France’s National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques has claimed that nearly 23,000 people were spied on by French authorities last year using ‘technical tools’ like geolocation and recording conversations.
The National Commission for the Control of Intelligence Techniques (CNCTR), an independent administrative authority, stated that in total, 22,958 people were targetted by authorities using various technological methods, including eavesdropping and geolocation last year, an increase of three per cent compared to the period before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
CNCTR president Serge Lasvignes commented on the data this week at a press briefing on Monday saying that international tensions, organised crime and “latent social violence” have created a “need for intelligence, in any case a feeling for a need for intelligence,” broadcaster BFMTV reports.
Around half of those targetted by spying techniques are said to be related to terrorism, while other domestic targets have included far-left and far-right extremists as well as ecological extremists.
France’s domestic terrorism watchlists contain tens of thousands of entries, with the Terrorist Radicalisation Prevention Report Index (FSRPT) watchlist alone containing over a thousand illegal immigrants, according to a report released last year in May.
Around 20 per cent of those on the FSRPT are said to be foreign nationals, including 4,000 foreigners with legal residency, with the majority coming originally from North Africa.
In October of last year, the Pharos platform, an initiative of the French Interior Ministry for reporting illegal content online, from terrorism to paedophilia, reported that it had received over 10,000 reports of terrorist material in 2021, 200 per cent more than the prior year.
Some reports suggest that France’s domestic security services have been successful in managing to foil terror attacks before they occur, with a report published last November indicating that since 2015, French security services and others have managed to prevent a total of 65 terrorist attacks, sixty of which were linked to radical Islamic extremism and five linked to far-right activity.