Coronavirus: with the pandemic, intelligence services on all fronts

The fight against the coronavirus is also a shadow war. In mid-March 2020, the Russian government created a task force against the Covid-19. Directed by Prime Minister Mikhaïl Michoustine, this Coordination Council welcomes the main heads of the internal and external security services. For his part, President Putin is surrounded by a working group made up of customs officials, the Ministry of Defense, civil defense, border guards and the FSB [internal intelligence service].

Officially, the objective is to monitor and protect the borders. "There is little doubt, says Alain Juillet to France 24, the former No. 2 of the French secret services, that the Russians are monitoring their own population, in particular the infected, and that they are watching the reaction closely. of other states in the face of the pandemic. " Just like the CIA, which had known for several weeks that China had largely underestimated the spread of the virus and its political and economic damage. Since January 2020, the American intelligence community has been constantly warning the White House about the threat of the pandemic, without getting a real return from President Trump.

Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet very committed

Russia and the United States are not the only countries to launch agents into the battle. In Israel, the Shin Bet, an internal service, was commissioned by the Prime Minister to monitor the movements of the sick. The skills of the Israeli services in this area are world renowned. Thanks to their cyber tools, they collect, aggregate and cross information from mobile phones, social networks, video surveillance cameras, etc. "With its exceptional ecosystem of start-ups working in security and surveillance, explains to France 24 Bernard Barbier, former technical director of the Directorate General of External Security (DGSE), the Israelis have no difficulty in obtaining and analyzing these millions of data. "

Israeli spies also engage in the battle for the acquisition of medical equipment such as masks or respirators. And these are not the only ones, judging by statements made Tuesday March 31 by one official of the Mossad: "All countries are currently engaged in a fierce secret battle to take control of the limited supply of respirators at any cost. " Even if it means taking over, he said, equipment ordered and paid for by other countries.

Ditto in China where surveillance technologies have just passed a milestone. "The Chinese have cameras capable of establishing the facial recognition of an individual wearing a mask," worries Alain Juillet. Beijing also has world renowned companies in big data analysis using artificial intelligence software: Xiaomi, Huawei, Hikvision…. Recently, the government asked the company MiningLamp to help it fight the virus by monitoring the population according to the site Intelligence Online.

Russian and Chinese spies against Western democracy?

European and American agencies point to the activism of Chinese and Russian services on social networks. They designate their troll farms and accuse them of activating and feeding thousands of fake accounts in order to manipulate Western public opinion. The objectives of Beijing are numerous: to make people forget the Chinese origin of the contamination and the confusion of the beginning of the epidemic, but also to promote its political model in the fight against the Covid-19 and finally, to praise its solidarity towards the rest of the world thanks to the sending to Europe as well as to the United States of hundreds of millions of masks.

Moscow is downright suspected of destabilizing democracies. On March 17, 2020, the Financial Times revealed the content of a study by the diplomatic services of the European Union. This alerted Brussels about the propaganda of the Russian services intended to sow "panic, fear and confusion", in order to undermine the morale of Western populations in the midst of a health crisis. Between January 22, 2020 and mid-March, Europeans reportedly registered 80 cases of false accounts, related to the "Russian state" in French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian.

At the end of March 2020, a report from the bloodhounds of the French defense company Thales warned against computer intrusions carried out by hackers often supported by the services of their state, in particular Russia. "These attacks are extremely intrusive, warns a Thales executive. They generally go through false e-mails supposedly sent by international institutions like the WHO ...".

What about French services?

They have not been officially activated to manage this crisis. "It is not at all in the culture of our services", assures Bernard Barbier. Admittedly, the former Mister Q of the DGSE (Editor's note: the technical manager of the British secret services, a term popularized in the "James Bond") is very well placed to know that his former employer has advanced technological resources to put in places a global watch. But it ensures that its statutes prohibit it from intervening on the national territory.

Questioned by France 24, "it's not a problem", explains Bernard Squarcini, former boss of the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), who can perfectly use his digital tools supplemented by those of the DGSE. "We just need a green light from political authority. We have wasted a lot of time," he added. "It would have been necessary to monitor borders, airports and know the potentially contaminated people in order to follow them."

For Alain Juillet, the problem is not the use of intelligence services or their methods; according to him, everything must be done to block the spread. "The problem is that absolutely nothing guarantees that these means will not be used tomorrow during other crises. I am afraid that once we have set foot in it, we will not be able to not go back. "

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