frenchelon

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On 13 September 2003, French state television sent via satellite to EBU (European Broadcasting Union) members, TV pictures of the so-called Frenchelon site at Dordogne, near Bordeaux. It actually shows an operator intercepting a phone call from the Middle East, and also includes interviews with DGSE officials and staff. See below the description of the TV item, as sent by France 3 TV:

LISTENING POST

Date Shot:
Location: DOMME Province/State: DORDOGNE
Country: FRANCE
Sound: NATURAL Language: FRENCH

Source: FRFT3
Restrictions:
Web Use Restricted: N

Dopesheet:

Intercepting telephone calls is one of the arms increasingly being used by secret services in the fight against terrorism.

A France 3 crew has been given unprecedented access to the French government listening centre - the DGSE - in Domme in the Dordogne.

Up to a million phone calls, made all over the world, are intercepted at the centre each day. From one single telephone number a whole network of contacts can be tracked down.

Shotlist:

- Recording of a phone call picked up in the Middle East
- Unidentified DGSE worker (in French) "to start with the call was intercepted because we had information that the callers might be linked to an international terrorist organisation."

- Aerial views of the listening centre

- Receivers inside centre

- Journalist talking to unidentified DGSE worker asking her whether what she has on her computer screen is a real example of intelligence gathering

- Unidentified DGSE worker (in French): "Yes, this is based on a number given to us by counter terrorism experts working on a radical group based in Afghanistan. With the number we have been able to identify all these contacts, we have been able to track down a whole network."

- Journalist: "from one number you are able to..."

- Unidentified DGSE worker (in French): "it's like a spider's web..."

- Journalist: "it's a real example, which you are working on now."

- Unidentified DGSE worker (in French): "yes."

- Antenna outside

- Unidentified, Head of the DGSE (in French): "we have a very wide range...into South-East Asia for example."

- Journalist: "other centres of interest such as the Middle East and Africa are they covered by these antennae?"

- Unidentified, Head of the DGSE (in French): "Yes, completely."

- Antenna

Id Item: 138837
Tx_Time: 06:19 - 06:21 Tx_Date: 13-SEP-2003 Status: TRS

Origin: ZZEBU Origin City: GNVE

Transmission: EVNM

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