Excerpts from leaked Draft ECHELON EP Ctte report

[David Wagner]

Caspar Bowden wrote:
>http://fas.org/irp/program/process/europarl_draft.pdf

Interesting.  Here are some more quotes:

: Electric cables may also be tapped between the terminals of a connection,
: by means of induction (i.e.  electromagnetically, by attaching a
: coil to the cable), without creating a direct, conductive connection.
: Underwater electric cables can also be tapped in this way from submarines,
: albeit at very high cost. This technique was employed by the USA in order
: to tap into a particular underwater cable laid by the USSR to transmit
: unencrypted commands to Soviet atomic submarines. The high costs alone
: rule out the comprehensive use of this technique.

This sounds optimistic.  There are large capital costs, maybe, but as
recent posts have indicated, the US intelligence agencies have already
spent a lot on obtaining the necessary capabilities.  Moreover, it is not
clear how many transatlantic cables there are, but it may be possible to
intercept a large portion of transatlantic traffic by tapping only a few
such cables; in this case, the high cost of such tapping does not provide
much room for comfort.  I would have expected this report to provide
more evidence for its claims before coming to such strong conclusions.

I note that the rest of the discussion on optical tapping appears
underinformed and optimistic in view of the recent articles on the NSA's
tapping of fibre optic cables under the sea.  For example, these reports
argued that electrical repeaters (if present) are a point of vulnerability,
because they convert the optical to electrical signals and thus might allow
inductive coupling.  The article also included claims that the NSA can
eavesdrop on the optical signals directly somehow.  While I cannot say
whether such feats are possible, the fact that the authors of this report
did not appear to be aware of their possibility lends some doubt to the
veracity of their conclusions.

: In your rapporteur's view, the use of submarines for the routine
: surveillance of international telephone traffic can be ruled out.

Heh.  I guess even Europarl documents need to offer a little bit of
comic relief here and there... :-)

In general, there are an awful lot of exclamation marks after statements
that would appear to be rather lacking in justification at the moment.
One is left with the impression that the writer had definite opinions
on the subject.  I would have preferred more persuasive evidence.