IP: Political control technologies - Summary of Interim Study

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: James Love <love () cptech org>


http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/166499/execsum.htm


-- 
James Love
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
http://www.cptech.org/     love () cptech org
202.387.8030, fax 202.234.5176


              AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL

                             STOA Interim Study
                             Executive Summary
                               September 1998

          Updated Executive Summary prepared as a background document 
                     for the September 1998 part-session

                                            PE 166.499/Int.St./Exec.Sum./en


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.  Introduction
2.  Developments in surveillance technology
     2.1    Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance Networks
     2.2    Algorithmic Surveillance Systems
     2.3    Bugging & Tapping
     2.4    National & International Communications Interception Networks
     2.4.1  NSA Interception of all EU Telecommunications
     2.4.2  EU-FBI Global Telecommunications Surveillance Systems
     2.5    Policy Options


1. INTRODUCTION

This Study represents a summarised version of an Interim Study, 'An
Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control' (PE 166.499), referred
to throughout this document as the Interim Study, prepared by the Omega
Foundation in Manchester and presented to the STOA Panel at its meeting
of 18 December 1997 and to the Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal
Affairs on 27 January 1998. 

When it became known that the issue of electronic surveillance was to be
on the agenda of the September 1998 part-session of the European
Parliament, the Omega Foundation was requested to prepare an updated
Executive Summary of the Interim Study for use as a background document. 
The updated Executive Summary covers the various areas of the subject of
technologies of political control dealt with in the Interim Study. 
However, the document in its present form concerns only the specific
topic of electronic surveillance.  The full version alone contains the
footnotes and bilbiography. 

The Interim Study aroused great interest and the resultant high-profile
press comment throughout the European Union and beyond indicates the
level of public concern about many of the innovations detailed by the
Study.  This updated Executive Summary is framed by the same key
objectives as the Interim Study, namely:-

(i) To provide Members of the European Parliament with a succinct
reference guide to recent advances in the technology of political
control;

(ii) To identify and describe the current state of the art of the most
salient developments, further clarifying and updating the areas of the
Interim Study which have aroused the greatest public concern and
comment;

(iii) To present MEP's with an account of current trends both within
Europe and Worldwide;

(iv) To suggest policy options covering regulatory strategies for the
future democratic control and management of this technology;

(v) To provide some further succinct background material to inform the
Parliament's response to the proposed declaration by the Commission on
electronic evesdropping which has been put on the agenda for the plenary
session of the European Parliament, on Wednesday 16 September 1998. 


2. DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY

Surveillance technology can be defined as devices or systems which can
monitor, track and assess the movements of individuals, their property
and other assets.  Much of this technology is used to track the
activities of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, student
leaders, minorities, trade union leaders and political opponents.  A
huge range of surveillance technologies has evolved, including the night
vision goggles; parabolic microphones to detect conversations over a
kilometre away; laser versions, can pick up any conversation from a
closed window in line of sight; the Danish Jai stroboscopic camera can
take hundreds of pictures in a matter of seconds and individually
photograph all the participants in a demonstration or March; and the
automatic vehicle recognition systems can tracks cars around a city via
a Geographic Information System of maps. 

New technologies which were originally conceived for the Defence and
Intelligence sectors have after the cold war rapidly spread into the law
enforcement and private sectors.  It is one of the areas of
technological advance, where outdated regulations have not kept pace
with an accelerating pattern of abuses.  Up until the 1960s, most
surveillance was low-tech and expensive since it involved following
suspects around from place to place, using up to 6 people in teams of
two working 3 eight hour shifts.  All of the material and contacts
gleaned had to be typed up and filed away with little prospect of
rapidly cross checking.  Even electronic surveillance was highly labour
intensive.  The East German police for example employed 500,000 secret
informers, 10,000 of which were needed just to listen and transcribe
citizens' phone calls. 

By the 1980s, new forms of electronic surveillance were emerging and
many of these were directed towards automation of communications
interception.  This trend was fuelled in the US in the 1990's by
accelerated government funding at the end of the cold war, with defence
and intelligence agencies being refocussed with new missions to justify
their budgets, transferring their technologies to certain law
enforcement applications such as anti-drug and anti-terror operations. 
In 1993, the US department of defence and the Justice department signed
memoranda of understanding for "Operations Other Than War and Law
Enforcement" to facilitate joint development and sharing of technology. 
According to David Banisar of Privacy International, "To counteract
reductions in military contracts which began in the 1980's, computer and
electronics companies are expanding into new markets - at home and
abroad - with equipment originally developed for the military. 
Companies such as E Systems, Electronic Data Systems and Texas
Instruments are selling advanced computer systems and surveillance
equipment to state and local governments that use them for law
enforcement, border control and Welfare administration."What the East
German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming a reality
in the free world."

2.1 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance Networks

In fact the art of visual surveillance has dramatically changed over
recent years.  Of course police and intelligence officers still
photograph demonstrations and individuals of interest but increasingly
such images can be stored and searched.  Ongoing processes of
ultra-miniaturisation mean that such devices can be made to be virtually
undetectable and are open to abuse by both indivduals, companies and
official agencies. 

The attitude to CCTV camera networks varies greatly in the European
Union, from the position in Denmark where such cameras are banned by law
to the position in the UK, where many hundreds of CCTV networks exist. 
Nevertheless, a common position on the status of such systems where they
exist in relation to data protection principles should apply in general. 
A specific consideration is the legal status of admissibility as
evidence, of digital material such as those taken by the more advanced
CCTV systems.  Much of this will fall within data protection legislation
if the material gathered can be searched eg by car number plate or by
time.  Given that material from such systems can be seemlessly edited,
the European Data Protection Directive legislation needs to be
implemented through primary legislation which clarifies the law as it
applies to CCTV, to avoid confusion amongst both CCTV data controllers
as well as citizens as data subjects.  Primary legislation will make it
possible to extend the impact of the Directive to areas of activity that
do not fall within community law.  Articles 3 and 13 of the Directive
should not create a blanket covering the use of CCTV in every
circumstance in a domestic context. 

A proper code of practice such as that promoted by the UK based Local
Government Information Unit (LGIU, 1996) should be extended to absorb
best practice from all EU Member States to cover the use of all CCTV
surveillance schemes operating in public spaces and especially in
residential areas.  As a first step it is suggested that the Civil
Liberties Committee formally consider examining the practice and control
of CCTV throughout the member States with a view to establishing what
elements of the various codes of practice could be adopted for a unified
code and an enforceable legal framework covering enforcement and civil
liberties protection and redress. 

2.2 Algorithmic Surveillance Sysytems

The revolution in urban surveillance will reach the next generation of
control once reliable face recognition comes in.  It will initially be
introduced at stationary locations, like turnstiles, customs points,
security gateways etc.  to enable a standard full face recognition to
take place.  The Interim Study predicted that in the early part of the
21st.  century, facial recognition on CCTV will be a reality and those
countries with CCTV infrastructures will view such technology as a
natural add-on.  In fact, an American company Software and Systems has
trialed a system in London which can scan crowds and match faces against
a database of images held in a remote computer.  We are at the beginning
of a revolution in 'algorithmic surveillance' - effectively data
analysis via complex algoritms which enable automatic recognition and
tracking.  Such automation not only widens the surveillance net, it
narrows the mesh.(See Norris, C., et.  al, 1998)

Similarly Vehicle Recognition Systems have been developed which can
identify a car number plate then track the car around a city using a
computerised geographic information system.  Such systems are now
commercially available, for example, the Talon system introduced in 1994
by UK company Racal at a price of # 2000 (British pound) per unit.  The
system is trained to recognise number plates based on neural network
technology developed by Cambridge Neurodynamics, and can see both night
and day.  Initially it has been used for traffic monitoring but its
function has been adapted in recent years to cover security surveillance
and has been incorporated in the "ring of steel" around London.  The
system can then record all the vehicles that entered or left the cordon
on a particular day. 

It is important to set clear guidelines and codes of practice for such
technological innovations, well in advance of the digital revolution
making new and unforseen opportunities to collate, analyze, recognise
and store such visual images.  Already multifunctional traffic
management systems such as 'Traffic Master' , (which uses vehicle
recognition systems to map and quantify congestion), are facilitating a
national surveillance architecture.  Such regulation will need to be
founded on sound data protection principles and take cognizance of
article 15 of the 1995 European Directive on the Protection of
Individuals and Processing of Personal Data.  Essentially this says that
: "Member States shall grant the right of every person not to be subject
to a decision which produces legal effects concerning him or
significantly affects him and which is based solely on the automatic
processing of data.  [1] "There is much to recommend the European
Parliament following the advice of a recent UK House of Lords Report
(Select Committee Report on Digital Images as Evidence, 1998).  Namely:
(i) that the European Parliament ...."produces guidance for both the
public and private sectors on the use of data matching, and in
particular the linking of surveillance systems with other databases; and
(ii) that the Data Protection Registrar be given powers to audit the
operation of data matching systems"

Such surveillance systems raise significant issues of accountability,
particularly when transferred to authoritarian regimes.  The cameras
used in Tiananmen Square were sold as advanced traffic control systems
by Siemens Plessey.  Yet after the 1989 massacre of students, there
followed a witch hunt when the authorities tortured and interrogated
thousands in an effort to ferret out the subversives.  The Scoot
surveillance system with USA made Pelco cameras were used to faithfully
record the protests.  The images were repeatedly broadcast over Chinese
television offering a reward for information, with the result that
nearly all the transgressors were identified.  Again democratic
accountability is only the criterion which distinguishes a modern
traffic control system from an advanced dissident capture technology. 
Foreign companies are exporting traffic control systems to Lhasa in
Tibet, yet Lhasa does not as yet have any traffic control problems.  The
problem here may be a culpable lack of imagination. 

2.3 Bugging & Tapping Devices

A wide range of bugging and tapping devices have been evolved to record
conversations and to intercept telecommunications traffic.  In recent
years the widespread practice of illegal and legal interception of
communications and the planting of 'bugs' has been an issue in many
European States.  However, planting illegal bugs is yesterday's
technology.  Modern snoopers can buy specially adapted lap top
computers, and simply tune in to all the mobile phones active in the
area by cursoring down to their number.  The machine will even search
for numbers 'of interest' to see if they are active.  However, these
bugs and taps pale into insignificance next to the national and
international state run interceptions networks. 

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.  Whilst 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".  It is worth looking briefly at the activities of both
systems in turn, encompassing, Echelon, encryption; EU- FBI surveillance
and new interfaces with for example 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 1970s 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.  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.  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 Times (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 carrrier (ILC) traffic -
essentially, ordinary commercial communications.  Its staff have grown
from 400 in the 1980s to more than 1400 now with a further 370 staff
from the MoD.  The Sunday Times also reported allegations that
converstaions 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 Industrie 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.  Whilst 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 consultatuion 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 1A 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. 

2.4.2 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 Mastricht
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 modern 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 co-
operate 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:-

2.5 POLICY OPTIONS

(i) That a more detailed series of studies should be commissioned on the
social, political commercial and constitutional implications of the
global electronic surveillance networks outlined in this Study, with a
view to holding a series of expert hearings to inform future EU civil
liberties policy.  These studies might cover:-

     a.  The consitutional issues raised by the facility of the US
         National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept all European
         telecommunications, particularly those legal commitments 
         made by member States in regard to the Maastricht Treaty 
         and the whole question of the use of this network for 
         automated political and commercial espionage. 

     b.  The social and political implications of the FBI-EU global
         surveillance system, its growing access to new
         telecommunications mediums including e-mail and its ongoing
         expansion into new countries together with any related
         financial and constitutional issues;

     c.  The structure, role and remit of an EU wide oversight body,
         independent from the European Parliament, which might be set up
         to oversee and audit the activities of all bodies engaged in
         intercepting telecommunications made within Europe;

(ii) The European Parliament has the option of urging rejection of
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.  These 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. 

(iii) That the European Parliament convene a series of expert hearings
covering all the technical, political and commercial activities of
bodies engaged in electronic surveillance and to further elaborate
possible options to bring such activities back within the realm of
democratic accountability and transparency.  These proposed hearings
might also examine the issue of proper codes of practice to ensure
redress if malpractice or abuse takes place.  Explicit criteria should
be agreed for deciding who should be targeted for surveillance and who
should not, how such data is stored, processed and shared and whether
such criteria and associated codes of practice could be made publicly
available. 

(iv) To amend the terms of reference of the Civil Liberties and Internal
Affairs Committee to include powers and responsibilities for all matters
relating to the civil liberties issues raised by electronic surveillance
devices and networks and to call for a series of reports during its next
work programme, including:-

     a.  How legally binding codes of practice could ensure that new
         surveillance technologies are brought within the appropriate
         data protection legislation?;

     b.  The production of guidance for both the public and private
         sectors on the use of data matching, and in particular the
         linking of surveillance systems with other databases; and
         addressing the issue of giving Member State Data Protection
         Registrars appropriate powers to audit the operation of data
         matching systems"

     c.  How the provision of electronic bugging and tapping devices to
         private citizens and companies, might be further regulated, so
         that their sale is governed by legal permission rather than
         self regulation?

     d.  How the use of telephone interception by Member states could be
         subject to procedures of public accountability referred to in
         (a) above? (e.g.  before any telephone interception takes place
         a warrant should be obtained in a manner prescribed by the
         relevant parliament.  In most cases, law enforcement agencies
         will not be permitted to self-authorise interception except in
         the most unusual of circumstances which should be reported back
         to the authorising authority at the earliest opportunity). 

     e.  How technologies facilitating the automatic profiling and
         pattern analysis of telephone calls to establish friendship and
         contact networks might be subject to the same legal
         requirements as those for telephone interception and reported
         to the relevant Member State parliament?;. 

     f.  The commission of a Study examining what constitutes best
         practice and control of CCTV throughout the member States with
         a view to establishing what elements of the various codes of
         practice could be adopted for a unified code and a legal
         framework covering enforcement and civil liberties protection
         and redress. 

(v) Setting up procedural mechanisms whereby relevant committees of the
European Parliament considering proposals for technologies which have
civil liberties implications (e.g.  the Telecommunications Committee) 
in regard to surveillance, should be required to forward all relevant
policy proposals and reports to the Civil Liberties Committee for their
observations in advance of any political or financial decisions on
deployment being taken. 

(vi) Setting up Agreements between Member States Agreement whereby
annual statistics on interception should be reported to each member
states' parliament in a standard and consistent format.  These
statistics should provide comprehensive details of the actual number of
communication devices intercepted and data should be not be aggregated. 
(To avoid the statistics only identifying the number of warrants, issued
whereas organisations under surveillance may have hundreds of members,
all of whose phones may be intercepted). 

NOTES:

[1] Common Position EC No/95, Adopted by the Council on 20 February
1995, Directive 95/EC of the European Parliament and the Council, 'On
the Protection of Individuals With regard to the Processing of Personal
Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data'. 

[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.