The Elysée’s leaden screed has its antidote: Emmanuel Macron’s telephone. Ministers and elected officials know that an SMS can be enough, for their arbitrations, to get a precious presidential boost. “Well taken”, do they sometimes receive in the night. Politics in Macronie is largely played out on WhatsApp or Telegram, the messaging application created by the Russian Durov brothers, opponents of Vladimir Putin. The Head of State and his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne write to each other constantly on their instant loop. One notification, and the troops are in motion.
After the projection of the deputy (National Rally, RN) of the Gironde Grégoire de Fournas, who embarrassed Marine Le Pen, Mr. Macron strums at a pillar of his majority: “You have to push her to punish her boyfriend. » Neither one nor two, the macronists target the RN with a Twitter video-montage, to the tune of Grandpa resists. Direct exchanges, sometimes tasty, the confidentiality of which was not of primary interest to the State services responsible for protecting classified conversations. Until recently.
The “Pegasus” scandal, named after the Israeli spyware used by the Kingdom of Morocco to penetrate the phones of targeted personalities, changed the situation. This vast affair, revealed in July 2021 by The world and a consortium of international media, highlighted the vulnerability of the communications of the President of the Republic and the French government. Since then, the protection of their correspondence – even if it does not contain any secret defense information – has been of concern to the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (SGDSN). The Elysée did not wish to speak on the subject.
According to our information, after “Pegasus”, new secure smartphones, equipped with a limited number of contacts, were discreetly made available to about twenty government officials. “We do not hack numbers that no one knows”, blows a source familiar with this network that has remained secret. Except that the holders use it very little, storing the devices in the drawers… “Everything that goes on Telegram is potentially listened to by Russians and Americans”warns Thomas Gassilloud, deputy (Renaissance) of the Rhône and chairman of the National Defense and Armed Forces Committee in the Assembly, who pleads in an information report for the development of a sovereign “French WhatsApp”.
Other software made in France
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