The telecommunications of French citizens were being monitored en masse by the American National Security Agency (NSA), as revealed in today's article by the newspaper "Le Monde", citing documents containing information about secret surveillance programs and published by former NSA technician Edward Snowden.
The newspaper says it has in its possession documents with graphs showing the extent of telephone interceptions and wiretapping in France. It shows that in a 30-day period – from December 10, 2012 to January 8, 2013 – 70.3 million phone records were made by the NSA.
The newspaper also publishes documents describing the techniques used to breach confidential information or simply the personal data of the French people. According to "Le Monde", the surveillance techniques were varied.
When a telephone number is used in France, it triggers a signal which automatically instructs the call to be recorded.
Apparently, this surveillance system also records SMS messages and their content using keywords. The NSA also apparently stores each target's chat history – the so-called metadata.
