French counter-espionage chiefs have upset hundreds of ministerial staff by banning BlackBerry mobile devices for fear that the Americans may be spying on their e-mails.

New staff recruited to serve ministers in the Sarkozy administration are especially bothered by the attempt to enforce a two-year-old decree against such devices for state business.

They were told by Alain Juillet, the government chief of economic intelligence, that BlackBerry communications were not secure because the system channelled its “push” e-mails through servers in the United States and Britain. This made them vulnerable to agencies such as the US National Security Agency. “The risk of interception is real. It’s economic war,” said Mr Juillet, according to Le Monde newspaper.

As the BlackBerry affair made the internet yesterday, Le Monde published another French-American espionage scoop. A new super-radar had detected a “sizeable number” of previously unknown American spy satellites in orbit over French territory, it said.

The Americans had admitted owning many of several dozen mystery satellites that had been found in low orbit by the Graves military defence radar, officials told the newspaper. “The matter was settled in a friendly way,” said General Patrick de Rousiers, Commander of Air Defence.

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