How Secret Are Your Secrets Sinister Technology to Spy

							    How Secret Are Your Secrets? Sinister Technology to Spy on a Global Scale


To those who saw Will Smith’s film of “Enemy of the State”, it has become rather a
myth or sometimes a fantasy to think that a technologically advanced state authority
would listen, watch, and monitor every aspect of personal as well as public life.
Equally alarming has been the possibility of such means turning against other state
actors particularly to those who were deemed as friends. The likelihood of the former
happening would be disaster in the name of civil liberties and rights while the
happening of the latter would at least cause utter embarrassment. Being caught by
an adversary who accepts spying as just one more facet of an unpleasant
relationship may not seem too troubling. Yet, when caught by a friend the
relationship that had served both sides would most likely to take a devastating blow.
       Prior to what “may happen”, lets focus on the questions of whether such
technology really exists, and if answer to that is affirmative who would do such a
thing and for what purpose.
        To begin with the technology, Stansfield Turner, Director of Central
Intelligence between 1977 and 1981, wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs
that:
         “ .building of a robust network of satellites with a variety of sensors. Washington
         can easily construct a system that will detect any significant activity on the surface of
         the earth, day or night, under clouds or jungle cover, and with such frequency as to
         make deliberate evasion difficult. Physicist Edward Teller has estimated that such a
         system would cost $5 billion to purchase and $1 billion per year to operate. At twice
         that it would be a bargain because the ability to peer anywhere, anytime, is bound to
         be of great value in the uncertain new world ahead”.1

As the then Director admitted such technology is possible but whether the US took
on the job of building one is yet unknown. What is known from a European
Parliament report, published on the 11th of July 2001, is the existence of ECHELON2.
Echelon is the name given to a global system of electronic eavesdropping network
for the interception of private and commercial communications run by the intelligence
organizations of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
        The history of ECHELON goes back to 1947 when the nations that now
operate the system signed accords agreeing to share and swap intelligence data
(UKUSA agreement). In time other countries including Norway, Denmark, and
Germany Turkey signed signal intelligence agreements and became "third parties"
participants in the UKUSA network3. Initially set-up against the increasing threat
posed by the Soviets and the Eastern bloc, ECHELON was designed primarily for
non-military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every
country.

1
  Turner, S., “Intelligence for a New World Order”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70 Issue 4, Fall 1991, p. 150.
2
  “Report on the Existence of a Global System For the Interception of Private and Commercial Communications (ECHELON
Interception System)”, 11 July 2001, A5-0264/2001, p. 11.
 http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/rapport_echelon_en.pdf
3
  Duncan Campbell is the author of the European Parliament's 1999 "Interception Capabilities 2000" report.
Duncan Campbell, Inside Echelon: The history, structure und function of the global surveillance system known as Echelon,
25.07.2000.
 http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6929/1.html.
As a sample of how the system worked a London Telegraph report described the
European leg of operations as follows;
          “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 in the UK."4

Masses of indiscriminately intercepted messages collected as such were then
searched through by computers looking for pre-programmed addresses and
keywords5. As the number of massages was drained off to a manageable size
according to their relevancy, they would be read and further investigated by
intelligence analysis staff6.
      The capability of the system presently covers phone conversations, mobile
phone calls, e-mail messages, fax transmissions, net browsing history, or satellite
transmissions. Yet, the system has been kept so secret that the British and American
Governments refused to admit the very existence of Echelon.
       While they were refusing to comment further, the word got out eventually as
one former US army intelligence officer has broken the code of silence. According to
a BBC report, Colonel Dan Smith told that while ECHELON kind of operation was
feasible, it was not official policy:
          "Technically they can scoop all this information up, sort through it, and find what it is
          that might be asked for," he said. "But there is no policy to do this specifically in
          response to a particular company's interests."7

By the late 1980s, various intelligence staff from New Zealand's Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), equivalent of the US National Security
Agency (NSA), admitted helping their Western allies as part of ECHELON to spy on
countries. GSPC2s activities covered the Pacific region without the knowledge of the
New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials8.
      During the Cold War, ECHELON's primary purpose of keeping an eye on the
U.S.S.R would have been reasonable, but since the threat of the Soviets faded away
how could such a potentially sinister machinery be justified. According to Stansfield
Turner;
          “So long as the Soviet Union maintains sizable conventional military forces, the
          United States must account for them, even if with a lesser sense of urgency. And
          Soviet nuclear forces will demand at least as much attention, perhaps more, if the
          United States is required to verify increasingly complex arms control agreements.
          Moreover Washington will want to know about renegade countries that manufacture

4
  “Spies Like Us”, London Telegraph, Issue 936, 16 December 1997.
5
  On the interception system’s operating methods the EU Parliament report stated that; “ each partner state had its own list of
search words on the basis of which communications were intercepted. In addition, however, communications were screened for
keywords entered into the system by the USA using ’dictionary managers’.”
“Report on the Existence of a Global System for the Interception of Private and Commercial Communications (ECHELON
Interception System)”, 11 July 2001, A5-0264/2001, p. 68.
 http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/rapport_echelon_en.pdf
6
  “Hooked up to the spy network: The UKUSA system”
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_c2.htm
7
  Bomford, A., “Echelon Spy Network Revealed”, BBC Radio 4 Programme, 3 November, 1999.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/503224.stm
8
  ECHELON: Online Surveillence, http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelon.html
         and store nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. And even those nations'
         conventional weapons will be of interest, as Washington will want to know in advance
         of intended military operations, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. These worldwide
         checks on weapons and a country's intentions for using them will require a highly
         intrusive monitoring and verification system.”9

To justify the continued multi-billion dollar expense spend on ECHELON, one may
add to that a claim; “the ongoing fight with terrorism", the catch-all phrase used to
justify any and all abuses of civil rights.

       More worrying is the likelihood of ECHELON’s capabilities being used
clandestinely to gather economic intelligence from its friends. The EU report
confirmed that part of the US intelligence service remit consisted of economic data
such as details of developments in individual sectors of the economy, trends on
commodity markets, compliance with economic embargoes, observance of rules on
supplying dual-use goods, etc10. At first sight investigating merely general economic
facts with the pretext of for example combating attempted bribery may not appear so
sinister.

        However, the findings of the EU report suggested another conclusion that; the
global interception system (ECHELON) has been used to spy on foreign firms with
the aim of securing a competitive advantage for firms in the US, although no such
case had been substantiated11. That conclusion was based on a list of allegations
published in the report which had been gathered from the press and relevant
literature. To count but to give a few examples; the NSA fed information to Boeing
and McDonnell Douglas which enabled both US companies to beat out European
Airbus Industries for a $ 6 billion contract; Raytheon received information that helped
it win a $ 1.3 billion contract to provide radar to Brazil, edging out the French
company Thomson-CSF; the NSA supplied U.S. automakers with information that
helped improve their competitiveness with the Japanese12.

        Although allegations of American intelligence services going out and stealing
trade secrets to pass on to the US firms were consistently denied, some former
intelligence officials were not reluctant to acknowledge that;

          "As long as you have intelligence services, they are going to try to get things you'd
         rather they not have."13

In some case, in an attempt to rationalize the actions of intelligence services it has
been suggested that other states, including US allies such as France and Israel,
were just as active in trying to steal secrets from American government agencies and
companies.14


9
  Turner, S., “Intelligence for a New World Order”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70 Issue 4, Fall 1991, p. 167.
10
   Report on the Existence of a Global System for the Interception of Private and Commercial Communications (ECHELON
Interception System)”, 11 July 2001, A5-0264/2001, p. 13.
 http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/rapport_echelon_en.pdf
11
  Ibid, p. 14.
12
   Ibid, pp. 103-106
13
   “The Lure Of The Steal America's Allies Are Grabbing U.S. Technology”, US News & World Report, Vol. 120, Issue 9,
3/4/1996, p. 45.
14
   Christian Science Monitor, November 20, 1996
       In conclusion, the technology to pry on every aspect of personal and public
life does really exist and it has been so for some time. The evidence that it may be
used to intrude personal, commercial and state secrets should be alarming to us all.
The best measure to counter that seems to remind ourselves and the state actors of
the civic liberties that have brought the humanity to level of civilization it is now. In
the meantime, let us all be cautious!!!