European communications 'wide open' to interception

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By Peter Warren, March 9, 2001

A leading British code expert has fuelled widespread concerns that
Europe's most sensitive electronic communications are open to
interception.

Desmond Perkins, a senior official in the European Commission's
cipher unit, has claimed that the superior
technology deployed by US authorities means there is little Europe
can do to prevent them listening in to its
communications.

Perkins was speaking at a recent EU hearing into Echelon, the
name given to a US monitoring system which is
allegedly able to eavesdrop on all European electronic traffic.

Perkins claimed he showed EU systems to his US counterparts,
thanks to his "cordial" relationship with the US
National Security Agency (NSA), the organisation widely believed
to operate Echelon.

"You have got to remember the Americans read no matter what is
going on inside here. They read everything
with their satellites lined up," he said.

EU officials have since gagged Perkins from making further
comments on the issue, and have claimed that his
evidence has been misunderstood. They say he only meant to
point out that the US had the technology to
intercept messages, but could not read them due to encryption.

They stressed that the EU has been using a Siemens system for
secure communications for over a decade.

But Perkins' claims have been backed up by former high-ranking
intelligence sources contacted by silicon.com.

A former Nato encryption expert, who advised the EU on
communications vulnerabilities in 1996, claimed that
the Commission had been in the habit of sending completely
unencrypted information, throwing into doubt
the EU claims that it had been using the Siemens system for a
decade.

"They were worried in the mid 1990s that the US may have been
picking up messages, but they did not
introduce encryption until 1998," said the expert, who asked to
remain anonymous.

He added that US intelligence efforts would almost certainly be
focussed on acquiring the keys needed to read
intercepted messages - a process the former official hinted may
have been made easier due to the
long-established UK-US practice of exchanging classified codes.

This is the kind of practice that could make sense of Perkins'
claims of a "cordial" relationship with the US.

Indeed, Perkins told the EU: "They usually check our systems to
see they are being well-looked after and not
being misused."

Perkins' trust in the NSA is almost certainly misplaced, according
to one former NSA employee. "I don't doubt
it has been going on. I would also be fairly confident that they will
have built back doors into any system they
have been looking at," he said.
------------------------------
. ^               Stuart Udall
.~X\     stuart () cyberdelix net
.~ \    http://cyberdelix.net/

..revolution through evolution

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