Pierre-Elliott Bécue, ANSSI & Debian cybertorture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
ANSSI is the cyberdefence arm of the French military, a department directly under the supervision of the Prime Minister.
Has ANSSI engaged in cybertorture exercises against citizens of other European states or even the citizens and inhabitants of France itself?
Have the ANSSI employees themselves been manipulated and weaponized by social control media vendettas and foreign companies like IBM Red Hat and Google, operating through front groups like Debian?
Every country has spy agency drama from time to time. Israel's Mossad created fake passports cloned from the identities of tourists from friendly countries. Australia's spies were engaged in the Securency bribery racket, generating news headlines such as "Australian trade official in spy sex scandal". The French spies notoriously attacked and sunk the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior while it was docked in New Zealand. The fact that they killed somebody and the spies were not even fast enough to evade local police caused even more embarassment and will probably not be forgotten for a very long time.
Looking at the official authorisation for ANSSI, they are not authorised to conduct offensive cyber attacks, they are only authorised to conduct defensive operations:
Service du Premier ministre créé en 2009 et placé sous l’autorité du secrétaire général de la défense et de la sécurité nationale, l’Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) est l’autorité nationale en matière de cybersécurité et de cyberdéfense en France. Le modèle français de la cybersécurité repose sur une séparation claire, au sein de l’État, entre les missions défensives et offensives, et l’ANSSI est chargée de coordonner le champ de la défense et de la protection des systèmes d’information.
Prof Nils Melzer was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In 2020, there was widespread reporting about his work on cybertorture and I analyzed it in a previous blog post.
Pierre-Elliott Bécue has published a full copy of his CV. We can see that from 1 September 2018 to 28 February 2023 he was employed as a System and Network Engineer/Architect @ ANSSI.
Pierre-Elliott Bécue was also part of the same group that is described in the report about the Debian Paris love nest at ENS Cachan and among other things, the indoctrination of Nicolas Dandrimont's (much) younger transgender partner.
Bécue's CV is headed with the title "Such CV, much wow" and "PhDDaddy - Converting coffeine into shitty dad jokes. - Breaking your infra all day long."
Bécue received his PhD at the end of 2018, at exactly the same time the transgender / zizian rabble attacked Dr Norbert Preining at Christmas. The manner in which they conducted these attacks on volunteers during an obvious holiday season, Christmas, is itself evidence of cybertorture because it denies the victims a normal period of rest and recovery. The Debian Christmas Lynchings are therefore similar to other practices based on sleep deprivation.
In February 2019, Gavin Howard wrote the following response to the lynchings:
It made me nervous that people could be accused and removed without any public process, opportunity to collect evidence, opportunity to face their accuser, presumption of innocence, and other basic human rights guaranteed, at least, by the US Constitution. (I don't know about the Debian constitution.)
Bécue, an employee of the French military, replies:
That being said, don't try to involve Human Rights or any State of Law justice notion in this as this is mostly irrelevant to the subject.
Remember, my great grandfather Robert Edward Ernest Pocock came to France in World War One to defend the human rights of the French public against German oppression.
How can a French military employee turn around and tell us that Dr Preining and I have no human rights any more?
The slithery things these people write to justify secret punishments and blackmail tactics is a massive risk to the security of free software projects like Debian. At the same time, his words legitimize the tactics of cybertorture.
Bécue continues:
Do you really think that among more than a thousand people, nobody except the two recently expelled developers made an innocent mistake? Do you actually think that regarding the one whom I replied to, he's on any "innocent mistake" path?
Human rights law tells us the opposite: everybody is innocent until proven guilty. What Bécue and others are saying is that they can declare somebody guilty and then the victim has to prove otherwise.
There you have it: an employee of the French cyberwar office insisting that unpaid volunteers are guilty of secret crimes. Tin foil hats aside, if that isn't a platform for cybertorture, what is?
It is easy to show that Bécue is wrong, despite all the "wow" in his CV. This was a time when I lost two family members and it was immediately after the conviction of Cardinal George Pell. When these dirty men became so hostile, I felt they were blackmailing me to give them more information about subjects that they have no right to ask about.
PhD or not, it is simply rude to insist their vendettas are a higher priority than grief and family privacy, especially in a voluntary group.
Casting aspersions of guilt is a manifest example of libel. Libel and defamation are all explicitly listed in Prof Melzer's list of cybertorture tactics.
The fact that Cardinal Pell had been treasurer of the Vatican, the highest ranking Catholic to be convicted of abuse, had created intense scrutiny on anybody connected to the choir and the archdiocese. News reports covered the story all around the world. Rogue Debianists spreading rumours of secret crimes caused great offence.
There was no way I could be complicit in such a thing. Moreover, in 2013, I had publicly denounced institutional abuse in all forms in a resignation email leaked to Crikey, an Australian political news service.
Over a period of months, the dirty men took turns giving people underhanded suggestions of wrongdoing without any of them ever telling anybody what they were talking about. The dirty men rely on constructs such as "Debian says" as a substitute for actual evidence.
Even though they never present names, just the hint of wrongdoing against the backdrop of real abuse is the most hideous violation of privacy. Even if I did know something about the case, I would never be able to say so in response to the dirty men spreading "abuse" rumours at the water cooler.
After the attack on the Rainbow Warrior, France eventually had to pay tens of millions of Euros in compensation to Greenpeace and the family of the victim. When Amnesty International staff committed suicide, Amnesty paid millions to their families but the families of Debian suicide cluster victims received nothing.
The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was done under the code name Opération Satanique. The Debian logo is an upside-down six. Go figure.
Interestingly, there is another Daniel Pocock working in cybersecurity for Australian Signals Directorate, that is the Australian equivalent to ANSSI:
Cyber Security Specialist at the Australian Public Service Commission, bringing expertise in IT infrastructure and security within the government sector.
Their background includes experience as a Cyber Security Analyst at the Department of Defence of Australia. During their tenure at the Department of Defence, they contributed to IT infrastructure support and security, progressing through roles including Project Support Officer and SharePoint Administrator. As a SharePoint Administrator, they focused on providing a user-friendly collaboration environment. Their involvement in Problem Management included conducting trend analysis and engaging with clients to identify and resolve IT issues, applying the ITIL framework to problem records. They also served as a Mainframe Communications ICT Cadet.
Daniel's educational background includes a Dual Diploma of Networking and Systems Administration from Swinburne University of Technology, a Bachelor's degree from the University of Canberra, an ITIL Foundation certification from ALC Training, and training in Big Data and Social Media Analysis from Michigan State University.
In fact, there are many other Daniel Pococks out there: I wonder how they feel with the Debian Zizian word nazis denouncing our name relentlessly to satisfy their sick egos.
Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved. █