TAP YIPL/TAP_and_YIPL_Collection_CD.iso/PHREAK/GENERAL/COMMSURV.TXT

Text File | 1994-07-17 | 6KB | 109 lines

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     This  extract was taken from Personal Computer World
     and written by Duncan Campbell.

                        Comms Surveillance

     Data  comms and electronic mail do pose special  problems  in
relation to comms interception,  since such messages (in  contrast
to telephone calls) are intrinsically 'machine readable'. Although
British  domestic communications (whether data or voice) are  only
suposed  to be intercepted if a specific warrant  is  issued,  few
people comprehend the scale on which Western intelligence agencies
are   already  routinely  intercepting  all  civil   international
communications.As  long  ago as 1960,  defectors from  the  United
States NSA (National Security Agency also know as No Such  Agency)
revealed  at a Moscow press conference that 'both  enciphered  and
plain  text communications are monitored from almost every  nation
in  the world,  including the nations on whose soil the  intercept
bases are located'.

     Soon US, British and Allied intelligence agencies will embark
on a massive,  billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic
surveillance system, which will enable them to monitor and analyse
civilian  and  comercial  communications into  the  21st  century.
According  to  information  recently given  secrectly  to  the  US
Congress,  a  new  surveillance system,  currently  identified  as
Project  P415,  is  being set up by  NSA.  Many  other  countries'
intelligence  agencies  will  be closely  involved  with  the  new
network,  including those from Britain,  Austrialia,  Germany  and
Japan, and even the People's Republic Of China.

     New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built
around the world,  and a chain of new satellites launched, so that
NSA and GCHQ Cheltenham, its British counterpart, may keep abreast
of  the burgeoning international telecommunications  traffic.  The
largest existing station in this network is the US  communications
base at Menwith Hill,  near Harrogate,  Yorkshire,  which has taps
into Britain's main national and international networks.  Although
high-technology  stations  such  as  Menwith  Hill  are  primarily
intended  to  monitor  international  comminications  and  control
ultra-secret eavesdropping satellites, their capability can be and
has  been  turned  inwards on domestic  tariff,  according  to  US
experts.  This vast international global eavesdropping network has
existed  since shortly after the Second World War,  when the   US,
Britain,  Canada,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  signed  a  secret
agreement on signals intelligence, or 'SIGINT'.

     Although  it is impossible for transcribers to listen to  all
but a small fraction of the billions of telephone calls and  other
signals which might contain interesting information, computer data
signals  can  easily  be processed in any way  that  NSA  or  GCHQ
analysts  require.  The agencies' computers automatically  analyse
every  telex message or data signal,  and can als  identify  calls
to, say, a target telephone number in London, no matter from which
country they originate. At present, Operations Building 36M at the
NSA's Menwith Hill station contains a network of eighteen powerful
DEC VAX-11 processors supporting this and related  tasks.  Menwith
Hill's  nest  of  computers  is part of  a  global  system  called
Echelon, which will eventually be superseded by Project P415.

     Both  the  new and existing surveillance systems  are  highly
computerised,   and  rely  on  virtually  total  interception   of
international commercial and satellite communications in order  to
locate  data of interest.  Early last summer a US  newspaper,  the
Cleveland Plain Dealer,  revealed that the system had been used to
target the telephone calls of a US senator.  British and  American
domestic communications are also being targeted and intercepted by
the Echelon network,  the US investigators have been told, despite
legal  provisions that should make such  intentional  interception
illegal.  Special teams from GCHQ have been secretly flown in  the
last few years to a computer centre in Silicon Valley for training
on   the   computer  systems  that  preform  both   domestic   and
international interception.

     Recently  published  US  Department of  Defense  1989  budget
information  has  confirmed that the Menwith Hill  base  would  be
the   subject  of  a  major,   $26million   expansion   programme.
Information given to the US Congress in February listed details of
plans  for  a four-year expansion of facilities at  Menwith  Hill.
Among  other  important stations being developed in the  new  P415
network, US intelligence sources say, are a GCHQ base in Cornwall,
which  intercepts  links  to  and  from  many  western  commercial
satellites.  This  spy base,  at Morwenstow near  Bude,  has  been
continuously expanded thoughout the 1980s.

     When  Britian's  new interception of Communications  Act  was
passed in 1985, however, it was obviously designed to make special
provision  for operations like Echelon to trawl all  international
communications to and from Britian.  A special section of the Act,
Section  3(2),  allows  warrants  to be issued  to  intercept  any
general type of international messages to or from Britain, if this
is 'in the interests of national security' or 'for the purpose  of
safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom'.  Such
warrants  also allow GCHQ to tap all other communications  on  the
same  cables or satellites that may have to be picked up in  order
to  select  the messages they want.  In  practice,  everything  is
intercepted.

     There is no doubt that British law, along with British bases,
has  been designed to encourage rather than inhibit  this  booming
industry in international data surveillance.  This is quite a  new
development.   In  the  1960s,  British  government  and  Treasury
officials  took  a lot of convincing (by the Americans)  that  the
interception  of  ordinary  commercial  data  communications   was
worthwhile.