Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 12:52:53 -0700
From: spooner@gbis.com (Rick Tompkins/Kathy Harrer)
Subject: [lpaz-repost] "None Are So Hopelessly enslaved..."  ECHELON
To: lpaz-repost@yahoogroups.com


>"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."

>--Johann Von Goethe (1800's)

>

>Worldwide spying network is revealed

>

>MEPs confirm eavesdropping by Echelon electronic network

>

>Stuart Millar, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Black

>Saturday May 26, 2001

>The Guardian

>

>For years it has been the subject of bitter controversy, its existence

>repeatedly claimed but never officially acknowledged.

>At last, the leaked draft of a report to be published next week by the

>European parliament removes any lingering doubt: Echelon, a shadowy, US-led

>worldwide electronic spying network, is a reality.

>Echelon is part of an Anglo-Saxon club set up by secret treaty in 1947,

>whereby the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, divided the world

>between them to share the prouct of global eavesdropping. Agencies from the

>five countries exchange intercepts using supercomputers to identify key

>words.

>The intercepts are picked up by ground stations, including the US base at

>Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, and GCHQ's listening post at Morwenstow in

>Cornwall.

>In the cold war, eavesdropping - signals intelligence, or Sigint as it is

>known in the trade - was aimed at military and diplomatic communications.

>Helped by increasingly sophisticated computers, it has now switched to

>industrial, commercial targets - and private individuals.

>Echelon computers can store millions of records on individuals, intercepting

>faxes, phone calls, and emails.

>The MEP's report - which faced opposition from the British and American

>governments and their respective security services - was prompted by claims

>that the US was using Echelon to spy on European companies on behalf of

>American firms.

>France, deeply suspicious of Britain's uniquely close intelligence links

>with the US, seized on reports that Echelon cost Airbus Industrie an 8bn

>contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994, after the US intercepted communications

>between Riyadh and the Toulouse headquarters of Airbus - in which British

>firms hold a 20% stake.

>The MEPs admitted they had been unable to find conclusive proof of

>industrial espionage. The claim has been dismissed by all the Echelon

>governments and in a new book by an intelligence expert, James Bamford.

>More disturbing, as Mr Bamford and the MEPs pointed out, was the threat

>chelon posed to privacy. "The real issue is whether Echelon is doing away

>with individual privacy - a basic human right," he said. The MEPs looked at

>statements from former members of the intelligence services, who provided

>compelling evidence of Echelon's existence, and the potential scope of its

>activities.

>One former member of the Canadian intelligence service, the CSE, claimed

>that every day millions of emails, faxes and phone conversations were

>intercepted. The name and phone number of one woman, he said, was added to

>the CSE's list of potential terrorists after she used an ambiguous word in

>an innocent call to a friend.

>"Disembodied snippets of conversations are snatched from the ether, perhaps

>out of context, and may be misinterpreted by an analyst who then secretly

>transmits them to spy agencies and law enforcement offices around the

>world," Mr Bamford said.

>The "misleading information", he said, "is then placed in NSA's

>near-bottomless computer storage system, a system capable of storing 5

>trillion pages of text, a stack of paper 150 miles high".

>Unlike information on US citizens, which officially cannot be kept longer

>than a year, information on foreigners can he held "eternally", he said.

>The MEP's draft report concludes the system cannot be as extensive as

>reports have assumed. It is limited by being based on worldwide interception

>of satellite communications, which account for a small part of

>communications.

>Eavesdropping on other messages requires either tapping cables or

>intercepting radio signals, but the states involved in Echelon, the draft

>report found, had access to a limited proportion of radio and cable

>communications.

>But independent privacy groups claimed Britain, the US and their Echelon

>partners, were developing eavesdropping systems to cope with the explosion

>in communications on email and internet.

>In Britain, the government last year brought in the Regulation of

>Investigatory Powers Act, which allowed authorities to monitor email and

>internet traffic through "black boxes" placed inside service providers'

>systems. It gave police authority to order companies or individuals using

>encryption to protect their communications, to hand over the encryption

>keys. Failure to do so was punishable by a sentence of up to two years.

>The act has been condemned by civil liberties campaigners, but there are

>signs the authorities are keen to secure more far reaching powers to monitor

>internet traffic.

>Last week, the London-based group, Statewatch, published leaked documents

>saying the EU's 15 member states were lobbying the European commission to

>require that service providers kept all phone, fax, email and internet data

>in case they were needed in criminal investigations.

>



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