France-based telecom firm Orange has revealed plans to take legal action against the US National Security Agency (NSA) for using its submarine cable for surveillance.
NSA is alleged to have accessed and tapped the customers’ telecoms data transmitted by Orange’s submarine cable running from Marseille to North Africa and Asia.
The submarine cable is used by the company along with 13 other telecoms companies, all of which collectively operate the cable.
An Orange spokeswoman was quoted by Reuters as saying: “We will take legal action in the next few days because we want to know more about the eventuality that Orange data may have been intercepted.”
Orange is yet to decide to whether to take an individual action or to join the current legal action launched against the federal project.
Under the surveillance programme, the federal government had collected metadata including telephone numbers, times and dates of calls, calling card numbers and the serial numbers of phones processed by various operators in the country.
The surveillance programme was disclosed by NSA’s former contractor, Edward Snowden.
