Willy de onthullingen van Snowden zijn niks nieuw. Dat “Europa” niet op de hoogte zou zijn is ook nonsens.
Mag ik verwijzen naar
(1) een studie uit 1998 door Omega Research Foundation “An Appraisal of technologies of political control” [European Parliament’s Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (PE 166.499)]
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 1970′s by a group of researchers in the UK. The researchers used open sources but were subsequently arrested under Britain’s Official Secrets legislation. The ‘ABC’ trial that followed was a critical turning point in researcher’s understanding both of the technology of political control and how it might be challenged by research on open sources…. 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 a “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. In February, The UK based research publication 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. (blz 19-20)
(2) een studie uit 1999 door Duncan Campbell “The state of the art in communications Intelligence (COMINT) of automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband multi-language leased or common carrier systems, and its applicability to COMINT targetting and selection, including speech recognition” [European Parliament’s Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (PE 168. 184 Vol 2/5)]
…new evidence shows that ECHELON has existed since the 1970s, and was greatly enlarged between 1975 and 1995. Like ILC interception, ECHELON has developed from earlier methods… Project P-415/ECHELON made heavy use of NSA and GCHQ’s global Internet-like communication network to enable remote intelligence customers to task computers at each collection site, and receive the results automatically. The key component of the system are local “Dictionary” computers, which store an extensive database on specified targets, including names, topics of interest, addresses, telephone numbers and other selection criteria. Incoming messages are compared to these criteria; if a match is found, the raw intelligence is forwarded automatically. Dictionary computers are tasked with many thousands of different collection requirements, described as “numbers” ….
In 1990 and 1991, the US government became concerned that the marketing of a secure telephone system by AT&T could curtail Comint activity. AT&T was persuaded to withdraw its product. In its place the US government offered NSA “Clipper” chips for incorporation in secure phones. The chips would be manufactured by NSA, which would also record built-in keys and pass this information to other government agencies for storage and, if required, retrieval. This proposal proved extremely unpopular, and was abandoned. In its place, the US government proposed that non government agencies should be required to keep copies of every user’s keys, a system called “key escrow” and, later, “key recovery”. Viewed in retrospect, the actual purpose of these proposals was to provide NSA with a single (or very few) point(s) of access to keys, enabling them to continue to access private and commercial communications. Between 1993 to 1998, the United States conducted sustained diplomatic activity seeking to persuade EU nations and the OECD to adopt their “key recovery” system. Throughout this period, the US government insisted that the purpose of the initiative was to assist law enforcement agencies. Documents obtained for this study suggest that these claims wilfully misrepresented the true intention of US policy. Documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act indicate that policymaking was led exclusively by NSA officials, sometimes to the complete exclusion of police or judicial officials…. This US deception was, however, clear to the senior Commission official responsible for information security. In September 1996, David Herson, head of the EU Senior Officers’ Group on Information Security, stated his assessment of the US “key recovery” project : “‘Law Enforcement’ is a protective shield for all the other governmental activities … We’re talking about foreign intelligence, that’s what all this is about. There is no question [that] ‘law enforcement’ is a smoke screen”. (blz 12 – 16)
(3) een studie uit 1999 “The perception of economic risks arising from the potential vulnerability of electronic commercial media to interception” [European Parliament’s Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (PE 168. 184 Vol 5/5)]
The US is behind a world-wide effort to limit individual privacy and enhance the capability of its intelligence services to eavesdrop on personal conversations. The campaign has had two legal strategies: the first made it mandatory for all digital telephone switches, cellular and satellite phones and all developing communication technologies to build in surveillance capabilities; the second sought to limit the dissemination of software that contains encryption, a technique which allows people to scramble their communications and files to prevent others from reading them. The first effort to heighten surveillance opportunities was to force telecommunications companies to use equipment designed to include enhanced wiretapping capabilities. The end goal was to ensure that the US and its allied intelligence services could easily eavesdrop on telephone networks anywhere in the world. In the late 1980s, in a programme known internally as ‘Operation Root Canal’, US law enforcement officials demanded that telephone companies alter their equipment to facilitate the interception of messages. The companies refused but, after several years of lobbying, Congress enacted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994. While the FBI lobbied Congress and pressured US companies into accepting a tougher CALEA, it also leant on US allies to adopt it as an international standard. In 1991, the FBI held a series of secret meetings with EU member states to persuade them to incorporate CALEA into European law. The plan, according to an EU report, was to ‘call for the Western World (EU, US and allies) to agree to norms and procedures and then sell their products to Third World countries. Even if they do not agree to interception orders, they will find their telecommunications monitored by the UK-USA signals intelligence network the minute they use the equipment.’ The FBI’s efforts resulted in an EU Council of Ministers resolution that was quietly adopted in January 1995, but not publicly released until 20 months later. The resolution’s text is almost word for word identical to the FBI’s demands at home. The US government is now pressuring the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to adopt the standards globally. Since 1993, unknown to European parliamentary bodies and their electors, law enforcement officials from many EU countries and most of the UKUSA nations have been meeting annually in a separate forum to discuss their requirements for interceptingcommunications. These officials met under the auspices of a hitherto unknown organisation, ILETS (International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar). ILETS was initiated and founded by the FBI.
Peter Dansaert
Antwoord:
Bedankt voor deze bijkomende boeiende informatie. De verbazing die onze politici en media hier tonen is op zich verbazend te noemen. Het lijkt wel of ze allen op een andere planeet woonden en pas nu op aarde komen. Het toont het beangstigend ultra laag niveau aan van die groepen.
Over Echelon kun je bijvoorbeeld op de website van het Belgisch parlement al wat informatie vinden. En toen Nicolas Sarkozy, de meest pro-Amerikaanse Franse president sinds WO II, staatshoofd werd kregen alle regeringsleden de aanmaning bepaalde digitale telefoons niet te gebruiken. Hun communicatie verliep immers via de VS.
Het is volgens insiders trouwens als gevolg van het onthullen van Echelon dat zowel magistraat Walter De Smedt als de politica Anne-Marie Lizin, ooit sleutelfiguren in het Comité I, in ongenade zijn gevallen en plots gerechtelijk moeilijkheden kregen.
Hier werd ook eerder het verhaal gebracht hoe de VS via phishing binnengeraakt was tot in de computers van top van het Elysée. Enzovoort.
Willy Van Damme