Trading COMSAT Sigint in Europe (Echelon developments)

[Owen Lewis]

I finally got around to reading this and it seemed to me that one or two of
its underlying premises are worth discussion.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Duncan
> Campbell
> Sent: 09 July 2001 19:12
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Trading COMSAT Sigint in Europe (Echelon developments)
>
>
> 10 July 2001
>
> Fight over Euro-intelligence plans
>
> The sudden closure of one of the worlds largest spy stations is a
> potential
> harbinger of confrontation between the U.S. and Germany.

Why so? Since 1945 Germany has been required to host hundreds of thousands
of foreign troops armed to the gills and having with them the full
supporting paraphernalia that operational military forces require.

This presence, first established by force majeure and maintained since 1956
by agreement and a commonality of interests, always had a finite life; its
life being more or less defined by continuance of a Russian domination of
Eastern and Central Europe. With the collapse of that domination - and the
consequent re-unification of Germany - the commonality of interest which in
recent years has alone underpinned the presence on German soil of large
forces of foreign troops.

For the last ten years, the removal of all forces of Germany's NATO allies
from German soil has proceeded apace. The last of them are now preparing to
go home at last.

With the purpose for which they were built ended, the continued basis
operation of any infrastructure facilities of foreign forces on German soil
would rely on some new agreement wherein Germany found it sufficiently in
her national interest to promote such a continuance. There may have been a
period of bargaining but if so then we know that:

	-	The US no longer regarded any extension of the life of the Bad Aibling
facility as essential at any price.

	-	That the price for its extension that was set by the German authorities
was well beyond the worth of its continuance to the US.

> Today in Brussels, members of the European Parliament will vote
> to finalise
> a report that condemns the use of the British and American run "Echelon"
> international communications surveillance system as a breach of privacy,
> sovereignty and human rights.

It would be a more interesting and worthwhile document if it included in its
balance the chain of SIGINT stations maintained on German soil by the German
government and which focus on Germany's neighbours, especially France and
into Eastern Europe. No mention either of Spanish, Italian, French, Czech,
Norwegian etc. etc facilities of a similar type. The report, as reported
here, is fatally blinkered, biased and risibly anti-American in tone. It can
serve little of interest other than its sponsors egos. However, it may do
some harm by appearing to have a solid imprimatur and serving as a source of
public disinformation.

> The worlds largest electronic spying system, of which Echelon is
> a part, is
> run by the UKUSA alliance..... The only
> other worldwide systems are run by Russia, and by France, which has
> listening stations in South America and the South Pacific.

This misses a crucial fact. Many countries operate regional rather than
global listening stations. Where lies the complaint of the privacy
fanaticists? Is it in the essential nature of the activity or merely in the
scale of its reach? The blinkered approach adopted simply uses the latter as
a smoke screen for the underlying anti-Americanism whilst actually bleating
noisily and with bias about the former. Tsk, tsk.

It also entirely ignores the level of electronic eavesdropping of their own
people, even in their own homes, carried out by the authorities in many
states in this world, albeit not so much in Europe or North America. In some
electronic eavesdropping is as near total as the state can devise. Not a
cheep from the privacy fanatics about this either. One does need to ask why
and not to accept silence in lieu of an answer. Their priorities are
ill-chosen and require full explanation and justification.

> ....A new European
> intelligence agency, in which Germany and France would take leading roles,
> would be a major challenge to the UKUSA group.

This is the merest wishful thinking. Intelligence services are policy
servants, to be given clear direction and to be delegated their authority
directly from a state's chief executive. He alone carries the responsibility
for what he chooses - for better or ill - to authorise. It is likely to be
at least another ten years - perhaps much more before the European Union has
either developed its political controls and Federal policies to the point
where it can sensibly employ and direct its own intelligence services. Until
that time and as particularly European intelligence requirements may arise,
the mature member states who already have and control such agencies will
decide what, when and within what limits intelligence support will be given
to European goals and in response to well formulated EU requests. This is
precisely as it should me and no one should wish for anything else.

The creation of EU intelligence agencies before there is a federated
political structure and clear federal economic, foreign and defence policy
goals is childish talk, albeit dangerous and perhaps mischievous also.
Fortunately, all the Western European states are politically mature and well
understand both the need and the means for the control of intelligence
services. The Euro MP's may bray and gesticulate as they will; none of these
states is about to give them the toy box to play with until they have well
and truly demonstrated that they can play nicely, constructively and
responsibly. We are some way away from that point yet as this present
display of irrational emotion serves to make clear.

>
> But the ETA-tracking deal is actually the first visible sign of
> longer term
> U.S. plans to set up new bilateral intelligence arrangements with selected
> European nations. The US has recently developed and extended intelligence
> links with Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, and has offered
> anti-terrorist
> intelligence sharing to the Italian and Greek government, as well as the
> Spanish.
>
> At the remote village of Skibsbylejren near Hjorring in northern Denmark,
> and at Heimenschwand and Leuk in central Switzerland, contractors are now
> putting the finishing touches to a new network of satellite communications
> interception centres. The data they collect will be routed to processing
> centres at Zimmerwald and near Copenhagen, and then exchanged with other
> intelligence agencies.
>
> By the time they are complete in 2002, the new stations will be capable of
> simultaneously intercepting messages from about 25 satellites. This will
> provide the US with more capacity than is provided by the three smaller
> members of the current US alliance- Canada, Australia and New Zealand  put
> together.

Mmmmm... capacity for what? A bit meaningless as given here.


> Neither Denmark nor Switzerland has claimed that the new spy bases are
> being provided for national requirements. According to General
> Peter Regli,
> head of the Swiss Untergruppe Nachrichtendienst der Armee (UNA) military
> intelligence unit, the purpose of the Swiss system  called SATOS-3  is to
> trade information with partner spy agencies.

And that is a simple sophistry. Whether or not what is written is true, the
reason such stations are built is to serve a national interest. Or is it
some vast, subversive US plan to buy intelligence facilities for greasy
dollars? I rather think not.

> This and other developments suggest that the U.S. intelligence agencies
> have long been planning how to overcome the new European intelligence and
> privacy concerns. Their goal appears to go further than merely protecting
> existing surveillance operations against privacy campaigners or
> restrictions proposed by the European Parliament. The greater target
> appears to be to head off, or at least subvert and minimise the impact of
> an independent European intelligence capability.

Not so. To anyone who understands the control of the arms of state, it must
be a nonsense for reasons outlined. The most if not all of the present EU
states will assure that no such capability is brought into being before
there are Federal structures and policy goals for its proper employment.
Were US interests to be pointedly anti-European federation, they would give
every encouragement to such dangerous (to EU interests) and foolish
nonsense.

> Now, in Bavaria and the
> Basque country, these battle lines have been joined.

A mountain has been made out of a molehill, methinks. In Bavaria, the US has
sensibly decided that it is cheaper to take its toys elsewhere and the only
losers are, economically, the Bavarian govt and in terms of what it might
have got had it asked for less, The German federal government. In Spain, as
the article itself eventually points out- the anti-ETA cooperation is much
older that the current little EUP spat about Echelon.

Really, it's a windmill, Don Quixote.

Owen