Question 14006 — telecommunications

Summary

Mr. Marc Chavent alerts the Prime Minister to the security vulnerabilities resulting from the use, by certain personnel occupying sensitive functions, of geolocation and activity tracking applications installed on mobile phones, since they can reveal confidential movements, schedules and locations. Indeed, this is not the first time that such an incident has occurred and it appears that the protection of the confidentiality of operations and strategic positions remains insufficiently guaranteed when personal terminals are used for private purposes. The facts recently made public illustrate a risk that is now well identified: a simple general public application can, through cross-referencing, make it possible to reconstruct the itineraries, locations and habits of exposed personnel, even though this information should remain out of reach. The same type of exposure had already been noted, which demonstrates the repetitive nature of the fault and the insufficiency of individual prevention measures. It appears necessary to establish an interministerial inventory of applications presenting a risk of geolocation, excessive data collection or indirect disclosure of sensitive information, in order to prohibit their use on personal terminals or professionals of personnel exposed when they carry out sensitive missions. Such a measure would be consistent with good cybersecurity practices which recommend limiting permissions inconsistent with the purpose of an application and better regulating downloads on smartphones. It is also appropriate to question the advisability of making compulsory, for personnel in sensitive jobs, a stricter digital security policy, including the deactivation or control of geolocation functions, the banning of certain sports or ride-sharing applications, as well as prior control of the authorizations requested by this software. Otherwise, successive revelations of location data risk continuing to unnecessarily expose military assets, ship movements and, more largely, information relating to national security. In this context, he wishes to know what measures the Government intends to take to immediately identify all risky applications, prohibit their downloading and use on the mobile phones of exposed personnel and prevent the repetition of such disclosures of sensitive data.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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