Nexus - 0706 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

... GLPBAL NEWS ... NEWS THE SPY IN YOUR SERVER Goaenments all over the world have become embroiled in controversy about electronic surveillance of the Internet. In the USA, a political storm has arisen over a new FBI Internet-tapping system, code-named Carnivore. In Britain, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act now extends telephone- tapping powers to cover Internet service providers (ISPs), and allows the govern- ment to arrange indiscriminate tapping or e-mail interception for foreign police forces and security agencies. Several worldwide factors lie behind the RIP Bill's introduction. The most important of these is to ensure compliance with the conditions of a new American-sponsored international regime of communications interception, where- by law enforcement agencies in one country can quickly arrange for selective monitoring of another country's telecoms traffic in the course of a criminal or intelligence investigation. Known under the even more unwieldy title of International User Requirements for Lawful Interception of Communications, these came into force secretly within the European Union in 1995. In total, 19 countries—the 15 EU states plus the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand—have signed the plan. In short, the EU and members of the NSA-led worldwide UKUSA electronic eaves- dropping system, of which Echelon is an integral part, have all signed up. In The Netherlands, the Dutch security service BVD admitted in late July that it has been collecting e-mails sent abroad by companies. In The Hague, laws are being prepared to allow the Justice Ministry to tap into e-mail and subscriber records, scan messages and mobile phone calls, and track users' movements. The Australian government has already passed laws allowing security agents to attack and modify computers secretly to obtain information. Many other governments have similar schemes in the pipeline. These developments are no coincidence, but the direct result of secret planning over seven years by an international co-ordinating group set up by the FBI—after Congress twice refused to extend its telephone-tapping powers for digital net- works. Under the innocuous title of the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS), the group has met annually to plan and lobby for telecommunications systems to be made "interception-friendly". The work of ILETS first came to light in late 1997 when a British researcher, Tony Bunyan, revealed collaboration between EU staff and the FBI over many years. Details of plans to compel ISPs all over the world to install secret Internet interception "black boxes" in their premises appeared in Online last year. In July, the European Parliament appointed 36 MEPs to lead a year-long inves- tigation into Echelon—the code-name for a mainly US system for monitoring traffic on commercial communications satellites. Echelon has become common parlance for the worldwide electronic eavesdropping or signals intelligence (SIG- INT) network, run by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) together with the US National Security Agency (NSA). The inquiry will ask if the rights of European citizens are adequately protected and will ascertain whether European industry is being put at risk by the global interception of com- munications. Electronic eavesdropping has become a battleground between the US and Russia. The Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act of 2000, passed on 19 July, stops President Clinton rescheduling or writing-off billions of dollars of Russian debts unless a Russian spy base in Cuba is "permanently closed". This base at Lourdes, located on leased land near Havana, was the former Soviet Union's most important intelligence facility. It uses Echelon-type systems to col- lect data from telephone calls and satellite links covering the US, and allegedly provides "between 60% and 70% of all Russian intelligence data about the US". The White House wants to stop the campaign to close Lourdes because other countries might then ask the US to close down its identical bases. Documents suggest the US would particularly fear the Lourdes effect spreading to Britain, Germany and Australia, where the NSA operates large sites. Its station at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, England, is the largest electronic intelligence base in the world. (Sources: By Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, London, 10 August 2000, www. guardianunlimited.co.uk/online/; Intelligence, France, no. 370, 10 July 2000, www.blythe.org/Intelligence) the West's official debt relief program in October this year. The increase is due to payments falling due on a large IMF loan. Oxfam has called for the Fund to write- off all the money owed to it by Zambia over the next few years, instead of offering the country limited debt relief. "The ultimate yardstick for measuring debt sustainability must be human need, rather than abstract financial indicators during creditor horse-trading," said David Bryer, Oxfam's direc- tae tor. Oxfam's figures show that in six African coun- tries—Mali, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi—debt pay- ments will outstrip spending on basic education even after the countries have graduated from the debt relief program. (Source: The Guardian, 27 August 2000) NATO DOES ABOUT-TURN ON KOSOVO DEATH TOLL indings by forensic teams from the International Criminal Tribunal for the for- mer Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague have forced NATO to admit that, at most, 3,000 peo- ple were killed by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo during the conflict. Last year, NATO charged that Yugoslav forces ad massacred at least 10,000 people. NATO spokespeople implied that as many as 500,000 supposedly "missing" people had also been illed. NATO has now been forced to admit that in effect it waged a propaganda war to win support for its own illegal intervention that killed over 3,000 Yugoslavs, about one-third of them chil- dren. (Source: Workers World newspaper, 31 August 2000, www.workers.org) BRITISH AIRCRAFT BOMBED OUT IN KOSOVO CONFLICT lhe UK Government stands accused of trying to suppress a report showing that only 3 out of 150 unguided, high-explosive bombs dropped by British aircraft in the Kosovo conflict last year were confirmed as hitting their targets. The report, produced by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the Ministry of Defence, also showed that only 40% of all bombs dropped by RAF aircraft in the campaign hit their target. This raises the prospect that civilian casualties and damage to property have been seriously underestimated. (Source: The Independent, 15 August 2000, www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000- 08/kosovo150800.shtml) NEXUS <9 OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2000