Service provider collaboration: Other

If you need to purchase an item in a store, you can purchase it anonymously to make it harder for an adversary to use the collaboration of the store to link your identity to the item.

You can follow digital best practices to make it harder for service providers to provide useful information to an adversary. For example, you can:

• Use Tor^[1] to make it harder for your Internet Service Provider to provide useful information about your Internet activity to an adversary.
• Use trusted online services^[2] that will refuse to comply with an adversary's requests to access your data, or build their service to make it technically impossible to comply with such requests.

You can encrypt “in-motion” data to make it harder for service providers to provide useful information to an adversary.

Investigators used the collaboration of the hospital to:

• Learn that a person (Louna) was hospitalized for burns.^[3]
• Obtain Louna's medical file.
• Seize Louna's clothing while she was hospitalized.^[4]
• Obtain the phone number of someone close to Louna that Louna had given to the hospital.
• Obtain CCTV footage from the hospital.
• Obtain information from the hospital's parking payment system.
• Learn the time and place of an appointment Louna had at the hospital a few days after the arson.

Investigators also used the collaboration of several State institutions:

• The Agence nationale des titres sécurisés (ANTS, National agency for secured documents) provided scans of identity documents and applications for renewal of identity documents.
• Health insurance organizations provided the personal information of people under investigation and their partners.
• The tax authorities provided the purchase and sale files of houses of Louna's parents and grandparents.

Investigators used the collaboration of several companies:

• Banks provided:
  • Bank information of several people, including many members of Louna's family.
  • IP addresses used to make online bank transfers.
  • Locations where people had withdrawn cash.
• An insurance company provided a person's address and list of roommates.
• The highway operator Vinci provided CCTV footage of highway toll booths.
• The French national railway company (SNCF) provided information about people who had booked seats next to people under investigation, including their photos and bank information.
• The carpooling service BlaBlaCar provided information about people who had used the service, including their photos, bank information, and the trips they had taken.
• The car manufacturer Stellantis provided the IMSI^[5] and IMEI^[6] numbers of a car's embedded location system. However, investigators were unable to locate the car because, for some unknown reason, it did not transmit its location.

Investigators asked a social housing landlord and a real estate agency to provide them with access cards to apartment buildings.

A fireworks store provided investigators with records showing that Peppy had purchased fireworks from the store three days before the protest.^[7]

Investigators gave the serial number of a camera to the camera manufacturer, and the manufacturer gave them the name of the store where the camera was sold.^[8] This helped investigators identify a person they accused of taking photos with the camera.

One defendant was identified because he was seen on CCTV footage boarding a bus and he used his partner's electronic bus card to board the bus — investigators presumably obtained his partner's name using the collaboration of the entity that manages the bus card system.^[9]

Investigators used the collaboration of an email provider to gain real-time access to an email address used by Boris: they were able to see emails sent and received in real time.

Investigators used the collaboration of banks to:^[10]

• Analyze the bank records of a suspected editor of the newspaper, including bank records as old as 8 years, to determine if the person had purchased printing equipment.
• Obtain, in real time, the locations of cash withdrawals made by N. When a cash withdrawal took place, investigators would send a patrol to the withdrawal location to try to locate N. However, this did not work, seemingly because the patrol always arrived too late.
• Reduce the maximum cash withdrawal limit of N. in order to force her to make more withdrawals and increase the opportunities of locating her.

Investigators asked several companies to provide information about N.:

• Mail order companies were asked to provide the shipping addresses she used.
• PayPal, Ebay, and similar companies were asked if she had an account with them and, if so, which addresses were associated with the account.
• The German national railway company (Deutsche Bahn) and the bus operator FlixBus were asked to provide information about her travels.
• Her former vocational school was asked to provide the list of participants in the school's courses, presumably to identify her possible contacts.

Investigators used the collaboration of several companies:^[11]

• The Italian national railway manager (RFI) provided CCTV footage from train stations, lists of tickets purchased from ticket machines, and searches made on ticket machines, even when no tickets were purchased.
• The Italian national railway operator (FSI) provided a list of fines on five different lines and a list of all tickets purchased under a given name in previous months. FSI also enabled an “automated alert” system that would have notified investigators when tickets were purchased under the name.
• Banks provided:
  • The bank records of 59 people, which investigators analyzed to determine if they contained “suspicious” transactions that could indicate financial support for Stecco.
  • The bank records of an anarchist journal, which investigators requested after seeing someone read an issue of the journal in CCTV footage.
• The classified ads website subito.it provided the IP addresses used to log into an account.
• An email service provider provided data related to email addresses.

Investigators used the collaboration of banks to obtain the bank records of organizations fighting against Cigéo.^[3] The bank records of one organization included a 500€ transfer entitled “participation manif 18 fev” (“contribution to the February 18 demonstration”), in reference to a demonstration in which people attacked a building associated with Cigéo.

The owner of a supermarket in a town about 20 km from Bure told investigators that he had seen customers buying an unusually large amount of denatured alcohol (15 liters), and gave the receipt to the investigators.

Investigators used the collaboration of banks to obtain bank statements that showed one of the defendants had made a purchase at a Stockholm supermarket on the day of the Stockholm beating, suggesting that he was in Stockholm that day.^[3]

Investigators used the collaboration of service providers to obtain information on people from many different sources, including:^[12]

• Court records.
• Birth, death, and marriage records.
• Electoral registers.
• Records from Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ),^[13] the State agency that provides social services.
• Property ownership records.
• Vehicle ownership records.
• Car registration records.
• Power company client records.
• Bank records.
• Overseas travel movements, in one case dating back to 1983.
• Trade Me, New Zealand's largest online auction website.

Investigators used the collaboration of the New Zealand Army to find out who, in a list of 58 people, had served in the military, presumably to identify who had military experience that they could use to contribute to the “training camps.”