 Oct. 2013, and titled quite aptly Mass surveillance : French companies in the service of dictatorships...
Espionnage de masse : des sociétés françaises au service de dictatures
LE MONDE | 29.10.2013
Drawing by Aurel | for Le Monde
The Sarkozy gouvernment's "honeymoon" with Kadhafi and Assad
It is important to remember that the contracts to provide the Syrian regime of Bachar El-Assad, and the Libyan regime of Mouammar Kadhafi, with surveillance equipment they could use against their own people, were signed under the gouvernment of Nicolas Sarkozy, who invited both dictators to Paris as part of his ill-fated "honeymoon" period with arab dictators that preceded the events of the "Arab spring".
Qosmos : a Secret Defense company working with the French secret services
Qosmos has been working closely with French government services (Interior & Defense) since at least 2007, and as such availed of the new Secret Defense laws voted in France in june 2009. The legislative changes introduced extended secrecy laws to cover "the premises of private companies working with the government", and replaced the term "intelligence" ("renseignements") by the far broader and all-inclusive terms "information" and "data", including all "electronic data". These new laws also made it practically impossible for protected private companies to be investigated by the French judiciary. A situation denounced at the time by highly-placed members of the French Judiciary itself, including the President of the Law Commission, and even by the then opposition Socialist Party (PS).
But as is often the case, protesting voices die away and nothing changes. Or as the French expression goes: "dogs may bark, but the caravan continues on its way."
Unfair dismissal case before the French labour courts
Like many of my colleagues at Qosmos, I discovered the identites of these illustrious customers - and notorious dictators - through leaks to the press that began with the onset of the "Arab spring".
Shaken to learn that I had been working on contracts to supply dictatorships with the means of carrying out massive surveillance and repression, I left the Qosmos offices, on the morning of april 20th 2012, in a state of "reactive depression", only to return once more eight months later: this time to be fired.
It was a lonely passage, a pre-Snowden period, where news of this kind did not get much attention.
I was sacked, in my letter of redundancy dated 13 December 2012, for not respecting my "obligation of loyalty" and "obligation of confidentiality" towards Qosmos, and am suspected, in the same letter of redundancy, of providing information to the International Federation for Human Rights. I maintained during my pre-redundancy meeting with Qosmos' CEO that it was my "duty as a citizen" to denounce such contracts. A notion that inspired, at the time at least, a mixture of hilarity, scorn and impatience.
In an audience held before the French labour court in Paris, on 23 Oct. 2013, it was decided to send my case before a professional judge. Details of the case are available here (in French) :
Matériel livré à la Libye et à la Syrie : Qosmos aux Prudhommes
Salarié licencié par Qosmos : les prud’hommes ne tranchent pas
Surveillance : un ancien salarié de Qosmos devant les prud'hommes
Retrospective ethics: "It was not right to keep supporting this regime"
In an article by the news agency Bloomberg, published November 4th 2011, the CEO of Qosmos, Thibaut Bechetoille, recognized the company's involvement in supplying Assad's Syrian regime with the technological means to carry out the surveillance and interception of communications, and recognized also that "it was not right to keep supporting this regime", and that Qosmos was "still figuring out how to unwind its involvement" :
When Bloomberg News contacted Qosmos, CEO Thibaut Bechetoille said he would pull out of the project. “It was not right to keep supporting this regime,” he says. The company’s board decided about four weeks ago to exit and is still figuring out how to unwind its involvement, he says. The company’s deep- packet inspection probes can peer into e-mail and reconstruct everything that happens on an Internet user’s screen, says Qosmos’s head of marketing, Erik Larsson. “The mechanics of pulling out of this, technically and contractually, are complicated,” Larsson says.
Quoted from the article Syria Crackdown Gets Italy Firm’s Aid With U.S.-Europe Spy Gear, by Ben Elgin and Vernon Silver, Nov 4, 2011.
These declarations by the Qosmos CEO, Thibaut Bechetoille, obviously beg the question : when was it "right" to "support" the regime of Assad ?
The Qosmos CEO, who signed both these contracts, destined to supply repressive surveillance means to the dictatorships of Colonel Kadhafi and Bachar El-Assad, sacked me in person in December 2012, for mentioning these facts publicly, and for offering information to journalists and to the International Federation for Human Rights.
The particularity of my declarations was to provide information that linked Qosmos to contracts involving both the Syrian regime of Assad and the Libyan regime of Kadhafi. And to France's DGSE. And to give the lie, effectively, to any supposedly "ethical" considerations concerning Qosmos' late retreat from the Syrian contract under increasingly adverse media fallout.
According to its website, like any modern self-respecting outfit, Qosmos is an "ethical" company.
Does being an "ethical" company mean deciding "it was not right to keep supporting this [totalitarian] regime" only after the wind has changed, and you've been caught red-handed ?
And then sacking those who disagree with this definition, and who find such behavior scandalous ?
Current legal proceedings against Qosmos and Amesys for "Complicity in Crimes against Humanity"
In july 2012, the French judiciary had opened a preliminary investigation against Qosmos, following a suit brought by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the French Human Rights League (LDH). Details can be found on the site of the FIDH :
FIDH and LDH ask French judiciary to investigate on the involvement of French companies in Syria
Here is an extract :
FIDH and LDH today filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor at the Paris Court to urge the French judiciary to investigate the involvement of French companies, especially Qosmos, in supplying the Bachar El Assad regime with surveillance equipment.
Qosmos, a company specialised in supplying Deep Packet Inspection material designed for real time analysis of digital data that transit over the network, has been called into question several times by several difference sources, for contributing to supplying the Syrian regime with the electronic surveillance equipment needed to quell the opposition that has been going on in Syria since March 2011.
“At a time when the French authorities are strongly criticising Bachar El Assad’s violence against the Syrian people, it is vital that full information be made available on the involvement of French companies in supplying surveillance equipment to the Syrian regime”, said Patrick Baudouin, FIDH Honorary President.
“Western companies must know that they cannot sell this type of equipment to authoritarian regimes without being held accountable, and without worrying about what happens when these regimes use this material”, said Michel Tubiana, LDH Honorary President.
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Despite procedural foot-dragging by the Executive-controlled "Parquet", a similar preliminary enquiry targeting Amesys has given rise to a fully fledged and independent legal inquiry that is also ongoing. Details can be found here :
Promoting legislative change to provide better safeguards against human rights abuses
The aim of such procedures is not only to challenge the impunity of private and State interests involved in such acts, it is also to heighten public awareness and promote legislative change, in order to provide better safeguards against human rights abuses by companies - or governments - selling surveillance technology and equipment. The FIDH website spells out these hopes, that require only that rare commodity "political will" - in France as elsewhere - to be implemented :
Amesys and Qosmos targeted by the judiciary: is there a new law on the horizon?
Following the complaints lodged by FIDH and the French Human Rights League (LDH), in November 2011 and May 2012, against Amesys and Qosmos, the French judicial services commissioned an investigation. These two companies allegedly sold communications surveillance equipment to the Libyan and Syrian governments that enabled the intelligence services of Mouammar Gaddafi and Bachar El Assad to refine their instruments of repression against their own people.
Clémence Bectarte, coordinator of the FIDH Legal Action Group on the Amesys and Qosmos case, feels that the total lack of export regulations for surveillance equipment is regrettable: “ although the main goal is to use judicial means to end the sale of surveillance equipment to governments that seriously violate human rights, we also want to send out signals so that progress can be made on the legal front ”.
This message has been clearly heard and may soon turn into reality, according to the French Innovation and Digital Economy Minister, Fleur Pellegrin. When asked about the impact of the Amesys and Qosmos case, she said that France recently decided to amend the French law and ensure progress in legislation at the European level: “ The Internet surveillance technologies, especially the technologies at the heart of the network developed by Amesys and Qosmos, should be on the Wassenaar list. If negotiations among the European countries do not progress, we will impose a national framework on the French industry by the end of the year ”.
Collaboration between the NSA, the GCHQ and France's DGSE
Of course, the activities of French surveillance companies and French government services are also part of the bigger picture of mass surveillance. Recent revelations, by The Guardian and Channel 4, have pinpointed close collaboration between Britain's GCHQ and other spy agencies in Europe, and in particular a "cooperate and share" partnership between Britain's GCHQ and France's DGSE :
GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance
Edward Snowden papers unmask close technical cooperation and loose alliance between British, German, French, Spanish and Swedish spy agencies
Here is an extract from The Guardian's november 1st article :
The country-by-country survey, which in places reads somewhat like a school report, also hands out high marks to the GCHQ's French partner, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE). But in this case it is suggested that the DGSE's comparative advantage is its relationship with an unnamed telecommunications company, a relationship GCHQ hoped to leverage for its own operations.
"DGSE are a highly motivated, technically competent partner, who have shown great willingness to engage on IP [internet protocol] issues, and to work with GCHQ on a "cooperate and share" basis."
Noting that the Cheltenham-based electronic intelligence agency had trained DGSE technicians on "multi-disciplinary internet operations", the document says: "We have made contact with the DGSE's main industry partner, who has some innovative approaches to some internet challenges, raising the potential for GCHQ to make use of this company in the protocol development arena."
GCHQ went on to host a major conference with its French partner on joint internet-monitoring initiatives in March 2009 and four months later reported on shared efforts on what had become by then GCHQ's biggest challenge – continuing to carry out bulk surveillance, despite the spread of commercial online encryption, by breaking that encryption.
"Very friendly crypt meeting with DGSE in July," British officials reported. The French were "clearly very keen to provide presentations on their work which included cipher detection in high-speed bearers. [GCHQ's] challenge is to ensure that we have enough UK capability to support a longer term crypt relationship."
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The DGSE's "main industry partner" specialised in "protocol development" is, of course, Qosmos, which has been a priviliged Secret Defense partner for many years, and which received €10 Million from France's Strategic Investment Fund (FSI) in august 2011, at a moment when it's deliveries to the Syrian regime of Bachar El-Assad were at their height, and when the repression of opponents and dissidents by the Assad regime was too. This strategic investment fund was created by none other than Nicolas Sarkozy.
As part of its ongoing expansion, in October 2008 Paris-based Qosmos opened its first US subsidiary, Qosmos Inc., located a brief twenty-minute drive from the NSA Headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.
The next phase
Are there reasons to be hopeful that such revelations will help usher changes in France's legislative arsenal, and end impunity for companies involved in the sale of such technologies to notorious dictatorships, despite the laws recently green-lighted by France's Senate ?
A New York Times article, published December 14 last, France Broadens Its Surveillance Power, indicates that such optimism may be unfounded:
The provision, quietly passed as part of a routine military spending bill, defines the conditions under which intelligence agencies may gain access to or record telephone conversations, emails, Internet activity, personal location data and other electronic communications.
The law provides for no judicial oversight and allows electronic surveillance for a broad range of purposes, including “national security,” the protection of France’s “scientific and economic potential” and prevention of “terrorism” or “criminality.”
So many raise their voices in protest, but the caravan continues its blind way.
Since the publication of this blog entry, a full official inquiry was launched by the French Judiciary, in april 2014, targeting Qosmos for "complicity in acts of torture" in Syria.
France: Opening of a judicial investigation targeting Qosmos for complicity in acts of torture in Syria
In March 2015, I won a 2 year legal battle against my former employer, Qosmos, for unfair dismissal.
In April 2015, Qosmos was placed under the regime of "assisted witness" in France's Crimes against humanity court, an intermediate status between being formally investigated and formally charged.
James J Dunne, Paris, France