France Outraged over NSA spying. How do you say "Glass Houses" in French?

The hypocrisy of French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius' outrage over U.S. spying allegations is stunning. France's record on espionage is well-known and long-standing. Here are just a few examples:

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Votre Secrets, Monsieur?
"AS THE 20TH CENTURY DRAWS TO A CLOSE, a country's economic power has become more essential to its survival than its military prowess. This increased emphasis on market dominance means the world's intelligence services are refocusing their efforts from collecting the traditional political and military material to collecting economic, scientific, technological, and business information. One intelligence service that has become synonymous with this new effort is the French government's General Directorate of External Security (DGSE)."

"The idea of the French using their intelligence service to obtain scientific, economic, and technological information from friendly countries is not new. Returning to power in 1958, President Charles de Gaulle indicated that the Service for External Documentation and Counterespionage (SDECE), the then French intelligence agency, needed to focus on obtaining technological information about the United States and other Western countries."

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WIKILEAKS: France leads Russia, China in Industrial Spying in Europe
"Back in 2001, European leaders accused the United States government of operating a vast industrial espionage network that was eavesdropping on European businesses and giving trade secrets to American companies. According to the latest WikiLeaks cable release, they should have been looking internally."

"France is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage on other European countries, even ahead of China and Russia, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, reported in a translation by Agence France Presse of Norwegian daily Aftenposten's reporting."

"French espionage is so widespread that the damages (it causes) the German economy are larger as a whole than those caused by China or Russia," an undated note from the U.S. embassy in Berlin said."

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Next Up for France: Police Keyloggers and Web Censorship
"Having just passed its super-controversial Internet "graduated response" law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the "internautes." Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called "Pericles."

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And this is just from the ones that I collected while researching and writing my security guide for business travelers ebook. The public might be outraged, but government officials know better.

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Announcing "A Traveler's Guide to Cyber Security"

Whether it’s a talk at a dinner for a group of Fortune 100 CIOs or a speech before the National Security Council of a U.S. allied government, one of the questions that I’m most frequently asked afterwards is “Jeff, how can I keep from being compromised when I travel overseas.” And of course they expect an easy answer in 30 seconds or less. After having written two editions of “Inside Cyber Warfare” (O’Reilly Media, 2009, 2011) and having given over 100 talks on the subject since 2008, I still struggled with the best way to answer it. The reality is that there’s no simple answer to that question if you want to do it justice. And there’s ample evidence that the most common advice given; i.e., don’t take your laptop or cell phone out of the country - is rarely complied with except by the most security conscious of government employees. The hard truth is that in a battle between security and convenience, convenience will always win.
I spent many hours working on the best way to answer that question. It eventually occured to me that attacks launched against high value targets are resource-intensive; meaning that they aren’t conducted - can’t be conducted - against everyone. Therefore an adversary most likely has a way to qualify targets of interest before commiting resources to compromise them. I decided to build my own system of qualifying targets (the Cyber Risk Index™) and then use that to provide appropriate security advice to traveling officials and executives. This ebook "A Traveler's Guide to Cyber Security" represents my best work to date on the question - what can I do to stay safe when traveling abroad. I consider it a work in progress and welcome your feedback.


This 40 page ebook provides detailed guidance on how to determine your personal CRI; provides information on how Russian and Chinese intelligence services can legally intercept your data and interact with you personally; and provides a groundwork in basic cyber self defense."

I'd appreciate your help in spreading the word about this new resource at your organization and among your peers. It's a low cost, unique, and effective approach to help business travelers more fully engage with the security process by knowing their risk of compromise in any country in which they're doing business. It's available on Amazon for the Kindle and on Lulu.com for all other formats although Lulu does require that Adobe Digital Editions be installed on your computer (sorry about that). Hopefully it'll soon be available at iBookstore as well.

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WaPo's "extreme" precautions for travel to China? Hardly.

Today's Washington Post article "In China, Business travelers take extreme precautions to avoid cyberespionage" barely cracks the surface of what occurs in China and other nation states who engage in cyber-espionage. I founded a company on that very premise in 2010 and am still amazed at how easily state actors can obtain exactly what they want from visiting C-level executives without anyone knowing it. In fact, I've had this very conversation with Joel Brenner just recently (Brenner is extensively quoted in the WaPo article).
A standard travel kit for Taia Global clients includes a pre-paid cell phone and an iPad or a hardened laptop with no documents stored on the hard drive. Instead, everything that the executive needs to work on is stored on an encrypted IronKey flash drive. We provide a variety of e-mail alternatives for executives to choose from which keep them from directly communicating with their home network. Access to free WiFi hotspots at the airport, the hotel, or anywhere else in-country is heavily discouraged. And no device ever re-connects with the corporate network after a trip.

These are realistic, not extreme, precautions and they're based upon real-life incidents that happen on a daily basis; not only in the PRC, but in many developed and developing countries including the EU. The risk factor isn't the same for everyone. Part of our work for our clients is to tell them what their CRI (Cyber Risk Index) is when they travel. The CRI varies according to what industry an executive is in, his position at his company, and which country he's visiting. Just like in network security, there is never a one-size-fits-all solution.

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