AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL
Interim Study
Up-dated Executive Summary prepared as a background document for the September 1998 part-session
Working document for the STOA panel, Luxembourg, September 14, 1998
(extract)
[...]
2.4 National & International Communications Interceptions Networks
The Interim Study set out in detail, the global surveillance systems which facilitate the
mass supervision of all telecommunications including telephone, email and fax transmissions
of private citizens, politicians, trade unionists and companies alike. There has been a political
shift in targeting in recent years. Instead of investigating crime (which is reactive) law
enforcement agencies are increasingly tracking certain social classes and races of people living
in red-lined areas before crime is committed - a form of pre-emptive policing deemed data-veillance
which is based on military models of gathering huge quantities of low grade intelligence.
Without encryption, modern communications systems are virtually transparent to the advanced
interceptions equipment which can be used to listen in. The Interim Study also explained how
mobile phones have inbuilt monitoring and tagging dimensions which can be accessed by police and
intelligence agencies. For example the digital technology required to pinpoint mobile phone users
for incoming calls, means that all mobile phone users in a country when activated, are mini-tracking
devices, giving their owners whereabouts at any time and stored in the company's computer. For
example Swiss Police have secretly tracked the whereabouts of mobile phone users from the computer
of the service provider Swisscom, which according SonntagsZeitung had stored movements of more than
a milion subscribers down to a few hundred metres, and going back at least half a year.
However, of all the developments covered in the Interim Study, the section covering some of
the constitutional and legal issues raised by the USA's National Security Agency's access and
facility to intercept all European telecommunications caused the most concern. Whlist no-one
denied the role of such networks in anti terrorist operations and countering illegal drug, money
laudering and illicit arms deals, alarm was expressed about the scale of the foreign interceptions
network identified in the Study and whether existing legislation, data protection and privacy
safeguards in the Member States were sufficient to protect the confidentiality between EU citizens,
corporations and those with third countries.
Since there has been a certain degree of confusion in subsequent press reports, it is worth
clarifying some of the issues surrounding transatlantic electronic surveillance and providing a
short history & update on developments since the Interim Study was published in January 1998.
There are essentially two separate system, namely:
(i) The UK/USA system comprising the activities of military intelligence agencies such as NSA-
CIA in the USA subsuming GCHQ & MI6 in the UK operating a system known as ECHELON;
(ii) The EU-FBI system which is linkeding up various law enforcement agencies such as the
FBI, police, customs, immigration and internal security;
As there is still a risk of confusion in the title of item 44 on the agenda for the Plenary
session of the European Parliament on September 16, 1998 [2] in intelligence terms, these are
two distinct "communities", iIt is worth looking briefly at the activities of both systems
in turn, encompassing, Echelon, encryption; EU-FBI surveillance and new interfaces with for example
to access to Internet providers and to databanks of other agencies.
2.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Interim Study said that within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are
routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target
information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to
Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.
The system was first uncovered in the 1970's by a group of researchers in the UK (Campbell, 1981).
A recent work by Nicky Hager, Secret Power, (Hager, 1996) provides the most comprehensive details
todate of a project known as ECHELON. Hager interviewed more than 50 people concerned with
intelligence to document a global surveillance system that stretches around the world to form a
targeting system on all of the key Intelsat satellites used to convey most of the world's satellite
phone calls, Internet, email, faxes and telexes. These sites are based at Sugar Grove and Yakima,
in the USA, at Waihopai in New Zealand, at Geraldton in Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the
UK.
The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system but unlike many of the electronic spy systems
developed during the cold war, ECHELON is designed for primarily non-military targets: governments,
organisations and businesses in virtually every country. The ECHELON system works by
indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what
is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like Memex. to find key words. Five nations share
the results with the US as the senior partner under the UKUSA agreement of 1948, Britain, Canada,
New Zealand and Australia are very much acting as subordinate information servicers.
Each of the five centres supply "dictionaries" to the other four of keywords,
Phrases, people and places to "tag" and the tagged intercept is forwarded straight to
the requesting country. Whlist there is much information gathered about potential terrorists,
there is a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries
participating in the GATT negotiations. But Hager found that by far the main priorities of this
system continued to be military and political intelligence applicable to their wider interests.
Hager quotes from "highly placed intelligence operatives" who spoke to the Observer
in London. "We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be
gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate." They gave as
examples. GCHQ interception of three charities, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid.
"At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target
request," the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With
telexes its called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to third world aid, the source was able to
demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organisations. With no system of accountability,
it is difficult to discover what criteria determine who is not a target.
Indeed since the Interim Study was published, journalists have alleged that ECHELON has benefited
US companies involved in arms deals, strengthened Washington's position in crucial World Trade
Organisation talks with Europe during a 1995 dispute with Japan over car part exports. According
to the Financial Mail On Sunday, "key words identified by US experts include the names of
inter-governmental trade organisations and business consortia bidding against US companies.
The word 'block' is on the list to Identify, communications about offshore oil in area where the
seabed has yet to be divided up into exploration blocks"..."It has also been suggested that
in 1990 the US broke into secret negotiations and persuaded Indonesia that US giant AT&T be
included in a multi-billion dollar telecoms deal that at one point was going entirely to Japan's NEC.
The Sunday Tunes (11 May, 1998) reported that early on the radomes at Menwith Hill (NSA station F83)
In North Yorkshire UK, were given the task of intercepting international leased carrier (ILC) traffic
essentially, ordinary commercial communications. Its staff have grown from 400 in the 1980's to more
than 1400 now with a further 370 staff from the MoD. The Sunday Times also reported allegations that
conversations between the German company Volkswagen and General Motors were intercepted and the French
have complained that Thompson-CSF, the French electronics company, lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply
Brazil with a radar system because the Americans intercepted details of the negotions and passed them
on to US company Raytheon, which subsequently won the contract. Another claim is that Airbus Industries
lost a contract worth $1 billion to Boeing and McDonnel Douglas because information was intercepted by
American spying. Other newspapers such as Liberation (21 April 1998) and Il Mondo (20 March 1998),
identify the network as an Anglo-Saxon Spy network because of the UK-USA axis. Privacy International
goes further. Whlist recognising that' strictly speaking, neither the Commission nor the European
Parliament have a mandate to regulate or intervene in security matters...they do have a responsibility
is harmonised throughout the Union.
According to Privacy International, the UK is likely to find its 'Special relationship' ties fall
foul of its Maastricht obligations since Title V of Maastricht requires that "Member States shall
inform and consult one another within the Council on any matter of foreign and security policy of general
interest in order to ensure that their combined influence is exerted as effectivelly as possible by means
of concerted and convergent action." Yet under the terms of the Special relationship, Britain
cannot engage in open consultation with its other European partners. The situation is further
complicated by counter allegations in the French magazine Le Point, that the French are systematically
spying on American and other allied countries telephone and cable traffic via the Helios IA Spy sattelite.
(Times, June 17 1998)
If even half of these allegations are true then the European Parliament must act to ensure that
such powerful surveillance systems operate to a more democratic consensus now that the Cold War has
ended. Clearly, the Overseas policies of European Union Member States are not always congruent with
those of the USA and in commercial terms, espionage is espionage. No proper Authority in the USA would
allow a similar EU spy network to operate from American soil without strict limitations, if at all.
Following full discussion on the implications of the operations of these networks, the European
Parliament is advised to set up appropriate independent audit and oversight porocedures and that any
effort to outlaw encryption by EU citizens should be denied until and unless such democratic and
accountable systems are in place, if at all.
[2] Commission Statement -Transatlantic relations/Echelon System. Transatlantic relations
following 18 May EU-US Summit and the use of monitoring techniques in the field of communications.
2.4.2 EU-FBI GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Much of the documentation and research necessary to put into the public domain, the history,
structure, role and function of the EU-FBI convention to legitimise global electronic surveillance,
has been secured by Statewatch, the widely respected UK based civil liberties monitoring and research
Organisation.
Statewatch have described at length the signing of the Transatlantic Agenda in Madrid at the EU-US
summit of 3 December 1995 - Part of which was the "Joint EU-US Action Plan" and has
subsequently analysed these efforts as an ongoing attempt to redefine the Atlantic Alliance in the
post-Cold War era, a stance increasingly used to justify the efforts of internal security agencies
taking on enhanced policing roles in Europe. Statewatch notes that the first Joint Action 'out of
the area" surveillance plan was not discussed at the Justice and Home Affairs meeting but adopted
on the nod, as an A point (without debate) by of all places, the Fisheries Council on 20 December 1996.
In February 1997, Statewatch reported that the EU had secretly agreed to set up an international
telephone tapping network via a secret network of committees established under the
"third pillar" of the Maastricht Treaty covering co-operation on law and order. Key points
of the plan are outlined in a memorandum of understanding, signed by EU states in 1995.
(ENFOPOL 112 10037/95 25.10.95) which remains classified. According to a Guardian report (25.2.97) it
reflects concern among European Intelligence agencies that modem technology will prevent them from
tapping private communications. "EU countries it says, should agree on "international
interception standards set at a level that would ensure encoding or scrambled words can be broken
down by government agencies." Official reports say that the EU governments agreed to cooperate
closely with the FBI in Washington. Yet earlier minutes of these meetings suggest that the original
initiative came from Washington. According to Statewatch, network and service providers in the EU will
be obliged to install "tappable" systems and to place under surveillance any person or group
when served with an interception order.
These plans have never been referred to any European government for scrutiny, nor to the Civil
Liberties Committee of the European Parliament, despite the clear civil liberties issues raised by
such an unaccountable system. The decision to go ahead was simply agreed in secret by "written
procedure" through an exchange of telexes between the 15 EU governments. We are told by Statewatch
the EU-FBI Global surveillance plan was now being developed "outside the third pillar."
In practical terms this means that the plan is being developed by a group of twenty countries - the
then 15 EU member countries plus the USA, Australia, Canada, Norway and New Zealand. This group of 20
is not accountable through the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers or to the European
Parliament or national parliaments. Nothing is said about finance of this system but a report produced
by the German government estimates that the mobile phone part of the package alone will cost 4 billion
D-marks.
Statewatch concludes that "It is the interface of the ECHELON system and its potential
development on phone calls combined with the standardisation of "tappable communications centres
and equipment being, sponsored by the EU and the USA which presents a truly global threat over which
there are no legal or democratic controls." (Press release 25.2.97) In many respects what we are
witnessing here are meetings of operatives of a new global military-intelligence state. It is very
difficult for anyone to get a full picture of what is being decided at the executive meetings setting
this 'Transatlantic agenda.' Whilst Statewatch won a ruling from the Ombudsman for access on the grounds
that the Council of Ministers 'misapplied the code of access', for the time being such access to the
agendas have been denied. Without such access, we are left with 'black box decision making'. The
eloquence of the unprecedented Commission statement on Echelon and Transatlantic relations scheduled
for the 16th of September, is likely to be as much about what is left out as it is about what is said
for public consumption. Members of the European Parliament may wish to consider the following policy
options: [...]
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