Echelon--Big Brother is Watching
enrique
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Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2000 17:33:32 -0400
To: paul...@icdc.com
From: Paul Wolf <paul...@icdc.com>
Subject: U.S. Eyes Europe's Echelon Probe
http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37411,00.html
U.S. Eyes Europe's Echelon Probe
by Steve Kettmann
July 6, 2000 - American critics of the National Security
Agency's so-called Echelon tech surveillance system are welcoming
mounting European efforts to investigate the system and allegations
that it has been used for industrial espionage.
That effort took a big step forward on Wednesday when the European
Parliament appointed a 36-member committee that will spend a year
investigating Echelon and plans to hold public hearings this fall.
Critics hope the hearings won't be as limited in scope as were the
U.S. House Intelligence Committee hearings earlier this year.
"It's a major step forward," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director
of the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which
maintains the echelonwatch.org website. "We've gone past the point
where Echelon is X Files material and can be dismissed as paranoia.
"It's been the intercession of the European Parliament that has forced
the issue out into the open and forced the United States government
to admit that Echelon exists and to begin to publicly account for their
actions."
U.S. Representative Bob Barr (R-Georgia), an outspoken critic of U.S.
intelligence, welcomed the European effort, and said he hopes it will
help raise awareness about how ordinary citizens' privacy is also at
stake.
"My goal in examining our intelligence surveillance activities continues
to be protecting the privacy of American citizens," Barr said in a
statement released through a spokesman. "While European nations are
primarily concerned with protecting their commercial interests, I
welcome any inquiry that helps further the debate about how intelligence
activities should be conducted.
The European Parliament action came one day after French prosecutor
Jean-Pierre Dintilhac ordered the French counter-intelligence agency,
DST, to investigate whether the purported global surveillance system
violated the rights of French citizens.
Two weeks ago, a Dutch parliamentary committee announced it planned
to hold hearings on Echelon as well. The system can allegedly intercept
email, faxes, and phone conversations.
As the ACLU site says:
"Echelon is perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering
organization in the world. Several credible reports suggest that this
global electronic communications surveillance system presents an extreme
threat to the privacy of people all over the world. According to these
reports, Echelon attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite,
microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic traffic, including communications
to and from North America. This vast quantity of voice and data
communications are then processed through sophisticated filtering
technologies. This massive surveillance system apparently operates
with little oversight."
The Echelon system, discussed for years in shadowy, speculative terms,
became a major topic in Europe when British analyst Duncan Campbell
prepared a detailed report on Echelon for the European Parliament and
delivered it last year.
Among the more controversial aspects of his findings was the contention
that the U.S. government -- along with the U.K., Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand -- used its worldwide array of satellite-dish listening
devices to conduct industrial espionage.
Carlos Coelho, the Portuguese Christian Democrat likely to be selected
to head the European Parliament committee on Thursday, said that part
of the work of investigating Echelon will be to quash some of the wider
speculation on the system. He also said the committee would endeavor
to glean more information about exactly what spying takes place and
how it might be subjected to checks and balances.
"Some things were published that were not true, that are not technically
possible," Coelho said in a phone interview. "But there are others
we have to look into and find out if this can happen and in what way.
We have to protect our citizens and our enterprises. That's our duty."
Coelho was at pains to assure Americans that the committee's expected
year-long investigation springs from a groundswell of public concern
in Europe. Since Campbell delivered his report on Echelon to the
European Parliament last fall, he said, the topic of alleged U.S. spying
on European businesses has been thrashed around in public at length.
"There was a huge debate in the countries of the European Union," he
said. "Everybody is very worried that this system can work without
being under the law, without being under judicial mandates, and it
can be a kind of attack on privacy. They are worried that there are
European enterprises in the situation of having unfair chances because
of this system.
"For us, America is a friend. We know how important the United States
is for security. If you want the ideological point of view, we are
not communists. We want the market economy and the free society like
the Americans want. This is not a fight about that. What we have on
our hands is a problem about how far can the systems of interception
of telecommunications go."
Others might find such assurances less than persuasive, given the
general belief that every government spies on every other government
-- friend, foe, or otherwise.
The German webzine Telepolis reported that the Dutch minister of
Justice, Benk Korthals, recently said that even without definitive
proof of spying, steps should be taken against it. He added that Germany
and France "are not innocent little children either," a suggestion
many interpreted as an indirect accusation that those countries also
use tech listening devices to intercept the communications of other
countries' citizens.
Telepolis reported in March that former Central Intelligence Agency
Director James Woolsey had confirmed that at least some of the European
concerns were valid and that the United States does intercept
communications in Europe to keep abreast of potential economic bribery.
"We have spied on that in the past," Woolsey said. "I hope ... that
the United States government continues to spy on bribery."
Telepolis reported that the United States steals economic secrets "with
espionage, with communications (intelligence), with reconnaissance
satellites," and there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic
intelligence.
Some U.S. experts on tech surveillance are skeptical that the European
effort will amount to much.
"I don't believe for a moment the Parliament will do anything more
than cloak this," said John Young, a New York privacy activist who
operates an online database that has publicized the Echelon system.
"Watch for hearings that don't go anywhere, just like the hearings
in the United States earlier this year. It's interesting that the U.S.
still won't own up, except Woolsey or someone like that," Young said.
"So far as I know, no official of the U.S. government has admitted
this damn thing exists. That's interesting to me.
"It doesn't seem to be grabbing Americans very much, which I guess
makes sense since they think it doesn't apply to them. But the sleeper
issue is what other forms of Echelon are there for surveying Americans.
I think the intelligence agencies are looking for new victims and it
looks like they're coming after their own citizens."
But some said the controversy kicked up by the European Parliament
investigations -- and parallel efforts in France and elsewhere -- could
at least have an inhibiting effect on aggressive data-collection.
"It can only help to have the European Parliament use its weight and
its investigatory power to further call the Echelon partners to
account," said Steinhard, the ACLU official. "If nothing else, it will
mean that the NSA and its partners will be more careful about their
practices."