Everybody Does It Defense

For John, BLUF:  .  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Quoting from an article in The International Herald Tribune, which references an article in the major French daily, La Monde♠:

PARIS — Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, Le Monde newspaper disclosed on Thursday that France has its own program of massive data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France.

Then this, about legality and control:

The system is run with “complete discretion, at the margins of legality and outside all serious control,” the newspaper said, describing it as “a-legal.”

That sounds like the situation with NSA, and given it is France, maybe worse.  This does play into President Obama's argument that everybody does it.  He made that point while in Dar es Salaam, earlier in the week.

When Governments begin to think they are the center, then they do strange things.  They sometimes even think they are doing it for the People.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  "Left-leaning Le Monde, self-proclaimed “newspaper of reference”, is the planet’s main French-language daily, with 35,000 copies distributed abroad."