Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur

The direction centrale du Renseignement intérieur (Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence, DCRI) is a French intelligence agency which reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior. It became officially operational on 1 July 2008, through the merging of the direction centrale des Renseignements généraux (RG) and the direction de la Surveillance du territoire (DST) of the French National Police; it is still informally known as the "RG".

The DCRI is headed by Central Director Patrick Calvar.^[1][2] It is organised with a headquarters and eight departments:^{[citation needed]}

• Economic Protection (Gilles Gray),
• Terrorism (Michel Guerin),
• Intelligence Technologies (Michel Pages),
• Violent Subversion (Françoise Bilancini),
• General Administration (Thierry Matta),
• Support (Jean-François Lelievre),
• Counter-Espionnage (Jean Petronille),
• International Affairs (Eric Toucas).

The functions of the DCRI are:

• counter-espionage
• counter-terrorism
• countering cybercrime
• surveillance of potentially threatening groups, organisations and social phenomena.^[3]

The DCRI is expected to be reformed and renamed as direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure (General Directorate of Homeland Security, DGSI) in January 2014, reporting directly to the Minister of the Interior and no longer being part of the National Police.^[4]

Controversy

In April 2013, the French Wikipedia article on the military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute attracted attention after the DCRI attempted to have the article removed from the French Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation asked the intelligence agency what precise part(s) of the article were a problem in the eyes of the intelligence agency. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for total deletion of the article.

The Wikimedia Foundation refused to delete the article, and the DCRI pressured an administrator^[5][6][7] of the French language Wikipedia and resident of France, into removing the article.^[8]

According to a statement by the Wikimedia Foundation, "the DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th [2013]. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. He warned the other sysops that trying to undelete the article would engage their responsibility before the law. This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable, given his regular promotional actions of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in France."

Later, the article was restored by other Wikipedia contributors.^{[9][10][11][12]} The French Ministry of the Interior told Agence France-Presse that for the moment it did not wish to comment on the incident.^[13]

References

External links

• Official announcement of the agency's launch on the website of the French Ministry of the Interior.