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In what has to be one of the least surprising revelations ever, it turns out that France has a vast, incredibly intrusive domestic surveillance program: French Agency Spies on Phone Calls, Email, Web Use, Paper Says.

(Reuters) - France’s external intelligence agency spies on the French public’s phone calls, emails and social media activity in France and abroad, the daily Le Monde said on Thursday.

It said the DGSE intercepted signals from computers and telephones in France, and between France and other countries, although not the content of phone calls, to create a map of “who is talking to whom”. It said the activity was illegal.

“All of our communications are spied on,” wrote Le Monde, which based its report on unnamed intelligence sources as well as remarks made publicly by intelligence officials.

“Emails, text messages, telephone records, access to Facebook and Twitter are then stored for years,” it said.

The technology for this kind of large-scale data collection is not a big secret. The implementation of the hardware and software isn’t exactly simple, but any developed nation has the resources to do it — which means they’re all doing it.