Ibrahim Erdogan Columnist JTW printable version send your friend message to author add comment ()

Tuesday, 30 December 2008

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 11^th of July 2001, is the existence of ECHELON.[2]  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 and Turkey signed signal intelligence agreements and became "third parties" participants in the UKUSA network.[3] 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.

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 keywords.[5] 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 staff.[6]

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 officials.[8]

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 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, etc.[10] 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 substantiated.[11] 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 Japanese.[12]

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]

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!!!