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IP: EuroParl Rpt re NSA, Echelon, Trade, & Crypto
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 07:21:37 -0500
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 03:30:35 -0500 To: farber () cis upenn edu From: Vin McLellan <vin () shore net> Dave: A draft ("consultation version") of a report by the European Parliament's Office for Scientific and Technological Option Assessment (STOA) entitled "AN APPRAISAL OF TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL" has been submitted to the EuroParl's Civil Liberties and Interior Committee. Several IT-relevant excerpts are now available at John Young's widely respected crypto-politics website: <http://www.jya.com/atpc.htm> (STOA regs apparently require a document to be distributed only on paper while it is a "working document." A hardcopy can be ordered by e-mail with a request to the office of British MEP Glyn Ford <jford () europarl eu int> or with a fax to STOA in Luxembourg at: 352-4300-22418) According to Mr. Young's correspondents, the report covers: - The Role & Function of Political Control Technologies - Recent Trends and Innovations - Developments in Surveillance Technologies - Innovations in Crowd Control Weapons - New Prison Control Systems - Interrogation, Torture Techniques and Technologies - Regulation of Horizontal Proliferation - Further Research As expected, the report highlight's the NSA's Echelon surveillance system, developed and managed in conjunction with its sister SigIntel agencies from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Snippets: "[...] 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." "[...] 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 priority targets of this surveillance system are selected by the participating intelligence agencies -- only one of which is European -- on the basis of their individual military and political interests, notes STOA. "Whilst 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...." The report seems to briefly summarize a wealth of earlier media reports on the Echelon network, but offers no apparent evidence of an independent inquiry. The report seems to suggest that these intelligence agencies have become a law unto themselves, and operate in a context where all presumably-private communications are effectively transparent and accessible to them. "With no system of accountability, it is difficult to discover what criteria determine who is not a target," the STOA adds in a dry summary. There were some startling revelations about technology that already seems familar, useful, and tame: "[...] Some systems even lend themselves to a dual role as a national interceptions network. For example the message switching system used on digital exchanges like System X in the UK supports an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) Protocol. This allows digital devices, e.g. fax to share the system with existing lines. The ISDN subset is defined in their documents as "Signalling CCITT1-series interface for ISDN access". What is not widely known is that built in to the international CCITT protocol is the ability to take phones 'off hook' and listen into conversations occurring near the phone, without the user being aware that it is happening." STOA recommends a new European Parliament study of the "constitutional issues" raised by the American eavesdropping practices, and of the impact of Echelon upon (a) the "constitutional safeguards" of the individual European states, and (b) "the political, cultural and economic autonomy" of EU's nation states. The report also recommends that the European Parliament should address and explicitly reject "proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network (Internet) accessible to US Intelligence Agencies. Nor should the Parliament agree to new expensive encryption controls without a wide ranging debate within the EU on the implications of such measures." The "implications" of the proposed controls over free access to strong cryptography -- declares STOA -- "encompass the civil and human rights of European citizens and the commercial rights of companies to operate within the law, without unwarranted surveillance by intelligence agencies operating in conjunction with multinational competitors..." That last phrase -- with its explicit reference to the commercial or economic intelligence which can be gleened from unversal surveillance (and the value of such intelligence to "multinational" corporations aligned with each of the intelligence agencies cooperating in Echelon) -- lies in the dense gray text of the report like an unlit fuse. One of the inevitable problems for a nation which fosters both intelligence prowess and commercial prowess is that success in the former can undermine the legitimacy of whatever success it achieves in commerce and industry. International finance and trade rely, in some measure, upon a general acceptance that the terms of such trade are overt, if not necessarily "fair." Without that minimal trust, the successful competitor is viewed not with respect, or even jealousy; but with scorn and bitterness. Commercial failures will inevitably attribute their losses not to the skill or ingenuity of their international competitors, but rather to the competence and bias of the mysterious cyberspooks who, all acknowledge, probably watched the deal unfold. The MEPs wouldn't be European if they didn't consider the possibility of that sort of frustration fueling a backlash against the European Union and EU governments which appear either unable or unwilling to protect the integrity of their economic infrastructure. Americans worry about future InfoWar: the corruption of the American economic infrastructure by tech-savvy foreigners. A Presidential Commission studies the threat today, and generates headlines by the ream. Europeans might fairly ask if they are not already the victims of such malovelent prowess. And what guarantees could they be offered that this is not the case? Suerte, _Vin "Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege." _ A thinking man's Creed for Crypto/ vbm. * Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin () shore net> * 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548
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- IP: EuroParl Rpt re NSA, Echelon, Trade, & Crypto Dave Farber (Jan 28)