Wednesday

31st May 2023

Trump-linked US firm at heart of French intelligence

  • French spies are now able to select and compare intercepted data and connect the dots and reveal potential terrorist activities. (Photo: CommScope)

France’s counter-terrorism services, which are reputed to be among the best in the world, have come to rely on American technology co-owned by one of US president Donald Trump's closest advisers.

With the fight against terrorism now mainly waged on the internet, the US has a trick up its sleeve: Palantir.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

The name refers to a "seeing stone" in the fantasy book The Lord of the Rings by British writer J.R.R. Tolkien.

The US firm that goes by that name than can analyse millions of data entries at the same time.

Last December, after several months of difficult negotiations, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), France's domestic intelligence service, signed a €10-million contract with Palantir to use the company's so-called Gotham program.

Palantir's Paris office hired extra technicians and IT engineers. It also trained French counter-terrorism officers on its equipment, which has been operational since spring.

Using Palantir's Gotham software, the DGSI can intercept data and cross check information on phone calls, emails, text messages, and banking wires.

It can select and compare intercepted data and connect the dots to reveal potential terrorist activities.

"Concretely, we are now able to use algorithms, a kind of black box, with which we can massively gather information from different sources, analyse them and therefore make an operational exploitation," a French intelligence official told EUobserver.

Deciphering information

This is crucial for the DGSI, which monitors jihadists' online activities, but which had so far found it difficult to exploit the information it had gathered.

Between October 2015, the month before the Paris terror attacks, and October 2016, French intelligence services spied on 20,282 people, including 9,624 (47 percent) of them "in accordance with terrorism prevention [rules]".

But wiretapping, video surveillance, and shadowing people remained insufficient to counter the threat.

In April, for instance, two men were arrested in Marseille, under the suspicion that they were preparing an "imminent and large-scale attack" ahead of the first round of the French presidential election. Weapons and chemical products were found in their apartment.

The operation was made possible by British intelligence, which intercepted a message of allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) terror group that was sent by the Marseilles suspects to other jihadists.

The event highlighted France's need for better data interception.

Britain has the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the world's second largest interception centre after the NSA in the US. GCHQ and the NSA also work closely together in Echelon, a worldwide interception network.

The French authorities believed it was necessary to work with Palantir even though the issue was sensitive.

Western intelligence services are allies, but they are also suspicious of each other and Palantir's profile has raised eyebrows in Paris.

Palantir's background

Palantir was created in 2004, partly with a $2-million (€1.8mn) contribution from In-Q-Tel, a US intelligence venture capital firm. It is now worth $20 billion.

Palantir provides services to US security agencies - the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI - as well as to the US army and special forces.

It is said to have played a crucial role in localising and eliminating the infamous 9/11 terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

While Palantir is close to US intelligence, its bosses are close to Trump.

On 15 December 2016, a month after his election, the US president met the bosses of America’s IT giants - from Apple and Google to Amazon and Yahoo.

Sitting directly to the left of Donald Trump was Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir. The other Palantir co-founder, Alex Karp, was also in the room.

According to the New York Times, the meeting was "orchestrated by Mr. Thiel" and "the president-elect caressed Mr. Thiel’s hand so affectionately that body language experts went into a frenzy."

Also a co-founder of the online payment firm PayPal, Thiel gave $1.25 million to Trump’s presidential campaign last year and is one of the US president's closest advisers for IT issues - the New York Times called him "Trump’s tech pal".

Thiel was a speaker at the Republican National Convention in August last year, when Trump was formally chosen as the party's presidential candidate.

Although the French intelligence source insisted that Palantir was not in charge of collecting information, France accepts the fact that the US, through the company, now has access to the most sensitive information on French counter-terrorism.

"We are in favour of an intelligent, non-naive, international cooperation," said Guillaume Poupard, the head of the French National Agency for Security of Information System (Anssi), last November.

EU parliament groups want inquiry into terror failures

The centre-right EPP and liberal Alde want EU state intelligence and police services to explain how people known to them were still able to commit terror attacks. The two groups are proposing a special committee.

Interview

Former spy chiefs call for EU-US intelligence hub

Europe and the US need an "intelligence hub” to fight terrorism, with grand ideas on EU military integration unlikely to bear fruit, Germany’s former spy chief has said.

MEPs to urge block on Hungary taking EU presidency in 2024

"This will be the first time a member state that is under the Article 7 procedure will take over the rotating presidency of the council," French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, the key lawmaker on Hungary, warned.

European Parliament scales back luxury MEP pension fund

The European Parliament's Bureau, a political body composed of the president and its vice-presidents, decided to slash payouts from the fund by 50 percent, freeze automatic indexations, and increase the pension age from 65 to 67.

Column

What a Spanish novelist can teach us about communality

In a world where cultural clashes and sectarianism seems to be on the increase, Spanish novelist Javier Cercas (b.1962) takes the opposite approach. He cherishes both life in the big city and in the countryside.

Opinion

Poland and Hungary's ugly divorce over Ukraine

What started in 2015 as a 'friends-with-benefits' relationship between Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, for Hungary and Poland, is ending in disgust and enmity — which will not be overcome until both leaders leave.

Latest News

  1. Germany unsure if Orbán fit to be 'EU president'
  2. EU Parliament chief given report on MEP abuse 30 weeks before sanction
  3. EU clashes over protection of workers exposed to asbestos
  4. EU to blacklist nine Russians over jailing of dissident
  5. Russia-Ukraine relations the Year After the war
  6. Why creating a new legal class of 'climate refugees' is a bad idea
  7. Equatorial Guinea: a 'tough nut' for the EU
  8. New EU ethics body and Moldova conference This WEEK

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us