The ex-director of IT services of the old Rhônes-Alpes region maintains that access to all agents’ mailboxes was a simple technical control.
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When the administration is tempted by the power of digital surveillance. At the helm of the Lyon Criminal Court, Friday, May 20, Benoît Dehais, 52, remains convinced that he did nothing wrong. Suspected of having set up a spying system for all the mailboxes of agents and elected officials of the former Rhône-Alpes, the former Director of IT services (DSI) supports with conviction that he put in works a purely technical system, intended to ensure the safety of the community information network. “We are in a logic of access control, we do not target a particular population, we put in place without further malice,” says the accused in marine costume and white shirt, tight throat and desolate mine.
At the end of 2015, the CSI requests total access to the Exchange network of the community, from its mailbox. The code allows it to administer all the computer accounts of the community, to monitor exchanges and, potentially, to consult the content of the messages. “I am in obedience to an instruction such that it was formulated to me. It is a technical organization to organize professional control,” said the engineer, now in office in Occitanie.
Signals flash, however. Responsible for implementing the instructions, the SPIE Service service provider finds the unusual process, in contradiction with ethical recommendations. He requests confirmation, by referring a form of the National Commission for Data Protection (CNIL), according to which this type of computer access must be reserved for specific positions, for strict maintenance of networks. The region confirms its request, by demanding confidentiality, and the mechanics starts.
“it falls badly, especially if the taupe does it again”
The period is particularly tense for computer operators, eager to succeed in the merger of the two regions, Auvergne and Rhône-Alpes. Which causes conflicts and suffering in the service. And then there is another request: the search for issuers or recipients from the keyword “dangle”, which corresponds to the email address of the former satirical newspaper Les Gossip d’Angèle. This approach aims to seek the sources of Gérard Angel, former head of the Progress Political Service, who launched his own weekly, swarming with confidential information. In the middle of the electoral period, the independent journalist multiplies the revelations on the management of the team of Jean-Jack Queyranne, then president (PS) of the regional council, not without mockery and drawn caricatures. The brocade reporter The Director General of Services (DGS), the prefect Philippe de Mester, whom he nicknamed “Master Kanter”, because he is “used to foaming”.
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