Over selectief fouilleren, discriminatoir handelen, willekeurige hoogten van boetes, drugs fouilleren, verdwenen ‘wapens’, afgenomen joints, einde van het gedoogbeleid, steunen van coffeeshophouders, vage cijfers en bizarre motivering (deel 1, 2003 – 2007).

De overheid heeft door een recentelijke wijziging van de bevoegdheid tot preventief fouilleren aangegeven dat de maatregel niet werkt. Natuurlijk wordt dat niet met zoveel woorden gezegd, maar de krampachtigheid waarmee de maatregel wordt verdedigd is veelzeggend.

Om vast te stellen of ‘het selectief fouilleren’ wel genoegzaam werkt, wordt er een experiment uitgevoerd in Rotterdam. In een bepaalde wijk fouilleert de politie burgers aan de hand van een aantal criteria. De burger als proefpersoon van een veiligheidsexperiment. Bij het testen van medicijnen zou de wereld op zijn kop staan, maar blijkbaar is het genoeg om de mannelijke guinea pigs in de leeftijd tussen ongeveer 14 en 34 jaar te betasten. Wat dit voor het rechtsgevoel van mensen betekent, lijkt allang geen punt van discussie meer.

artikel als pdf
Wob stukken gemeente Maastricht
Wob stukken politie Limburg
processen verbaal politie Limburg
Wob stukken parket Limburg

Tony Blair has hired a former Israeli army intelligence officer to work in his private office, despite his role as Middle East peace envoy. Pollak was recruited as a private consultant between October 2012 and April this year

Lianne Pollak, who has led intelligence teams in the Israel Defence Forces, was recruited as a private consultant between October 2012 and April this year.

The 30-year-old was previously a policy adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, working with security agencies and senior officials.

Mr Blair has been involved in sensitive negotiations between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority. The former prime minister is the unpaid envoy to the Middle East for the Quartet – the group that represents the US, Russia, the United Nations and Europe.

His role includes encouraging development in Gaza and the West Bank and helping to forge a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having been appointed when he left Downing Street in June 2007.

The disclosure of Miss Pollak’s appointment follows calls for the former prime minister to be more transparent about his complex business network.
Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour minister who was Mr Blair’s leadership campaign manager, but is now a critic, said: “If you have got someone close to the so-called negotiator who is so partial in these matters [the Palestinians] are going to look even more sceptically at Mr Blair than they do currently.”

Miss Pollak’s public profile on the Linkedin website states: “She recently finished a project as a consultant at the Office of Tony Blair, where she managed processes on Economic Development, improving the business environment, and security related topics.”

Under “experience” she writes that she was a consultant in Mr Blair’s office, listing as her duties: “Strategy and Management Consulting for a major client overseas.

“Managing work processes on Economic Development, improving the business environment and security-related topics.”

Describing her professional experience before her work for Mr Blair, the profile states: “Before joining the team, she worked for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office in the negotiation team with the Palestinians during the Annapolis process and with the Foreign Affairs Department at the National Security Council.

“She specialized in Economic Development and capacity building for the Palestinian population.

“Lianne was also an officer in the Israeli army in the area of intelligence analysis, and led intelligence teams and intelligence processes in volatile periods, working with senior generals on a daily basis.”

According to Linkedin she served as an officer in the IDF between November 2001 and May 2004, before going on to work for the Israeli prime minister’s office in September 2008, for just under three years.

During her time in the Israeli government she provided strategic planning for the prime minister and worked “hand in hand” with “diverse stakeholders” including high ranking officials and security agencies, her profile states.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said Miss Pollak, who has an MA in public management from the London School of Economics, worked on “public service reform” on a project not related to the Middle East, adding: “There are Palestinians who work for Tony Blair. So the idea of a conflict of interest on this basis is absolutely absurd.”

By Edward Malnick, and Robert Mendick
7:10AM BST 07 Jul 2013

Find this story at 7 July 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

The internet is being snooped on and CCTV is everywhere. How did we come to accept that this is just the way things are?

These days we are all supects, or at least consumers. Photograph: Alamy

America controls the sky. Fear of what America might do can make countries divert planes – all because Edward Snowden might be on one.

Owning the sky has somehow got to me more than controlling the internet. Maybe because I am a simpleton and sometimes can only process what I can see – the actual sky, rather than invisible cyberspace in which data blips through fibre-optic cables.

Thus the everyday internet remains opaque to all but geeks. And that’s where I think I have got it wrong. My first reaction to the Prism leaks was to make stupid jokes: Spies spy? Who knew? The fact that Snowden looked as if he came from central casting didn’t help. Nor did the involvement of Julian Assange, a cult leader who should be in Sweden instead of a cupboard in an embassy.

What I failed to grasp, though, was quite how much I had already surrendered my liberty, not just personally but my political ideals about what liberty means. I simply took for granted that everyone can see everything and laughed at the idea that Obama will be looking at my pictures of a cat dressed as a lobster. I was resigned to the fact that some random FBI merchant will wonder at the inane and profane nature of my drunken tweets.

Slowly but surely, The Lives of Others have become ours. CCTV cameras everywhere watch us, so we no longer watch out for each other. Public space is controlled. Of course, much CCTV footage is never seen and often useless. But we don’t need the panopticon once we have built one in our own minds. We are all suspects.

Or at least consumers. iTunes thinks I might like Bowie; Amazon thinks I want a compact tumble dryer. Really? Facebook seems to think I want to date men in uniform. I revel in the fact that the algorithms get it as wrong as the man who knocks on my door selling fish out of a van. “And not just fish,” as he sometimes says mysteriously.

But how did I come to accept that all this data gathered about me is just the way it is? Wasn’t I once interested in civil liberties? Indeed, weren’t the Lib Dems? Didn’t freedom somehow incorporate the idea of individual privacy? When the state monitored all its citizens as though they were suspects – whether in East Germany or North Korea – we called it authoritarianism. Now we think it is what keeps us safe.

In 2009 I sat on a panel with Vince Cable at the cross-party Convention on Modern Liberty. Cable told us that a recession could provide the preconditions for fascism. Gosh, I thought, that’s a bit strong. Then the recession hit and austerity became the narrative that subsumed all debates about freedom. No one poor is free, and it is no coincidence that the poor are the most snooped on of all.

What Snowden, who is no spy, has revealed is the nature of the game: that surveillance is a huge private industry; that almost full control of the internet has been achieved already; that politicians here and in the US have totally acquiesced to industrial-scale snooping. There is a generation now made up of people who will never have had a private conversation online or by phone. These are my children. And should they or anyone else want to organise against the powers that be, they will be traceable. We have sleepwalked into this because liberty remains such an alien concept, still. But the US has the fourth amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure, shall not be violated.”

It has been violated. Bradley Manning is in prison, Guantánamo remains open, CIA agents who spoke out about waterboarding are banged up. And there are other kinds of whistleblowers who conveniently kill themselves. The letter from Daniel Somers, who served in Iraq, says he was made to do things he could not live with. He described his suicide as a mercy killing and reminded us that 22 veterans kill themselves every day. This is not whistleblowing. It is screaming into a void.

But we remain passive while other European countries are angry at what Snowden has told us. We maintain the special relationship. For Snowden, the truth will not set him free, it will imprison him for ever. We now debate whether we should exchange liberty for security, but it is too late. As John Locke said: “As soon as men decide all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.” He could have been talking about our passivity.

When did you surrender your freedom to communicate, something that was yours and yours alone, whether an email to a lover or a picture of your child? Ask yourself, do you feel safer now you know that you have no secrets? Now, the intimacies that are of no import to anyone but you have been subject to virtual extraordinary rendition. Because, fundamentally, your government does not trust you. Why therefore should you trust it?

Suzanne Moore
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 July 2013 20.00 BST

Find this story at 3 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials refer to Edward J. Snowden’s job as a National Security Agency contractor as “systems administrator” — a bland name for the specialists who keep the computers humming. But his last job before leaking classified documents about N.S.A. surveillance, he told the news organization The Guardian, was actually “infrastructure analyst.”

It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.

That assignment helps explain how Mr. Snowden got hold of documents laying bare the top-secret capabilities of the nation’s largest intelligence agency, setting off a far-reaching political and diplomatic crisis for the Obama administration.

Even as some members of Congress have challenged the N.S.A.’s collection of logs of nearly every phone call Americans make, European officials furiously protested on Sunday after Mr. Snowden’s disclosure that the N.S.A. has bugged European Union offices in Washington and Brussels and, with its British counterpart, has tapped the Continent’s major fiber-optic communications cables.

On Sunday evening, The Guardian posted an article saying documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show 38 embassies and missions on a list of United States electronic surveillance targets. Some of those offices belong to allies like France, Italy, Japan and Mexico, The Guardian said.

Mr. Snowden, who planned his leaks for at least a year, has said he took the infrastructure analyst position with Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii in March, evidently taking a pay cut, to gain access to a fresh supply of documents.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the N.S.A. hacked,” he told The South China Morning Post before leaving Hong Kong a week ago for Moscow, where he has been in limbo in the transit area of Sheremetyevo airport. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

A close reading of Mr. Snowden’s documents shows the extent to which the eavesdropping agency now has two new roles: It is a data cruncher, with an appetite to sweep up, and hold for years, a staggering variety of information. And it is an intelligence force armed with cyberweapons, assigned not just to monitor foreign computers but also, if necessary, to attack.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the documents suggest, the N.S.A. decided it was too risky to wait for leads on specific suspects before going after relevant phone and Internet records. So it followed the example of the hoarder who justifies stacks of paper because someday, somehow, a single page could prove vitally important.

The agency began amassing databases of “metadata” — logs of all telephone calls collected from the major carriers and similar data on e-mail traffic. The e-mail program was halted in 2011, though it appears possible that the same data is now gathered in some other way.

The documents show that America’s phone and Internet companies grew leery of N.S.A. demands as the years passed after 9/11, fearing that customers might be angry to find out their records were shared with the government. More and more, the companies’ lawyers insisted on legal orders to compel them to comply.

So the N.S.A. came up with a solution: store the data itself. That is evidently what gave birth to a vast data storage center that the N.S.A. is building in Utah, exploiting the declining cost of storage and the advance of sophisticated search software.

Those huge databases were once called “bit buckets” in the industry — collections of electronic bits waiting to be sifted. “They park stuff in storage in the hopes that they will eventually have time to get to it,” said James Lewis, a cyberexpert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “or that they’ll find something that they need to go back and look for in the masses of data.” But, he added, “most of it sits and is never looked at by anyone.”

Indeed, an obscure passage in one of the Snowden documents — rules for collecting Internet data that the Obama administration wrote in secret in 2009 and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved — suggested that the government was concerned about its ability to process all the data it was collecting. So it got the court to approve an exception allowing the government to hold on to that information if it could not keep up. The rules said that “the communications that may be retained” for up to five years “include electronic communications acquired because of the limitation on the N.S.A.’s ability to filter communications.”

As one private expert who sometimes advises the N.S.A. on this technology put it: “This means that if you can’t desalinate all the seawater at once, you get to hold on to the ocean until you figure it out.”

Collecting that ocean requires the brazen efforts of tens of thousands of technicians like Mr. Snowden. On Thursday, President Obama played down Mr. Snowden’s importance, perhaps concerned that the manhunt was itself damaging the image and diplomatic relations of the United States. “No, I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” the president said during a stop in Senegal.

Mr. Obama presumably meant the term to be dismissive, suggesting that Mr. Snowden (who turned 30 on June 21) was a young computer delinquent. But as an N.S.A. infrastructure analyst, Mr. Snowden was, in a sense, part of the United States’ biggest and most skilled team of hackers.

The N.S.A., Mr. Snowden’s documents show, has worked with its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, to tap into hundreds of fiber-optic cables that cross the Atlantic or go on into Europe, with the N.S.A. helping sort the data. The disclosure revived old concerns that the British might be helping the N.S.A. evade American privacy protections, an accusation that American officials flatly deny.

And a secret presidential directive on cyberactivities unveiled by Mr. Snowden — discussing the primary new task of the N.S.A. and its military counterpart, Cyber Command — makes clear that when the agency’s technicians probe for vulnerabilities to collect intelligence, they also study foreign communications and computer systems to identify potential targets for a future cyberwar.

Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets. They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system.

Mr. Snowden’s collection of pilfered N.S.A. documents has cast an awkward light on officials’ past assurances to Congress and the public about their concern about Americans’ privacy.

It was only in March that James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee that the N.S.A. did not collect data on millions of Americans. Mr. Snowden’s records forced Mr. Clapper to backtrack, admitting his statement was false.

Last week, two senators challenged even the accuracy of a fact sheet prepared by the N.S.A. to counter Mr. Snowden’s claims about the phone data and Internet collection programs. Agency officials did not defend themselves; the fact sheet simply disappeared, without explanation, from the agency’s Web site.

Newly disclosed slides from an N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation on the agency’s Prism database of Internet data, posted on Saturday by The Washington Post, reveal that the F.B.I. plays a role as middleman between the N.S.A. and Internet companies like Google and Yahoo. The arrangement provides the N.S.A. with a defense, however nominal, against claims that it spies on United States soil.

Even in the unaccustomed spotlight after the N.S.A. revelations, intelligence officials have concealed more than they have revealed in careful comments, fearful of alerting potential eavesdropping targets to agency methods. They invariably discuss the N.S.A.’s role in preventing terrorist attacks, an agency priority that the public can easily grasp.

In fact, as Mr. Snowden’s documents have shown, the omnivorous agency’s operations range far beyond terrorism, targeting foreigners of any conceivable interest. British eavesdroppers working with the N.S.A. penetrated London meetings of the Group of 20 industrialized nations, partly by luring delegates to fake Internet cafes, and the N.S.A. hacked into computers at Chinese universities.

At Fort Meade, on the N.S.A.’s heavily guarded campus off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Maryland, such disclosures are seen as devastating tip-offs to targets. The disclosure in Mr. Snowden’s documents that Skype is cooperating with orders to turn over data to the N.S.A., for example, undermined a widespread myth that the agency could not intercept the voice-over-Internet service. Warned, in effect, by Mr. Snowden, foreign officials, drug cartel leaders and terrorists may become far more careful about how, and how much, they communicate.

“We’re seeing indications that several terrorist groups are changing their communications behavior based on these disclosures,” one intelligence official said last week, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We’re going to miss tidbits that could be useful in stopping the next plot.”

Mr. Snowden’s breach is an unplanned test of the N.S.A.’s decades-old conviction that it can operate effectively only under absolute secrecy. The agency is conducting a damage assessment — a routine step after major leaks — but the assessment itself is likely to remain classified.

The N.S.A.’s assessment of Mr. Snowden’s case will likely also consider what has become, for intelligence officials, a chilling consideration: there are thousands of people of his generation and computer skills at the agency, hired in recent years to keep up with the communications boom.

The officials fear that some of them, like young computer aficionados outside the agency, might share Mr. Snowden’s professed libertarian streak and skepticism of the government’s secret power. Intelligence bosses are keeping a closer eye on them now, hoping that there is not another self-appointed whistle-blower in their midst.

June 30, 2013
By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID E. SANGER

Find this story at 30 June 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Postscript ||: Our Government has No Right to Hide Its Actions

This is a guest post by Jesse Stavis, another one of the students at the NSA session. The first postscript by me (Madiha) available below.

My name is Jesse Stavis. I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I was the male student in the recording. Madiha has graciously invited me to share some final thoughts on our confrontation with the NSA. I’ll try to keep this brief:

1. I have never been involved in anything that’s come anywhere close to receiving the exposure that this incident has. I will admit that it was exciting to see this story go quasi-viral. The fact that comments that were made in a room with perhaps twenty audience members eventually reached hundreds of thousands of people speaks to the power that the internet has as a tool for political and social advocacy. This should remind us of why it’s so important to protect the openness of the internet and the privacy of our communications on it.

2. A few days after this story broke, my feelings of excitement and pride in what we had accomplished gave way to a lingering feeling of depression. To put it bluntly, this should not have been a big story. The big story should have been about congressional representatives asking tough questions of the people at the top levels of the NSA. We should have been reading about Lt. Gen. Clapper being investigated for perjury. The fact that a few graduate students peppering recruiters with tough questions received so much attention speaks to the utterly dysfunctional condition of our political system as a whole and of the Democratic Party in particular.

3. While most people have been supportive of what we did, a number of commenters have suggested that we were wrong to confront low-level employees who were just doing their job. I want to make one thing clear: These were not low-level employees. They were what I would describe as upper mid-level managers. They told us that they had a combined fifty-five years of experience at the NSA. Without the support and consent of people like this, the surveillance machine could not exist. I don’t think that they are stupid people or evil people. I do think that they are people who have abdicated their moral agency and thus allowed for something very scary and very evil to come into existence. It’s our responsibility as educated citizens to remind these people that they do have the power to effect real change.

4. A number of people have written that they wished that there were a video recording of this event. I’m not so sure that they would have liked what they would have seen. They would have seen three people aggressively challenging the recruiters while fifteen or twenty other people who were actually considering working at the NSA sat stone-faced and bored, waiting for this unfortunate interruption to end. They would have seen the high school teacher sitting next to me muttering through a clenched jaw about how indescribably rude we were being. They would have seen just how much more we have to accomplish when it comes to convincing our fellow citizens that our government has no right to hide its actions from its citizens.

5. Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, I want to make it clear that I take very little credit for anything that was accomplished at that meeting. Without someone as brave, informed, and articulate as Madiha Tahir, this wouldn’t have been a story at all. I am deeply, deeply impressed by her, and I hope that you are too.
Tagged government, nsa, prism, surveillance

Jul 07 2013
32 Comments
Multitudes, The Terror Wars
Postscript: The Present through a PRISM

See also guest post by Jesse Stavis

Since I posted about our engagement with NSA recruiters who were visiting the campus at the Univ of

Good Muslim anyone? (Internal flap of NSA brochure)

Wisconsin, I’ve been inundated with hundreds upon hundreds of tweets, emails and messages from people, both Americans, but also folks from Germany, the UK, France, Pakistan and elsewhere. They have been overwhelmingly positive, heartfelt messages (with a few nastier comments thrown in, but I imagine that is par for the course). I’ve tried my best to keep up and respond to, and/or acknowledge the messages in some way, but once again: Thank you for all of your messages of support.

It has been inspiring for us to hear from all of you!

When we posed our questions to the NSA recruiters, we did not expect to go viral. But some time soon after tweeting out my post, my blog crashed. So did the blog PrivacySOS (follow @onekade!) who had posted about it. By next afternoon, Huffpo had picked it up. Numerous blogs, local sites and news sites also reported the story including: Business Insider, The Guardian, Firedoglake, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (the largest German-language daily in Germany), WORT Radio, NBC15 (Wisconsin’s local channel which also features Jesse Stavis @tolstoved. Means one who studies Tolstoy), one of the other students who spoke), WeAct Radio, Isthmus, Wisconsin Reporter, Wonkette, ActivistPost, Daily Kos and Truthdig, among others. There have been some Youtube videos posted as well.

I’ve made the audio downloadable as per several requests.

Here, I want to add some things I left out in my initial post (because I wasn’t expecting so many people to read it), make some corrections, and finally make some notes on a few things I thought were interesting:

1. The recruiters in question were seasoned employees of the NSA, not newbies. They told us that together, they had 55 years of experience with the NSA. The female recruiter worked on South Asia and implied that she was in a senior position in that office. That was the impression others I’ve spoken with also had. The male recruiter worked on China and Korea.

2. Anybody can be an “adversary.” That means foreign governments, allies, and American citizens. Anyone can become an adversary at any time as far as the American government is concerned. That means OWS anarchists, socialists, activists and leftists of various stripes, environmentalists or just stupid kids. That means Anwar al-Awlaki because his opinions were reprehensible, or his teenage son –also an American citizen– who was killed in a drone attack just because, or Tarek Mehanna, or Fahad Hashmi, or the Muslim Students’ Association, or Muslims generally, or me or you. As Atlantic Wire reported last month,

And the NSA would never abuse its awesome surveillance power, right? Wrong. In 2008, NSA workers told ABC News that they routinely eavesdropped on phone sex between troops serving overseas and their loved ones in America. They listened in on both satellite phone calls and calls from the phone banks in Iraq’s Green Zone where soldiers call home. Former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk described how a coworker would say, “Hey, check this out… there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out.” Faulk explained they would gossip about the best calls during breaks. “It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy.’”

In a word: creepy. But, what’s more worrisome to me than the eavesdropping on the pillow talk of American troops is the differential burden that the surveillance state levies on the marginalized. For example, it is not accidental that the names on my little list above are largely Muslim. When bureaucrats or the government or the police are managing large populations, they narrow down categories of presumed suspects through racial profiling. That is why stop-and-frisk disproportionately

Sent to me by dminkler.com

affects African-Americans and Latinos. And, it’s the same reason why –when hunting for ‘terrorists’– American security forces obsess over Islam, and the mainstream media tends to present Muslims as the face of terror even though white hate groups are on the rise. In fact in 2009, conservatives so heavily criticized the Department of Homeland Security when it “reported that white supremacy is the US’s biggest threat for domestic terror” (ThinkProgress) that Janet Napolitano ended up withdrawing its report.

So, there’s a racial politics to the surveillance state. The marginalized, poor and non-white are likely to bear the brunt of the state’s violence. But, in the end, it affects the entire social space. First of all, it has a chilling effect on dissent, particularly in these communities.

Secondly, for the police or the FBI or the NSA or the drones to come for some of us requires that the rest of us agree or at least, remain silent. I think that silence is produced: through the jingoism of television whether it’s the evening news or shows like NCIS, 24, or Homeland as well as through attacks on education, research and dissent. Finally, there are all the smaller ways of disciplining people into silence, things we even do to each other. You are told it’s rude to ask questions. This is not the right time. This is not the right space. Those are not the right people. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP.

That kind of social space kills independent thought. It produces thinking that is vehemently opposed to asking questions of NSA recruiters and by extension, the state. Such thinking is more angered by the whistle-blowing than what it reveals. To paraphrase a dead French guy badly, the surveillance state has to change people/populations into the kind of group that basically remains silent. That is what is needed first in order to make the unthinkable possible and finally, normal.

This is why, when they come for some of us, they actually come for all of us.

Therefore, a critical response can only succeed if it is able to understand the entire structure as a whole, that is, as long as we continue to draw distinctions between people that ought to be surveilled and those that should not be surveilled, we will fail. The point –and the real test– is learning to stand in solidarity with people who are not like you or me or us.

3. “The globe is our playground.” A little nugget of honesty about the worldview of the intelligence and military community.

4. They are just doing their jobs. I’m not sure why this is a defense. It didn’t work at Nuremberg. And, it shouldn’t work now. This is not to compare what is happening now as somehow equal to or better or worse than the German holocaust, but to underscore a philosophical point Hannah Arendt made about the nature of modern evil: It’s banal. That means it hasn’t got a pitchfork or horns sprouting out of its head. Rather, it is thousands of ordinary people just doing their jobs.

The question of whether they are “good” people and love their families or “bad” people is irrelevant here. The routinization of such work into small tasks turns the victims of that work into an

Sent to me by dminkler.com

abstraction or a mathematical problem for the people-just-doing-their-jobs. (Thanks to a commenter at the Guardian, the prior link is to a discussion of how the NSA reconfigures issues into an abstract mathematical problem that is then handed over to its mathematicians –none of whom actually know the real-world ‘problem’ that they are working on or to what end their mathematical solutions will be applied. For another instance, take the discussion of drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In the mainstream media, it is a discussion that lacks imagination and has been reduced to counting up the dead and categorizing them as “civilian” or “militant” –effectively turning it into a numbers problem: are we killing more of the “bad” ones than the “good” ones or vice versa? Needless to say, this is a terrible, even a horrifying kind of question.)

So, some people go on just doing their jobs and other people go on not asking questions for fear of appearing rude (Jesse talks about how the high school teacher sitting next to him during the session kept muttering about our ‘rudeness’), enraged, irrational, naive. This is how, together, we build monsters.

What has struck me about the anti-war movement in America in these last few years –perhaps it is different elsewhere and perhaps it was different before– is generally how polite it has been. How ironic to chant, “Whose streets! Our streets!” while politely walking into pens and free speech zones. How strange to demand an end to the war while politely conceding to the demands of the NYPD that protesters not use Central Park, that they only march on these streets and not those streets so that order can be maintained, so that things can carry on as if there were no protest at all. I am not arguing for blind rage, but I think anger –articulate, politically engaged, critically minded anger that holds the line– can be a virtue in these times.

5. Edward Snowden should’ve stuck it out instead of “running away.” This is interesting to me because I think this speaks to a kind of Christian imaginary: the hero as martyr, like Jesus, who should hang on the cross. That is apparently what will redeem the worth of these revelations. I am not saying that the people who make this claim are Christian; I am only observing that long after secularization, forms of Christian thought and habit hang around, and I think this is one of them. It is a very specific kind of typology for a hero, and one that only makes sense in a context where people (whether they be actually Christians or Muslims or Hindus or Jews or atheists or whatever) are habituated to the idea of Jesus’ martyrdom for our redemption. It’s out there in the social space. Hell, think about the end of Harry Potter.

6. To the people telling me to grow up, I’m 5 ft 1.75 inches, and I’m pretty sure I’m not growing any taller. And to those wondering if I’m a “foreigner,” well, if I am one, so are you. I do get how my name trips up your black-and-white world though. If it helps, you can call me Maddie.

Some links I thought were worth sharing:

Prism Break

Restore the Fourth

Mass Surveillance in America: A Timeline

Let’s not forget about the corporations who surveil us too.

PRISM by the numbers

Security Data-Mining and Other Forms of Witchcraft

Finally, once again thank you so much for your messages. It has been inspiring for us.

Onwards!
Tagged europe, muslims, nsa, race, secrecy, surveillance

Jul 02 2013
336 Comments
Multitudes, The Terror Wars
The NSA Comes Recruiting

Some students and I had an exchange with NSA recruiters today. The audio and a rough transcript below.

The NSA came to recruit at a language program at the University of Wisconsin where I am spending my summer learning a language. Two recruiters, a redhead who looked more like a middle-aged mother (listed as “NSA_F” below) and a portly, balding man (“NSA_M”), began to go through slides explaining the NSA and its work.

I had intended to go simply to hear how the NSA is recruiting at a moment when it’s facing severe challenges, what with the Edward Snowden and all. Dismayingly, however, a local high school teacher had thought it was good to bring 5 of his students to the session. They were smartly dressed, some of them even wearing ties as if there might be a job interview, young faces in a classroom of graduate students. They sat across from me at the roundtable. It was really their presence that goaded me–and I think a couple of other students–into an interaction with the recruiters.

Roughly half an hour into the session, the exchange below began. I began by asking them how they understood the term “adversary” since the surveillance seems to be far beyond those the American state classifies as enemies, and their understanding of that ties into the recruiters’ earlier statement that “the globe is our playground.” I ended up asking them whether being a liar was a qualification for the NSA because:

@Madi_Hatter a 2008 slideshow for college seniors considering CIA careers asked potential applicants: “Are you good at manipulating people?”

— David Mehnert (@Savants) July 2, 2013

The NSA’s instrumental understanding of language as well as its claustrophobic social world was readily apparent. One of the recruiters discussed how they tend to socialize after work, dressing up in costumes and getting drunk (referenced below). I can imagine that also exerts a lot of social pressure and works as a kind of social closure from which it would be difficult to escape. The last thing I want to point out –once again– their defense seems to be that it’s legal. What is legal is not just.

Someone else happened to record it on an iPhone, hence the audio quality. It’s been edited mainly to cut garbled audio or audio that wouldn’t have made sense and edit out questions and comments from people who didn’t explicitly say it was ok to post their audio.You’ll hear the sound drop out for a second to mark the cuts.

Rough Transcript

Me: You said earlier that the two tasks that you do: one is tracking down the communications of your adversaries and the other is protecting the communications of officials. So, do you consider Germany and the countries the US has been spying on to be adversaries or are you, right now, not speaking the truth?

Me: I mean do you consider European countries, etc, adversaries or are you, right now, not telling us the truth and lying when you say that actually you simply track – you keep focusing on that, but clearly the NSA is doing a lot more than that, as we know, so I’m just asking for a clarification.

NSA_F: I’m focusing on what our foreign intelligence requires of [garbled] so, I mean you know, You can define adversary as enemy and clearly, Germany is not our enemy but would we have foreign
national interest from an intelligence perspective on what’s going on across the globe. Yeah, we do. That’s our requirements that come to us as an intelligence community organization from the policymakers, from the military, from whoever –our global so–

Me: So adversary –adversaries you actually mean anybody and everybody. There’s nobody then by your definition that is not an adversary. Is that correct?

NSA_F: That is not correct.

Me: Who is not an adversary?

NSA_F: Well, ok. I can answer your questions but the reality is—

Me: No, I’m just trying to get a clarification because you told us what the two nodes of your work are but it’s not clear to me what that encompasses and you’re being fairly unclear at the moment. Apparently it’s somebody who’s not just an enemy. It’s something broader than that. And yet, it doesn’t seem to encompass everyone.

NSA_M: So for us, umm, our business is apolitical. Ok. We do not generate the intelligence requirements. They are levied on us so, if there is a requirement for foreign intelligence concerning this issue or this region or whatever then that is. If you wanna use the word adversary, you ca– we

This is not a tampon.

might use the word ‘target.’ That is what we are going after. That is the intelligence target that we are going after because we were given that requirement. Whether that’s adversary in a global war on terrorism sense or adversary in terms of national security interests or whatever – that’s for policymakers, I guess to make that determination. We respond to the requirements we are given, if that helps. And there’s a separation. As language analysts, we work on the SIG INT side of the house. We don’t really work on the information assurance (?) side of the house. That’s the guy setting up, protecting our communications.

Me: I’m just surprised that for language analysts, you’re incredibly imprecise with your language. And it just doesn’t seem to be clear. So, adversary is basically what any of your so-called “customers” as you call them –which is also a strange term to use for a government agency– decide if anybody wants, any part of the government wants something about some country, suddenly they are now internally considered or termed an ‘adversary.’ That’s what you seem to be saying.

[Pause]

NSA_M: I’m saying you can think about it using that term.

NSA_F: But the reality is it’s our government’s interest in what a foreign government or foreign country is doing.

Me: Right. So adversary can be anyone.

NSA_M: As long as they levy their requirement on us thru the right vehicle that exists for this and that it is defined in terms of a foreign intelligence requirement, there’s a national framework of foreign intelligence – what’s it called?

NSA_F: nipa

NSA_M: the national prioritization of intelligence framework or whatever that determines these are the issues that we are interested in, these are how they are prioritized.

Me: Your slide said adversary. It might be a bit better to say “target” but it’s not just a word game. The problem is these countries are fairly –I think Afghanistan is probably not shocked to realize they’re on the list. I think Germany seems to be quite shocked at what has been going on. This is not just a word game and you understand that as well as I do. So, it’s very strange that you’re selling yourself here in one particular fashion when it’s absolutely not true.

NSA_F: I don’t think we’re selling ourselves in an untrue fashion.

Me: Well, this is a recruiting session and you are telling us things that aren’t true. We also know that the NSA took down brochures and fact sheets after the Snowden revelations because those brochures also had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them. So, how are we supposed to believe what you’re saying?

[pause]

Student A (female): I have a lifestyle question that you seem to be selling. It sounds more like a colonial expedition. You know the “globe is our playground” is the words you used, the phrasing that you used and you seem to be saying that you can do your work. You can analyze said documents for your so-called customers but then you can go and get drunk and dress up and have fun without thinking of the repercussions of the info you’re analyzing has on the rest of the world. I also want to know what are the qualifications that one needs to become a whistleblower because that sounds like a much more interesting job. And I think the Edward Snowdens and the Bradley Mannings and Julian Assanges of the world will prevail ultimately.

NSA_M: I’m not sure what the –

Me: The question here is do you actually think about the ramifications of the work that you do, which is deeply problematic, or do you just dress up in costumes and get drunk? [This is in reference to an earlier comment made by the recruiters in which NSA_F said: they do heady work and then they go down to the bar and dress up in costume and do karaoke. I tweeted it earlier.]

NSA_M: That’s why, as I was saying, reporting the info in the right context is so important because the consequences of bad political decisions by our policymakers is something we all suffer from.

Student A: And people suffer from the misinformation that you pass along so you should take responsibility as well.

NSA_M: We take it very seriously that when we give info to our policy makers that we do give it to them in the right context so that they can make the best decision with the best info available.

Student B: Is that what Clapper was doing when he perjured himself in front of Congress? Was he giving accurate information when he said we do not collect any intelligence on the US citizens that it’s only occasionally unintentionally or was he perjuring himself when he made a statement before Congress under oath that he later declared to be erroneous or at least, untruthful the least truthful answer? How do you feel personally having a boss whose comfortable perjuring himself in front of Congress?

NSA_F: Our director is not general Clapper.

Student B: General Alexander also lied in front of Congress.

NSA_F: I don’t know about that.

Student B: Probably because access to the Guardian is restricted on the NSA’s computers. I am sure they don’t encourage people like you to actually think about these things. Thank God for a man like Edward Snowden who your organization is now part of a manhunt trying to track down, trying to put him in a little hole somewhere for the rest of his life. Thank god they exist.

Student A: and why are you denigrating anything else with language? We don’t do this; we don’t do that; we don’t read cultural artifacts, poetry? There are other things to do with language other than joining this group, ok. [last line of this comment was directed at the high school students.]

NSA_M: This job is not for everybody. Academia is a great career for people with language.

Me: So is this job for liars? Is this what you’re saying? Because, clearly, you’re not able to give us forthright answers. Given the way the way the NSA has behaved, given the fact that we’ve been lied to as Americans, given the fact that fact sheets have been pulled down because they clearly had untruths in them, given the fact that Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress — is that a qualification for being in the NSA? Do you have to be a good liar?

NSA_F: I don’t consider myself to be a liar in any fashion and the reality is I mean, this was billed as if you are potentially interested in an NSA career come to our session. If you’re not, if this is your personal belief and you’re understanding of what has been presented then there is nothing that says you need to come and apply and work for us. We are not here — our role as NSA employees is not to represent NSA the things that are in the press right now about the NSA. That’s not our role at all. That’s not my area of expertise. I have not read–

Me: Right, but you’re here recruiting so you’re selling the organization. I mean I’m less interested in what your specialized role is within in the NSA. I don’t care. The fact is you’re here presenting a public face for the NSA and you’re trying to sell the organization to people that are as young as high schoolers and trying to tell us that this is an attractive option in a context in which we clearly know that the NSA has been telling us complete lies. So, I’m wondering is that a qualification?

NSA_F: I don’t believe the NSA is telling complete lies. And I do believe that you know, people can, you can read a lot of different things that are portrayed as fact and that doesn’t make them fact just because they’re in newspapers.

Student A: Or intelligence reports.

NSA_F: That’s not really our purpose here today and I think if you’re not interested in that. There are people here who are probably interested in a language career.

Me: The trouble is we can’t opt out of NSA surveillance and we don’t get answers. It’s not an option. You’re posing it as a choice like ‘oh you know people who are interested can just sit here and those of us who are not interested can just leave.’ If I could opt out of NSA surveillance and it was no longer my business, that would be fine. But it is my business because all of us are being surveilled so we’re here.

NSA_F: That is incorrect. That is not our job. That is not our business.

Me: That doesn’t seem to be incorrect given the leaks. Right, and the NSA has not been able to actually put out anything that is convincing or contrary to that.

[pause]

Student A: I don’t understand what’s wrong with having some accountability.

NSA_F: We have complete accountability and there is absolutely nothing that we can or have done without approval of the 3 branches of the government. The programs that we’re enacting–

Student B: Did you read the NY Times? Did you read about the illegal wiretapping? Why are you lying?

NSA_M: Did you read the Senate judiciary report that said there have only been 15 (?) instances, and they were all documented and done correctly by the FISA courts–

Student B: I’d love to read the opinion of the FISA court that says that this program one of the NSA’s programs was violating the 4th amendment right of massive amounts of Americans, but it’s a big ‘ol secret and only people like you who will not talk with their wives when they get home about what they do all day are able to…[garbled]…protecting us from the ‘terrorist threat’, but let’s let everyone here hear more information about karaoke.

Find this story at 8 July 2013

Staff from the National Security Agency got more than they bargained for when they attempted to recruit students to their organisation earlier this week …

A demonstrator holds a sign with a photograph of Edward Snowden during 4 July celebrations in Boston, Massachusetts. Photograph: Brian Snyder/REUTERS

On Tuesday, the National Security Agency called at the University of Wisconsin on a recruitment drive.

Attending the session was Madiha R Tahir, a journalist studying a language course at the university. She asked the squirming recruiters a few uncomfortable questions about the activities of NSA: which countries the agency considers to be “adversaries”, and if being a good liar is a qualification for getting a job at the NSA.

She has posted a recording of the session on Soundcloud, which you can hear above, and posted a rough transcript on her blog, The Mob and the Multitude. Here are some highlights.

The session begins …

Tahir: “Do you consider Germany and the countries that the NSA has been spying upon to be adversaries, or are you, right now, not speaking the truth?”

Recruiter 1: “You can define adversary as ‘enemy’ and, clearly, Germany is not our enemy. But would we have foreign national interests from an intelligence perspective on what’s going on across the globe? Yeah, we do.”

Tahir: “So by ‘adversaries’, you actually mean anybody and everybody. There is nobody, then, by your definition that is not an adversary. Is that correct?”

Recruiter 1: “That is not correct.”

Recruiter 2: “… for us, our business is apolitical, OK? We do not generate the intelligence requirements. They are levied on us … We might use the word ‘target’.”

Tahir: “I’m just surprised that for language analysts, you’re incredibly imprecise with your language. And it just doesn’t seem to be clear.”

Later …

Tahir: “… this is a recruiting session and you are telling us things that aren’t true. And we also know that the NSA took down brochures and factsheets after the Snowden revelations because those factsheets also had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them, right? So how are we supposed to believe what you’re saying?”

Even later …

Tahir: “I think the question here is do you actually think about the ramifications of the work that you do, which is deeply problematic, or do you just dress up in costumes and get drunk?” [A reference to an earlier comment the recruiter made about NSA employees working hard and going to the bar to do karaoke.]

Recruiter 2: “… reporting the info in the right context is so important because the consequences of bad political decisions by our policymakers is something we all suffer from.”

Unnamed female student: “And people suffer from the misinformation that you pass along so you should take responsibility as well.”

Later still …

Male student: “General Alexander [head of the NSA] also lied in front of Congress.”

Recruiter 1: “I don’t believe that he did.”

Male student: “Probably because access to the Guardian is restricted on the Department of Defence’s computers. I am sure they don’t encourage people like you to actually think about these things. Thank God for a man like Edward Snowden who your organisation is now part of a manhunt trying to track down, trying to put him in a little hole somewhere for the rest of his life. Thank God they exist.”

And finally …

Recruiter 2: “This job isn’t for everybody, you know …”

Tahir: “So is this job for liars? Is this what you’re saying? Because, clearly, you’re not able to give us forthright answers. I mean, given the way the NSA has behaved, given the fact that we’ve been lied to as Americans, given the fact that factsheets have been pulled down because they clearly had untruths in them, given the fact that Clapper and Alexander lied to Congress – is that a qualification for being in the NSA? Do you have to be a good liar?”

Recruiter 1: I don’t believe the NSA is telling complete lies. And I do believe that you know, I mean people can, you can read a lot of different things that are, um, portrayed as fact and that doesn’t make them fact just because they’re in newspapers.”

Unnamed female student: “Or intelligence reports.”

Recruiter 1: “That’s not really our purpose here today and I think if you’re not interested in that … there are people here who are probably interested in a language career.”

Bim Adewunmi
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 July 2013 13.15 BST

Find this story at 5 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

If the revelations about the American espionage program Prism set off a chorus of indignation in Europe, France itself protested only weakly. For two excellent reasons: Paris already knew about it – and it”s doing exactly the same thing. Le Monde is able to disclose that the General Directorate of External Security (the DGSE, or special services) systematically collects the electromagnetic signals emitted by computers and telephones in France, and the flow of signals between France and countries abroad: the entirety of our communications are being spied on. All of our email messages, SMS messages, itemised phone bills and connections to FaceBook and Twitter are then stored for years.
If this immense data base was used just by the DGSE, which operates only outside French borders, it would already be illegal. But the six other intelligence services – among them the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence, the customs service and the Tracfin anti-money-laundering service – delve into this base daily for the data of interest to them. This takes place discreetly, on the margins of legality and and beyond any serious control. Politicians are perfectly aware of it, but secrecy is the rule.

A CLANDESTINE SYSTEM

This French Big Brother, a little brother of the American services, is clandestine. Yet its existence appears discreetly in parliamentary documents. In a report issued on April 30, the eight deputies and senators in the parliamentary intelligence delegation note that “progress has been made since 2008 in the mutualisation of capabilities, notably regarding intelligence of electromagnetic origin, effected by the DGSE for the benefit of the entire intelligence community.”

The parliamentarians propose to go still further, to “reinforce the capabilities exploited by the DGSE” and to “consolidate the access of other services to the capabilities mutualised by the DGSE.”

THE TARGET: “METADATA”

The intelligence services are not looking for the content of the messages, but rather their context. It is more interesting to know who is speaking to whom than to record what they are saying. More than phone tapping, it”s the technical data – the “metadata” – that is being combed through.

The DGSE thus collects the itemised telephone bills of millions of subscribers – the names of the callers and the called, the place, the date, the duration, the weight of the message. The same goes for email (with the possibility of reading the title of the message), SMS messages, faxes… And all activity on the Internet that takes place via Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo… It’s what the parliamentary intelligence delegation very aptly calls “intelligence of electromagnetic origin”, the equivalent of the NSA’s SigInt (signals intelligence).

This metadata may be used to draw huge graphs of links among people based on their digital activity, and it’s been going on for years. The idea is to sketch out a kind of diary of each person’s activity on both telephone and computer. When an interesting group has been identified, it then becomes the responsibility of the intelligence services to use more intrusive techniques, like wire-tapping or police tails.

A SUPERCOMPUTER ON BOULEVARD MORTIER IN PARIS

This system is obviously of great value in the fight against terrorism. But it allows spying on anyone, any time. The DGSE collects billions of billions of units of data, which are compressed and stored on three floors in the basement of the DGSE headquarters on Boulevard Mortier in Paris.

Bernard Barbier, technical director of the DGSE since 2006, has spoken publicly about this system on two occasions – in 2010 at a symposium on the security of information and communications technology, and to the Association of Reservists in Encryption and Information Security (Arsci). His comments were reported on a few specialised sites, including Bug Brother, a blog by Jean-Marc Manach on lemonde.fr. Mr. Barbier spoke of “the development of a calculator based on FPGA” – Field Programmable Gate Array, or an integrated circuit that may be programmed for logical functions – that is “probably the biggest data processing center in Europe after the English”, capable of managing dozens of petaoctets of data, in other words dozens of millions of gigaoctets. The heat emitted by the computers is sufficient to heat all the buildings of the DGSE…

France is said to be among the Top 5 in computing capacity, after the United States, Britain, Israel and China. Mr. Barbier estimated the number of connections picked up by the system at 4 billion in 2013, with a flow of about 1 billion simultaneous communications. “Today, our targets are the networks of the public at large,” the director said at the time, “because they are used by terrorists.”

The DGSE heads “the strongest team of crypto-mathematicians” in France, penetrates computer systems – and of course collects millions of units of personal data.

“MUTUALISED” INTELLIGENCE

The other French intelligence services have access to this gigantic data base, which is soberly called the “mutualisation infrastructure”. They include the DGSE of course, but also the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM); the Directorate of Protection and Security of Defense (DPSD); the Central Directorate of Internal Security (DCRI); the Directorate of National Intelligence and Customs Investigations (DNRED); Tracfin, the anti-money-laundering unit; and even the small intelligence service of the police headquarters in Paris.

According to Senate reports, 80% of the resources of the technical management of the DGSE are used by these other intelligence services. Each supplies the name of the target of their investigation to the DGSE, which replies “hit” or “no hit” according to whether the target appears in the data base or not. Then the services of the DGSE make the metadata intelligible with the addition of classical intelligence.

Requests for consultation go far beyond just terrorism and the defence of France’s economic property. The very vague wording – protection of national security – makes it possible notably to identify the entourage of politicians at the highest level of the state, whatever their position and the nature of the links under surveillance.

ABSENCE OF MONITORING

The system is perfectly illegal – or “a-legal”, as the chief of one of the intelligence agencies puts it. According to the National Commission for Information Technology and Freedom (CNIL), the French agency in charge of protecting personal data, “The legal system governing security interceptions forbids the establishment by the intelligence services of a procedure like Prism.” It adds : “Each request for the requisition or interception of data must be targeted and may not be carried out massively in terms of the quantity or the time period. Such practices thus have no legal foundation.” The CNIL can neither confirm or deny the existence of the French system – it moveover does not have access to the files of the DGSE or the DCRI.

To be sure, there is a strict legal framework for security interceptions, which are to be authorised by the prime minister, on the recommendation of the National Consultative Commission for Security Interceptions, but this framework did not forecess the massive stocking of technical data by the secret services. “We’ve been operating is a zone of virtual autorisation for years”, confided a former chief of one of the services. “And each agency is quite content with this freedom, which is possible thanks to the legal vagueness surrounding metadata.” A parliamentarian confirmed that “a large portion of the electronic connections in France are effectively intercepted and stocked by the DGSE.” But, officially, the “mutualisation infrastructure” does not exist.

(Translated by Meg Bortin)
LE MONDE | 04.07.2013 à 17h06 • Mis à jour le 04.07.2013 à 17h24 |
Par Jacques Follorou et Franck Johannès

Find this story at 4 July 2013

© Le Monde.fr

Die Briten tun es, die Amerikaner sowieso – und jetzt stellt sich heraus: Auch die Franzosen greifen laut “Le Monde” massenhaft Kommunikationsdaten ab. Der Auslandsgeheimdienst späht systematisch Telefonate, Mails und soziale Netzwerke aus.

Paris – Frankreich hat womöglich seit Donnerstag seinen eigenen Datenskandal: Die Tageszeitung “Le Monde” berichtet auf ihrer Website, der französische Auslandsgeheimdienst DGSE greife in ähnlicher Art und Weise Kommunikationsdaten ab wie der US-Geheimdienst NSA. “Enthüllungen über den französischen Big Brother”, hat das Blatt seine Geschichte überschrieben.

Der DGSE fange Signale von Computern und Telefonen in Frankreich ab, betroffen seien auch Verbindungen zwischen Frankreich und dem Ausland. Zwar würden nicht die Inhalte von Gesprächen ausgeforscht, heißt es in dem Bericht. Es gehe vielmehr darum, eine Übersicht, eine Art Karte zu erstellen, wer mit wem kommuniziere.

Laut der Zeitung, die sich auf namentlich nicht genannte Geheimdienstquellen sowie offizielle Äußerungen von Geheimdienstmitarbeitern beruft, handelt es sich um illegale Eingriffe. E-Mails, SMS, Verbindungsdaten und die Nutzung von Facebook und Twitter etwa würden über Jahre gespeichert.

Das Vorgehen ähnelt dem der NSA, das der SPIEGEL enthüllt hatte. Demnach überwacht die NSA in Deutschland monatlich rund eine halbe Milliarde Telefonate, E-Mails oder SMS – systematisch wird ein Großteil der Telefon- und Internetverbindungsdaten kontrolliert und gespeichert. Außerdem überwachen die Amerikaner offenbar gezielt EU-Vertretungen. Auch in Großbritannien sorgte ein ähnlicher Abhörskandal für Aufsehen.

Eine Stellungnahme der DGSE gibt es bisher nicht. Laut “Le Monde” zweifelt die für die Kontrolle solcher Spionagemaßnahmen zuständige Kommission den Bericht allerdings an und versicherte, der Geheimdienst arbeite im Einklang mit den Gesetzen. Die einzige Einrichtung, die Kommunikationsdaten sammle, sei eine Regierungsstelle, die dem Premierminister unterstellt sei und deren Aufgabe es sei, Sicherheitslücken aufzuspüren.

Die Vorwürfe in dem Zeitungsbericht sind allerdings sehr konkret. Der Dienst DGSE horte die Daten im Keller seines Hauptquartiers in Paris, schreibt “Le Monde”. Die Wärme, die das Rechenzentrum ausstrahle, reiche aus, um das gesamte Gebäude zu heizen.

Die übrigen sieben französischen Geheimdienste, darunter Inlandsdienste, Experten für Geldwäsche und Zollfahnder, hätten Zugriff auf die Daten. Diesen anderen Diensten sei es dann freigestellt, sich in als verdächtig aufgefallene Kommunikation einzuklinken und etwa Gespräche abzuhören.

ffr/Reuters/Mitarbeit: Valérie Wagner
04. Juli 2013, 18:25 Uhr

Find this story at 4 July 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

France’s foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.

The operation is “outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision”, Le Monde says.

Other French intelligence agencies allegedly access the data secretly.

It is not clear however whether the DGSE surveillance goes as far as Prism. So far French officials have not commented on Le Monde’s allegations.

The DGSE allegedly analyses the “metadata” – not the contents of e-mails and other communications, but the data revealing who is speaking to whom, when and where.

Connections inside France and between France and other countries are all monitored, Le Monde reports.

The paper alleges the data is being stored on three basement floors of the DGSE building in Paris. The secret service is the French equivalent of Britain’s MI6.

The operation is designed, say experts, to uncover terrorist cells. But the scale of it means that “anyone can be spied on, any time”, Le Monde says.

There is a continuing international furore over revelations that the US has been systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

The French government has sharply criticised the US spying, which allegedly included eavesdropping on official EU communications.

The scale of surveillance by America’s National Security Agency (NSA) emerged from classified intelligence documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The UK spy agency GCHQ is reported to run a similarly vast data collection operation, co-operating closely with the NSA.
4 July 2013 Last updated at 14:11 GMT

Find this story at 4 July 2013

BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

Der deutsche Geheimdienst wusste mehr über die Umtriebe der NSA in Deutschland als bisher bekannt. “Die stecken unter einer Decke”, sagt Edward Snowden in einem Interview im SPIEGEL. Auch gegen die Briten erhebt der Whistleblower Vorwürfe.

Seit Wochen hält Edward Snowden die Geheimdienstwelt mit immer neuen Enthüllungen in Atem. Ob die amerikanische NSA oder die GCHQ aus Großbritannien, Systeme wie Prism oder Tempora: Der Whistleblower lässt wohldosiert Skandalöses über die internationalen Schnüffeldienste durchsickern. In einem Interview, das der SPIEGEL in seiner neuen Ausgabe veröffentlicht, beschreibt Snowden die Nähe zwischen US- und deutschem Geheimdienst – und die Datensammelwut der britischen Spione.

In Deutschland hatten die Berichte über die umfangreichen Spionage-Tätigkeiten der USA für Überraschung und Entsetzen gesorgt – auch unter Politkern. Die Version von der vollkommenen Unwissenheit der Deutschen will Snowden so nicht gelten lassen. Im Gegenteil: Die NSA-Leute steckten “unter einer Decke mit den Deutschen”, erklärte der Whistleblower dem amerikanischen Chiffrier-Experten Jacob Appelbaum und der Dokumentarfilmerin Laura Poitras mit Hilfe verschlüsselter E-Mails, kurz bevor er weltweit bekannt wurde.

Snowden beschreibt die Zusammenarbeit der Geheimdienste detailliert. In der NSA gebe es für solche Kooperationen mit anderen Ländern eine eigene Abteilung, das sogenannte Foreign Affairs Directorate. Dabei enthüllt er ein bemerkenswertes Detail zum Schutz von Entscheidungsträgern: Die Zusammenarbeit werde so organisiert, dass Behörden anderer Länder “ihr politisches Führungspersonal vor dem ‘Backlash’ schützen” können, falls herauskommen sollte, wie “massiv die Privatsphäre von Menschen missachtet wird”, sagt der US-Amerikaner.

Nach SPIEGEL-Recherchen ist die Zusammenarbeit zwischen der NSA und dem Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) offenbar tatsächlich deutlich intensiver als bislang bekannt. So lieferte die NSA die Analyse-Tools für den Lauschangriff des BND auf ausländische Datenströme, die durch Deutschland führen. Im Fokus des BND steht unter anderem die Nahost-Strecke, über die Datenpakete etwa aus Krisenregionen verlaufen.

BND-Chef Gerhard Schindler hat den Mitgliedern des Parlamentarischen Kontrollgremiums die Zusammenarbeit mit der NSA bestätigt. (Mehr zum Thema finden Sie hier)

Doch nicht nur die Umtriebe des BND stehen im Fokus des Gesprächs mit Snowden. Auch über den britischen Geheimdienst Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) gibt der 30-Jährige weitere neue Details preis. So läuft in Großbritannien ein Versuch der Komplettdatenspeicherung. Das Tempora-System der Briten sei “der erste ‘ich speichere alles’-Ansatz (‘full take’) in der Geheimdienstwelt”, sagt Snowden.

Daten bleiben drei Tage im Pufferspeicher

Der Umfang dieses “Full Take”-Systems ist gewaltig. Im Rahmen von Tempora werden dem Whistleblower und dem “Guardian” zufolge Verbindungsdaten bis zu 30 Tage, aber auch alle Inhalte bis zu drei Tage lang gespeichert, in einem sogenannten Pufferspeicher. “Dieser Zwischenspeicher macht nachträgliche Überwachung möglich, ihm entgeht kein einziges Bit”.

Auf Rückfrage, ob man dieser Totalerfassung aller Internetkommunikation entgehen könne, antwortet er: “Na ja, wenn man die Wahl hat, sollte man niemals Informationen durch britische Leitungen oder über britische Server schicken.”

Entgehen könne man dem Zugriff durch die GCHQ nur, wenn man keine Informationen über britische Leitungen oder britische Server schicke, so Snowden. Deutsche Internet-Experten halten dies in der Praxis allerdings für kaum durchführbar.

Metadaten liefern Orientierung im Datenmeer

Der Versuch der Komplettdatenspeicherung ist bemerkenswert, war doch bisher im Zusammenhang mit den Abhörskandalen meist von Metadaten die Rede. Auch Snowden betont in der aktuellen Ausgabe des SPIEGEL noch einmal wie wichtig die Metadaten – etwa Telefonnummern, IP-Adressen und Verbindungszeiten – eigentlich sind. Und wie sie genutzt werden. Die Metadaten seien meist “wertvoller als der Inhalt der Kommunikation”, sagt Snowden.

Wer die Metadaten hat, weiß, wer wann mit wem kommuniziert hat. Auf dieser Basis lässt sich dann entscheiden, welche Datensätze, welche Kommunikationsinhalte man sich genauer ansehen möchte. “Die Metadaten sagen einem, was man vom breiten Datenstrom tatsächlich haben will”, so Snowden im SPIEGEL.

So wird nach und nach klar, wie die Überwachungsprogramme von NSA und GCHQ, Prism, Tempora und Boundless Informant zusammenwirken:

Die Metadaten-Abfrage gibt Analysten Hinweise, für welche Kommunikationen und Inhalte sie sich vielleicht interessieren könnten, dann, sagt Snowden sinngemäß, lässt sich per Knopfdruck festlegen, dass von einer Person oder einer Gruppe alle verfügbaren Inhalte im Volltext mitgeschnitten oder anderweitig erfasst werden. Zum Zielobjekt könne man aber auch “aufgrund des eigenen Facebook-Profils oder der eigenen E-Mails” werden.

07. Juli 2013, 19:31 Uhr

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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed German secret services profited from the spying and tapping operations of their USA colleagues. But whistleblower Edward Snowden says the extent of the cooperation was hidden from politicians.

Der Spiegel magazine reported over the weekend that Snowden, currently hiding in a Moscow airport, had said the US secret service was “in bed with the Germans.”

His assertion was confirmed by Merkel who said of the spying programme: “We as Germans got a lot of information.” Speaking to a Christian Democratic Union party conference on Saturday she said terrorist attacks in Germany had been foiled thanks to timely information from the Americans.

“But this does not justify bugging each other’s embassies. And that is why I say bugging really doesn’t work between friends,” she added.

Referring to Monday’s talks between the European Union and the US about free trade agreements, opposition Social Democratic Party’s parliamentary party leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he expected “clear and dependable guarantees that there will be no further spying operations – before the assumption of negotiations.”

Snowden is in Moscow avoiding American authorities who want to prosecute him for leaking details of the National Security Agency (NSA) spying operation known as Prism, the exposure of which has caused international scandal.

He told US cipher expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras that security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic had organized their cooperation so that they could protect their “political leadership from any backlash”, Der Spiegel reported.

The pair had sent Snowden questions shortly before he revealed the Prism operation in early June, but his answers have only now been published.

“We warn the others when someone who we want to get, uses one of their airports – and they deliver then to us,” said Snowden.

“The other authorities don’t ask us where we have the evidence from, and we don’t ask them anything.” This protects politicians from having to take any responsibility should it be revealed how “massively the privacy of people is being abused,” he said.

Published: 8 Jul 13 15:00 CET
The Local/DPA/hc

Find this story at 8 July 2013

© www.thelocal.de

The fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged on Sunday that the National Security Agency was “in bed together” with German intelligence despite claims by politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition that they were shocked by the extent of American spying in Germany.

In an interview with Der Spiegel , Snowden claimed that the NSA provided German intelligence, with analysis tools to help the organisation monitor data flowing through Germany. “The NSA people are in bed together with the Germans,”” he told the magazine.

He added that the NSA’s foreign affairs directorate, which is responsible for relations with other countries, had set up a system whereby political leaders “could be insulated” from the backlash if spying became public and helped to play down how grievously they were “violating global privacy.”

Snowden also claimed to shed further light on the extent of British spying activities saying that the UK’s GCHQ was the only organisation which operated a so-called “full take” system of information monitoring which stored all data crossing its path for a total of 30 days.

The allegations seemed certain to cause further shock waves in Germany, where the issue of NSA spying is fast turning into a thorny political campaign issue in the run up to the September general election.

German MPs have expressed outrage at the extent of British and American spying on German internet and phone traffic and NSA spying on European Union offices. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Interior Minister is scheduled to fly to Washington this week to obtain an “explanation” from the US authorities.

Ms Merkel has herself complained that the extent of US and British spying is reminiscent of the Cold War and demanded that it be brought under control. However it is well known that German intelligence has been able to prevent planned terror attacks on German soil with the help of NSA intelligence.

Snowden is believed to be still holed up in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. He has been trying to find a country to give him sanctuary since arriving there from Hong Kong on June 23. However his Russian hosts appear to be becoming irked by his continued presence.

On Sunday Alexei Pushkov, an influential Russian MP who often speaks for the Kremlin said he would encourage Snowden to accept Venezuela’s recent offer of asylum, saying it was probably his “last chance”.

Tony Paterson
Sunday, 7 July 2013

Find this story at 7 July 2013

© independent.co.uk

The German foreign intelligence service knew more about the activities of the NSA in Germany than previously known. “They’re in bed together,” Edward Snowden claims in an interview in SPIEGEL. The whistleblower also lodges fresh allegations against the British.

For weeks now, officials at intelligence services around the world have been in suspense as one leak after another from whistleblower Edward Snowden has been published. Be it America’s National Security Agency, Britain’s GCHQ or systems like Prism or Tempora, he has been leaking scandalous information about international spying agencies. In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain’s acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

In Germany, reports of the United States’ vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn’t buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are “in bed together with the Germans,” the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.

Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. The partnerships are organized in a way so that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” in the event it becomes public “how grievously they’re violating global privacy,” the former NSA employee says.

Intensive Cooperation with Germany

SPIEGEL reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is more intensive than previously known. The NSA, for example, provides “analysis tools” for the BND to monitor signals from foreign data streams that travel through Germany. Among the BND’s focuses are the Middle East route through which data packets from crisis regions travel.

BND head Gerhard Schindler confirmed the partnership during a recent meeting with members of the German parliament’s control committee for intelligence issues.

But it’s not just the BND’s activities that are the focus of the interview with Snowden.

The 30-year-old also provides new details about Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He says that Britain’s Tempora system is the signal intelligence community’s first “full-take Internet buffer,” meaning that it saves all of the data passing through the country.

Data Remains Buffered for Three Days

The scope of this “full take” system is vast. According to Snowden and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Tempora stores communications data for up to 30 days and saves all content for up to three days in a so-called Internet buffer. “It snarfs everything in a rolling buffer to allow retroactive investigation without missing a single bit,” Snowden says.

Asked if it is possible to get around this total surveillance of all Internet communication, he says: “As a general rule, so long as you have any choice at all, you should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances.”

In other words, Snowden says, one can only prevent GCHQ from accessing their data if they do not send any information through British Internet lines or servers. However, German Internet experts believe this would be almost impossible in practice.

Metadata Provide Orientation in Sea of Data

The attempt to conduct total data retention is noteworthy because most of the leaks so far in the spying scandal have pertained to so-called metadata. In the interview, Snowden reiterates just how important metadata — which can include telephone numbers, IP addresses and connection times, for example — really are. “In most cases, content isn’t as valuable as metadata,” Snowden says.

Those in possession of metadata can determine who has communicated with whom. And using the metadata, they can determine which data sets and communications content they would like to take a closer look at. “The metadata tells you what out of their data stream you actually want,” Snowden says.

It is becoming increasingly clear to recognize the way in which surveillance programs from the NSA and GCHQ — including Prism, Tempora and Boundless Informant — cooperate. The metadata provides analysts with tips on which communications and content might be interesting. Then, Snowden says, with the touch of a button they can then retrieve or permanently collect the full content of communications that have already been stored for a specific person or group, or they can collect future communications. But a person can also be “selected for targeting based on, for example, your Facebook or webmail content.”

07/07/2013 07:30 PM

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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Welche Macht hat die US-Lauschbehörde NSA? Nach SPIEGEL-Recherchen ist die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Amerikanern und BND offenbar intensiver als bislang bekannt. Geheimdienst-Enthüller Edward Snowden sagt in einem Interview: Die NSA-Leute steckten “unter einer Decke mit den Deutschen”.

Hamburg – Die NSA kontrolliert das Internet, hat Edward Snowden enthüllt. Selbst die engen Verbündeten werden von den USA ausgespäht. Doch die Deutschen wollen davon nichts gewusst haben.

Die NSA-Leute steckten “unter einer Decke mit den Deutschen”, erklärt Edward Snowden in einem Interview, das der SPIEGEL in seiner neuen Ausgabe veröffentlicht. Nach Angaben des Geheimdienst-Enthüllers gebe es in der US-Lauschbehörde NSA das “Foreign Affairs Directorate”, das zuständig für Kooperationen mit anderen Ländern sei.

Die Zusammenarbeit werde so organisiert, dass Behörden anderer Länder “ihr politisches Führungspersonal vor dem ‘Backlash’ schützen” können, falls herauskommen sollte, wie “massiv die Privatsphäre von Menschen missachtet wird”, sagt der US-Amerikaner. Und weiter: Telekommunikationsfirmen würden mit der NSA kooperieren, Personen würden normalerweise “aufgrund etwa des Facebook-Profils oder der eigenen E-Mails als Zielobjekt markiert”.

Das Interview wurde von dem amerikanischen Chiffrier-Experten Jacob Appelbaum und der Dokumentarfilmerin Laura Poitras mit Hilfe verschlüsselter E-Mails geführt, kurz bevor Snowden als Whistleblower weltweit bekannt wurde.

Snowden sitzt wahrscheinlich noch immer im Transitbereich des Moskauer Flughafens fest. Inzwischen haben ihm Venezuela und Nicaragua Asyl angeboten. Doch seit der Offerte am Samstag habe man keinen Kontakt mit Snowden gehabt, sagte der Außenminister Venezuelas Elías Jaua.

BND-Chef bestätigt Zusammenarbeit mit der NSA

Nach SPIEGEL-Recherchen ist die Zusammenarbeit zwischen der NSA und dem Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) offenbar deutlich intensiver als bislang bekannt. So lieferte die NSA die Analyse-Tools für den Lauschangriff des BND auf ausländische Datenströme, die durch Deutschland führen. Im Fokus des BND steht unter anderem die Nahost-Strecke, über die Datenpakete etwa aus Krisenregionen verlaufen.

Insgesamt zieht der BND nach SPIEGEL-Recherchen aus fünf digitalen Knotenpunkten Informationen, die in Pullach analysiert werden. BND-Chef Gerhard Schindler bestätigte den Mitgliedern des Parlamentarischen Kontrollgremiums die Zusammenarbeit mit der NSA.

Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, das für Spionageabwehr zuständig ist, untersucht derzeit, wo die NSA Zugriff auf den Internetverkehr nimmt, der durch Deutschland geht. Eine erste Analyse ergab keine Klarheit, sagte der Präsident des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Hans-Georg Maaßen. “Wir haben bislang keine Erkenntnisse, dass Internetknotenpunkte in Deutschland durch die NSA ausspioniert wurden”, sagte Maaßen dem SPIEGEL.

Neuer Stützpunkt in Wiesbaden

Ein neuer Stützpunkt der US-Armee auf dem Boden der Bundesrepublik, den auch die NSA nutzen soll, ist mit den deutschen Behörden abgesprochen. In Wiesbaden wird derzeit ein neues “Consolidated Intelligence Center” errichtet. Für 124 Millionen Dollar entstehen abhörsichere Büros und ein Hightech-Kontrollzentrum. Sobald die Anlage in Wiesbaden fertiggestellt ist, wird ein bislang genutzter Komplex bei Darmstadt geschlossen.

Die Amerikaner vertrauen bei dem Neubau in Wiesbaden nur auf Landsleute. Die Baufirmen müssen aus den USA stammen und sicherheitsüberprüft sein. Und selbst die Materialien sollen aus den Vereinigten Staaten importiert und auf ihrem Weg nach Deutschland überwacht werden.

07. Juli 2013, 08:17 Uhr

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© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Q – What is Project ECHELON?

ECHELON is the term popularly used for an automated global interception and relay system operated by the intelligence agencies in five nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (it is believed that ECHELON is the code name for the portion of the system that intercepts satellite-based communications). While the United States National Security Agency (NSA) takes the lead, ECHELON works in conjunction with other intelligence agencies, including the Australian Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). It is believed that ECHELON also works with Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the agencies of other allies of the United States, pursuant to various treaties. (1)

These countries coordinate their activities pursuant to the UKUSA agreement, which dates back to 1947. The original ECHELON dates back to 1971. However, its capabilities and priorities have expanded greatly since its formation. According to reports, it is capable of intercepting and processing many types of transmissions, throughout the globe. In fact, it has been suggested that ECHELON may intercept as many as 3 billion communications everyday, including phone calls, e-mail messages, Internet downloads, satellite transmissions, and so on. (2) The ECHELON system gathers all of these transmissions indiscriminately, then distills the information that is most heavily desired through artificial intelligence programs. Some sources have claimed that ECHELON sifts through an estimated 90 percent of all traffic that flows through the Internet. (3)

However, the exact capabilities and goals of ECHELON remain unclear. For example, it is unknown whether ECHELON actually targets domestic communications. Also, it is apparently very difficult for ECHELON to intercept certain types of transmissions, particularly fiber communications.

Q – How does ECHELON work?

ECHELON apparently collects data in several ways. Reports suggest it has massive ground based radio antennae to intercept satellite transmissions. In addition, some sites reputedly are tasked with tapping surface traffic. These antennae reportedly are in the United States, Italy, England, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and several other places. (4)

Similarly, it is believed that ECHELON uses numerous satellites to catch “spillover” data from transmissions between cities. These satellites then beam the information down to processing centers on the ground. The main centers are in the United States (near Denver), England (Menwith Hill), Australia, and Germany. (5)

According to various sources, ECHELON also routinely intercepts Internet transmissions. The organization allegedly has installed numerous “sniffer” devices. These “sniffers” collect information from data packets as they traverse the Internet via several key junctions. It also uses search software to scan for web sites that may be of interest. (6)

Furthermore, it is believed that ECHELON has even used special underwater devices which tap into cables that carry phone calls across the seas. According to published reports, American divers were able to install surveillance devices on to the underwater cables. One of these taps was discovered in 1982, but other devices apparently continued to function undetected. (7)
It is not known at this point whether ECHELON has been able to tap fiber optic phone cables.

Finally, if the aforementioned methods fail to garner the desired information, there is another alternative. Apparently, the nations that are involved with ECHELON also train special agents to install a variety of special data collection devices. One of these devices is reputed to be an information processing kit that is the size of a suitcase. Another such item is a sophisticated radio receiver that is as small as a credit card. (8)

After capturing this raw data, ECHELON sifts through them using DICTIONARY. DICTIONARY is actually a special system of computers which finds pertinent information by searching for key words, addresses, etc. These search programs help pare down the voluminous quantity of transmissions which pass through the ECHELON network every day. These programs also seem to enable users to focus on any specific subject upon which information is desired. (9)

Q – If ECHELON is so powerful, why haven’t I heard about it before?

The United States government has gone to extreme lengths to keep ECHELON a secret. To this day, the U.S. government refuses to admit that ECHELON even exists. We know it exists because both the governments of Australia (through its Defence Signals Directorate) and New Zealand have admitted to this fact. (10) However, even with this revelation, US officials have refused to comment.

This “wall of silence” is beginning to erode. The first report on ECHELON was published in 1988. (11) In addition, besides the revelations from Australia, the Scientific and Technical Options Assessment program office (STOA) of the European Parliament commissioned two reports which describe ECHELON’s activities. These reports unearthed a startling amount of evidence, which suggests that Echelon’s powers may have been underestimated. The first report, entitled “An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control,” suggested that ECHELON primarily targeted civilians.

This report found that:

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 1947, 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. (12)

A more recent report, known as Interception Capabilities 2000, describes ECHELON capabilities in even more elaborate detail. (13) The release of the report sparked accusations from the French government that the United States was using ECHELON to give American companies an advantage over rival firms. (14) In response, R. James Woolsey, the former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), charged that the French government was using bribes to get lucrative deals around the world, and that US surveillance networks were used simply to level the playing field. (15) However, experts have pointed out that Woolsey missed several key points. For example, Woolsey neglected to mention alleged instances of economic espionage (cited in Intelligence Capabilities 2000) that did not involve bribery. Furthermore, many observers expressed alarm with Woolsey’s apparent assertion that isolated incidents of bribery could justify the wholesale interception of the world’s communications. (16)

The European Parliament formed a temporary Committee of Enquiry to investigate ECHELON abuses. (17) In May 2001, members of this committee visited the United States in an attempt to discover more details about ECHELON. However, officials from both the NSA and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) canceled meetings that they had previously scheduled with the European panel. The committee’s chairman, Carlos Coelho, said that his group was “very disappointed” with the apparent rebuffs; in protest, the Parliamentary representatives returned home a day early. (18)

Afterwards, the committee published a report stating that ECHELON does indeed exist and that individuals should strongly consider encrypting their emails and other Internet messages. (19) However, the panel was unable to confirm suspicions that ECHELON is used to conduct industrial espionage, due to a lack of evidence. (20) Ironically, the report also mentioned the idea that European government agents should be allowed greater powers to decrypt electronic communications, which was criticized by some observers (including several members of the committee) as giving further support to Europe’s own ECHELON-type system. (21) The European Parliament approved the report, but despite the apparent need for further investigation, the committee was disbanded. (22) Nevertheless, the European Commission plans to draft a “roadmap” for data protection that will address many of the concerns aired by the EP panel. (23)

Meanwhile, after years of denying the existence of ECHELON, the Dutch government issued a letter that stated: “Although the Dutch government does not have official confirmation of the existence of Echelon by the governments related to this system, it thinks it is plausible this network exists. The government believes not only the governments associated with Echelon are able to intercept communication systems, but that it is an activity of the investigative authorities and intelligence services of many countries with governments of different political signature.” (24)These revelations worried Dutch legislators, who had convened a special hearing on the subject. During the hearing, several experts argued that there must be tougher oversight of government surveillance activities. There was also considerable criticism of Dutch government efforts to protect individual privacy, particularly the fact that no information had been made available relating to Dutch intelligence service’s investigation of possible ECHELON abuses.(25)

In addition, an Italian government official has begun to investigate Echelon’s intelligence-gathering efforts, based on the belief that the organization may be spying on European citizens in violation of Italian or international law. (26)

Events in the United States have also indicated that the “wall of silence” might not last much longer. Exercising their Constitutionally created oversight authority, members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence started asking questions about the legal basis for NSA’s ECHELON activities. In particular, the Committee wanted to know if the communications of Americans were being intercepted and under what authority, since US law severely limits the ability of the intelligence agencies to engage in domestic surveillance. When asked about its legal authority, NSA invoked the attorney-client privilege and refused to disclose the legal standards by which ECHELON might have conducted its activities. (27)

President Clinton then signed into law a funding bill which required the NSA to report on the legal basis for ECHELON and similar activities. (28) However, the subsequent report (entitled Legal Standards for the Intelligence Community in Conducting Electronic Surveillance) gave few details about Echelon’s operations and legality. (29)

However, during these proceedings, Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), who has taken the lead in Congressional efforts to ferret out the truth about ECHELON, stated that he had arranged for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to hold its own oversight hearings.(30)

Finally, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued the US Government, hoping to obtain documents which would describe the legal standards by which ECHELON operates.(31)

Q – What is being done with the information that ECHELON collects?

The original purpose of ECHELON was to protect national security. That purpose continues today. For example, we know that ECHELON is gathering information on North Korea. Sources from Australia’s DSD have disclosed this much because Australian officials help operate the facilities there which scan through transmissions, looking for pertinent material. (32) Similarly, the Spanish government has apparently signed a deal with the United States to receive information collected using ECHELON. The consummation of this agreement was confirmed by Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, who tried to justify this arrangement on security grounds. (33)

However, national security is not Echelon’s only concern. Reports have indicated that industrial espionage has become a part of Echelon’s activities. While present information seems to suggest that only high-ranking government officials have direct control over Echelon’s tasks, the information that is gained may be passed along at the discretion of these very same officials. As a result, much of this information has been given to American companies, in apparent attempts to give these companies an edge over their less knowledgeable counterparts. (34)

In addition, there are concerns that Echelon’s actions may be used to stifle political dissent. Many of these concerns were voiced in a report commissioned by the European Parliament. What is more, there are no known safeguards to prevent such abuses of power. (35)

Q – Is there any evidence that ECHELON is doing anything improper or illegal with the spying resources at its disposal?

ECHELON is a highly classified operation, which is conducted with little or no oversight by national parliaments or courts. Most of what is known comes from whistleblowers and classified documents. The simple truth is that there is no way to know precisely what ECHELON is being used for.

But there is evidence, much of which is circumstantial, that ECHELON (along with its British counterpart) has been engaged in significant invasions of privacy. These alleged violations include secret surveillance of political organizations, such as Amnesty International. (36) It has also been reported that ECHELON has engaged in industrial espionage on various private companies such as Airbus Industries and Panavia, then has passed along the information to their American competitors. (37) It is unclear just how far Echelon’s activities have harmed private individuals.

However, the most sensational revelation was that Diana, Princess of Wales may have come under ECHELON surveillance before she died. As reported in the Washington Post, the NSA admitted that they possessed files on the Princess, partly composed of intercepted phone conversations. While one official from the NSA claimed that the Princess was never a direct target, this disclosure seems to indicates the intrusive, yet surreptitious manner by which ECHELON operates. (38)

What is even more disquieting is that, if these allegations are proven to be true, the NSA and its compatriot organizations may have circumvented countless laws in numerous countries. Many nations have laws in place to prevent such invasions of privacy. However, there are suspicions that ECHELON has engaged in subterfuge to avoid these legal restrictions. For example, it is rumored that nations would not use their own agents to spy on their own citizens, but assign the task to agents from other countries. (39) In addition, as mentioned earlier, it is unclear just what legal standards ECHELON follows, if any actually exist. Thus, it is difficult to say what could prevent ECHELON from abusing its remarkable capabilities.

Q – Is everyone else doing what ECHELON does?

Maybe not everyone else, but there are plenty of other countries that engage in the type of intelligence gathering that ECHELON performs. These countries apparently include Russia, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and many others. (40) Indeed, the excesses of these ECHELON-like operations are rumored to be similar in form to their American equivalents, including digging up information for private companies to give them a commercial advantage.

However, it is also known that ECHELON system is the largest of its kind. What is more, its considerable powers are enhanced through the efforts of America’s allies, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Other countries don’t have the resources to engage in the massive garnering of information that the United States is carrying out.

Notes

1. Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information (An appraisal of technologies for political control), Part 4/4: 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 targeting and selection, including speech recognition, Ch. 1, para. 5, PE 168.184 / Part 4/4 (April 1999). See Duncan Campbell, Interception Capabilities 2000 (April 1999) (http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm).

2. Kevin Poulsen, Echelon Revealed, ZDTV (June 9, 1999).

3. Greg Lindsay, The Government Is Reading Your E-Mail, TIME DIGITAL DAILY (June 24, 1999).

4. PE 168.184 / Part 4/4, supra note 1, Ch. 2, para. 32-34, 45-46.

5. Id. Ch. 2, para. 42.

6. Id. Ch. 2, para. 60.

7. Id. Ch. 2, para. 50.

8. Id. Ch. 2, para. 62-63.

9. An Appraisal of Technologies for Political Control, at 20, PE 166.499 (January 6, 1998). See Steve Wright, An Appraisal of Technologies for Political Control (January 6, 1998) (http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm).

10.Letter from Martin Brady, Director, Defence Signals Directorate, to Ross Coulhart, Reporter, Nine Network Australia 2 (Mar. 16, 1999) (on file with the author); see also Calls for inquiry into spy bases, ONE NEWS New Zealand (Dec. 28, 1999).

11. Duncan Campbell, Somebody’s listening, NEW STATESMAN, 12 August 1988, Cover, pages 10-12. See Duncan Campbell, ECHELON: NSA’s Global Electronic Interception, (last visited October 12, 1999) (http://jya.com/echelon-dc.htm).

12. PE 166.499, supra note 9, at 19-20.

13. PE 168.184 / Part 4/4, supra note 1.

14. David Ruppe, Snooping on Friends?, ABCNews.com (US) (Feb. 25, 2000) (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/dailynews/echelon000224.html).

15. R. James Woolsey, Why We Spy on Our Allies, WALL ST. J., March 17, 2000. See also CRYPTOME, Ex-CIA Head: Why We Spy on Our Allies (last visited April 11, 2000) (http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm).

16. Letter from Duncan Campbell to the Wall Street Journal (March 20, 2000) (on file with the author). See also Kevin Poulsen, Echelon Reporter answers Ex-CIA Chief, SecurityFocus.com (March 23, 2000) (http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6).

17. Duncan Campbell, Flaw in Human Rights Uncovered, HEISE TELEPOLIS, April 8, 2000. See also HEISE ONLINE, Flaw in Human Rights Uncovered (April 8, 2000) (http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/6724/1.html).

18.Angus Roxburgh, EU investigators ‘snubbed’ in US, BBC News, May 11, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1325000/1325186.stm).

19.Report on the existence of a global system for intercepting private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system), PE 305.391 (July 11, 2001) (available in PDF or Word format at http://www2.europarl.eu.int).

20. Id.; see also E-mail users warned over spy network, BBC News, May 29, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1357000/1357264.stm).

21. Steve Kettman, Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper, Wired News, July 3, 2001 (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44984,00.html).

22. European Parliament resolution on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)), A5-0264/2001, PE 305.391/DEF (Sept. 5, 2001) (available at http://www3.europarl.eu.int); Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti, Europa-Parlament verabsciedet Echelon-Bericht, Heise Telepolis, Sept. 5, 2001 (available at http://www.heise.de/tp/); Steve Kettman, Echelon Panel Calls It a Day, Wired News, June 21, 2001 (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,44721,00.html).

23. European Commission member Erkki Liikanen, Speech regarding European Parliament motion for a resolution on the Echelon interception system (Sept. 5, 2001) (transcript available at http://europa.eu.int).

24. Jelle van Buuren, Dutch Government Says Echelon Exists, Heise Telepolis, Jan. 20, 2001 (available at http://www.heise.de/tp/).

25. Jelle van Buuren, Hearing On Echelon In Dutch Parliament, Heise Telepolis, Jan. 23, 2001 (available at http://www.heise.de/tp/).

26. Nicholas Rufford, Spy Station F83, SUNDAY TIMES (London), May 31, 1998. See Nicholas Rufford, Spy Station F83 (May 31, 1998) (http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/98/05/31/stifocnws01003.html?999).

27. H. Rep. No. 106-130 (1999). See Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Additional Views of Chairman Porter J. Goss (http://www.echelonwatch.org/goss.htm).

28. Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Pub. L. 106-120, Section 309, 113 Stat. 1605, 1613 (1999). See H.R. 1555 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (Enrolled Bill (Sent to President)) http://www.echelonwatch.org/hr1555c.htm).

29. UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, LEGAL STANDARDS FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IN CONDUCTING ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE (2000) (http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/standards.html).

30. House Committee to Hold Privacy Hearings, (August 16, 1999) (http://www.house.gov/barr/p_081699.html).

31. ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER, PRESS RELEASE: LAWSUIT SEEKS MEMOS ON SURVEILLANCE OF AMERICANS; EPIC LAUNCHES STUDY OF NSA INTERCEPTION ACTIVITIES (1999). See also Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC Sues for NSA Surveillance Memos (last visited December 17, 1999) (http://www.epic.org/open_gov/foia/nsa_suit_12_99.html).

32. Ross Coulhart, Echelon System: FAQs and website links, (May 23, 1999).

33. Isambard Wilkinson, US wins Spain’s favour with offer to share spy network material, Sydney Morning Herald, June 18, 2001 (http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/18/text/world11.html).

34. PE 168.184 / Part 4/4, supra note 1, Ch. 5, para. 101-103.

35. PE 166.499, supra note 9, at 20.

36. Id.

37. PE 168.184 / Part 4/4, supra note 1, Ch. 5, para. 101-102; Brian Dooks, EU vice-president to claim US site spies on European business, YORKSHIRE POST, Jan. 30, 2002 (available at http://yorkshirepost.co.uk).

38. Vernon Loeb, NSA Admits to Spying on Princess Diana, WASHINGTON POST, December 12, 1998, at A13. See Vernon Loeb, NSA Admits to Spying on Princess Diana, WASHINGTON POST, A13 (December 12, 1998) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/dec98/diana12.htm).

39. Ross Coulhart, Big Brother is listening, (May 23, 1999).

40. PE 168.184 / Part 4/4, supra note 1, Ch. 1, para. 7.

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