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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.
Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253