LEAK 2LAST

The Australian reported that DCNS yesterday sought to The Australian reported that DCNS yesterday sought toreassure Australia that the leak of the data on the IndianScorpene submarine would not happen with its proposedsubmarine for that country. The company also implied that the leak might haveoccurred at India’s end, rather than from France. "Uncontrolled technical data is not possible in theAustralian arrangements," the company said. "Multiple and independent controls exist within DCNS toprevent unauthorised access to data and all data movements areencrypted and recorded. In the case of India, where a DCNSdesign is built by a local company, DCNS is the provider andnot the controller of technical data," the company said. The Australian has been told that the data on theScorpene was written in France for India in 2011 and issuspected of being removed from France in that same year by aformer French Navy officer who was at that time a DCNSsubcontractor. "The data is then believed to have been taken to acompany in Southeast Asia, possibly to assist in a commercialventure for a ­regional navy. It was subsequently passed by athird party to a second company in the region before beingsent on a data disk by regular mail to a company in Australia. "It is unclear how widely the data has been shared inAsia or whether it has been obtained by foreign ­intelligenceagencies," it said. However, some of the documents also date to 2013. The data accessed by The Australian also includesseparate confidential DCNS files on plans to sell Frenchfrigates to Chile and the French sale of the Mistral-classamphibious assault ship carrier to Russia. These DCNS projects have no link to India. PTI SAPDV