http://www.thewinds.org/arc_features/government/surveillance12-98.html
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[Feature article]
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[Past Features]
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[satellite spying on the earth] U.S. SURVEILLANCE OF CITIZENS REACHES NEW
LEVELS
Are the Citizens Criminals or are World Governments?
This October, Congress passed a sweeping piece of legislation designed
to keep track of the activities of those the government fears most. Foreign
terrorists? No. Domestic terrorists? No. Then perhaps the overinflated
fantasy of those "dangerous" militia movements? No. Who then? Those the
government fears most are the American people.
"Without debate or notice," says an October 8th report published by
Reuters, "U.S. lawmakers...approved a proposal long sought by the FBI that
would dramatically expand wiretapping authority -- an idea Congress openly
rejected three years ago." [1]
What Reuters is referring to is House Resolution 3694 which passed
Congress and, as mentioned, without fanfare of any kind, was signed into law
by President Clinton October 20th, becoming Public Law #105- 272.[2]
"The conference report was easily adopted by the House Wednesday,"
Reuters went on to say, "despite an objection to the wiretapping provision
from Georgia Republican Bob Barr, and by the Senate Thursday. Neither the
House nor the Senate had included the provision, known as roving wiretap
authority, in their versions of the intelligence bill." That was added later
in closed committee.
Roving wiretaps are those that are not limited by former legal
constraints to just one telephone line per court order. Where previously
each wiretap had to be approved by a judge (at least on the surface), these
hybrid wiretaps are more of a carte blanche authority of the courts to tap
into any line that law enforcement agencies think even might be used by, or
is in the immediate vicinity of, a suspect. And, of course, the definition
of "suspect" is itself suspect--being whatever those agencies define at any
given moment.
"'Roving wiretaps are a major expansion of current government
surveillance power,' said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for
Democracy and Technology in Washington. 'To take a controversial provision
that affects the fundamental constitutional liberties of the people and pass
it behind closed doors shows a shocking disregard for our democratic
process.' FBI officials said they needed to be able to get roving wiretap
authority more easily to catch criminals taking advantage of new
telecommunications technologies." [ibid.]
House Resolution 3694
Entitled Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, H.R. 3694
rests much of its authority on Executive Order 12333 established by
President Reagan in December of 1981. Title VI, Section 403 of the act
states that the Attorney General can authorize wiretaps on an "emergency
basis" without the approval of a judge. It requires only that a judge be
notified of the intention and that the tap is allowed for 48 hours without
judicial permission.
Not incidentally, the term "emergency" is not defined in the bill and
therefore can be whatever the Attorney General desires it to be. As will be
shown later, it can be easily deduced from this that the government is
merely authorizing itself by paper legislation what it has already been
doing for some time. What this bill has resulted in, among other things, is
a major erosion of the dividing line in the separation of powers. The
authority to approve wiretapping has been effectively shifted from the
judiciary to the executive branch of government, thereby creating a further
blurring of the vital division establishing that constitutional separation
of powers--the protective barrier that divides the three main components of
government in this country.
It was the intention of the framers of the Constitution to establish a
certain tension between the legislative, judicial and executive branches for
the purpose of making government, to a degree, self-regulating. As those
divisions become weaker and less substantial, government becomes more
independent from the will of the people. When those divisions are finally
erased, this nation will be in the full clutch of a dictatorship--at least
one more easily recognizable than the present one.
In a seemingly prophetic portent of things to come the CATO Institute, a
Washington-based conservative think tank, reported that "...the 1994
Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)...gave the FBI
extraordinary power to demand that telephone companies rebuild their
networks to make wiretapping easier. The FBI is already straining at the
bounds of its authority," the report continues, "at one point demanding to
be able to tap one in every hundred phone conversations simultaneously. Rep.
Bob Barr (R.-Ga.) has fought to keep the FBI accountable."[3]
In a previous WINDS article it was revealed that "when CALEA passed in
1994, it promised to reimburse regional carriers for embedding a common law
enforcement interface into the backbone of their call switching networks.
Instead of restoring law enforcement to their old vantage ground, the new
requirements would give police immediate access into the nerve center of the
regional telephone carrier - a massive leap past what they had before. Where
before law enforcement had to work to find the correct copper wire to tap
into, now they are asking for the equivalent of requiring every new home to
be built with listening devices in the walls in case they want to eavesdrop
someday."[4]
The CATO Institute, reporting on proposed legislation clear back in
October of 1996 commented, "Other measures proposed for passage...include a
provision allowing law enforcement officers to use 'roving wiretaps' without
getting permission from a court to do so. This means that the police could
tap your phone without a warrant if they saw someone they think might be a
criminal enter your house or place of business. Another proposed rule would
allow investigators to use 'emergency' wiretaps, which can be used for 48
hours without a warrant, even when there is no emergency."
Their fears were realized, of course, with the passage of House
Resolution 3694.
"Supporters of the new roving wiretap rule have succeeded in concealing
its impact from the public. The media has widely reported that the roving
wiretap proposal would allow investigators to eavesdrop on criminals who are
moving from phone to phone to evade interception. But federal law already
permits this type of wiretap -- when investigators have satisfied a court
that it is necessary. Requiring police to get the permission of a judge is
essential to protect the privacy of the innocent. According to yearly
reports filed with Congress by the Administrative Office of United States
Courts (AO), over 80 percent of calls intercepted by wiretaps are innocent;
roving wiretaps intercept an even higher percentage of calls placed by
innocent parties who are not suspected of any crime. The new proposal would
do away with judicial safeguards." [ibid.]
The author of the CATO article, Solveig Bernstein, makes a growingly
apparent observation when he says, "The natural tendency of any bureaucracy
is to expand. If a government program fails, the administrators insist this
was not their fault -- they simply needed more money, more power, and more
guns. In the wake of the TWA disaster and the Atlanta bombing, running true
to bureaucratic form, law enforcement interests promise they can offer us
perfect security, if only we give them more power."
The power Mr. Bernstein refers to does not replicate itself like the
government's magic computer money; where once you had 'x' amount of power
and now you have 2x. Power is not given, it is given away. When a nation's
citizens "give" more power to government they "give away" that power in the
form of less freedom, less privacy for themselves resulting in less
accountability by their government to the citizen--and any less
accountability than presently exists approaches zero.
To highlight that attitude of unaccountability Bernstein says that "the
Senate appears ready to play into their hands, even though polls show that
70 percent of Americans think wiretaps should be banned." Isn't it
interesting how when polls agree with the government's desires, they are
used to justify their actions, but totally ignored when it does not serve
them?
THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT
(Another Paper Shredder for the Constitution)
"In a highly restricted room inside the Department of Justice Building
in Washington D.C. resides a federal court that meets in complete secrecy,"
begins an essay by Patrick S. Poole, former Deputy Director for the Center
for Technology Policy, a division of the Washington-based Free Congress
Foundation.[5]
In his article entitled, "Inside America's Secret" Court Mr. Poole
reveals the workings of a legal entity known by few Americans but whose
workings can, in Poole's words, "result in criminal charges, convictions and
prison sentences for US citizens, their writs and rulings [being]
permanently sealed from review by those accused of crimes and from any
substantive civilian review."
This court handles wiretap and other surveillance requests along with
physical search warrants for the U.S. Intelligence community and the
Department of Justice. The FISC is the direct offspring of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, legislation that resulted from
the increasing acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. It was chartered
by President Jimmy Carter in Executive Order 12139 which appears to be the
first real endowment of authority upon the Attorney General for initiating
wiretaps without court order.
"During the 20-year tenure of the FISC," Poole claims, "the court has
received over 10,000 applications for covert surveillance and physical
searches. To date, not a single application has been denied....The FISA
court issues more surveillance and physical search orders," the essay
reveals, "than the entire federal judiciary combined." [ibid.] [emphasis
supplied]. Also of interest, Poole points out, is that there is a separate
FISC appeals court that, in twenty years of its existence, "has never heard
a case."
"...The records of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts
show that federal electronic intercepts have increased 30-40 percent since
Clinton took office, and no federal magistrate has turned down a federal
request for an intercept order since 1988."[6]
In 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno expanded the Justice Department's
power beyond mere wiretapping to the issuing of warrantless physical
searches which resulted, after the fact, in Congress' broadening Justice's
authority to do so by passing the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1995.
"This expansion also included the power for evidence gathered in FISA
surveillance and searches to be used in criminal proceedings. However, all
information regarding the order and any evidence obtained under the order
are permanently sealed and classified 'top secret.' The effect of this
provision has been that US citizens are being charged with crimes in federal
court and not allowed to review the evidence against them, nor are their
attorneys permitted to see the warrants that authorized the search."[5]
"Many constitutional scholars and civil liberty advocates," Poole
claims, "note that the overly broad powers of the FISA statute and court
authority are in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment protections
against unreasonable searches and general warrants. With such a powerful
weapon against citizens� Constitutional liberties, many opponents of the
court argue that Congress should conduct extensive oversight of the court.
But congressional oversight of the FISA court is virtually non-existent."
[ibid.]
The sole oversight report for all of 1997 consisted of just two
paragraphs, but which showed an exponential increase in approved
surveillance orders, says the Center for Technology Policy report. There has
been "a sharp increase in FISC orders...since the ascendance of the Clinton
Administration."
The FISC clearly violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment against
"the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," not to mention the
part of that amendment that guarantees against warrants without probable
cause.
As mentioned previously, the secret court seals all evidence from the
eyes of both the accused and his attorney's, thus violating the Sixth
Amendment rights to a fair trial by jury. Poole relates an instance of one
Richard Johnson in which "the judge instructed the jury that evidence
against Johnson existed, and yet would not be presented for 'national
security' reasons, requiring the jury to rely on the 'testimony' of the
judge. This prevented Johnson's attorneys from challenging evidence that was
not available to them but was testified to by the judge himself." [ibid.]
This sort of procedure also makes the legal privilege of the defendant's
attorneys to cross-examine witnesses realistically impossible.
A writer for the Washington Post claims "the FISA standard is
constitutional" because it is to be used for counterintelligence probes and
not for criminal investigations.[7] But according to Mr. Poole "to date,
over 90 criminal cases have resulted from evidence gathered under a FISC
order."
In addition to the constitutional violations, Poole claims that the
Clinton Administration has used "the top secret court to gain economic
information and data for political party contributors...." This is indeed an
interesting twist on the definition of what constitutes "national security."
THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: What Do They Have
In Common?
The European Parliament, the governing body elected by the member
nations of the emerging European Community (AKA, the European Common Market,
European Economic Community, et. al.) commissioned a special report from its
panel on Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA), which was
published in its final form in September of this year. Considering its
contents the report carries a justifiably ominous title: An Appraisal of the
Technologies of Political Control.[8] When one peruses the document, it is
found that the term "Political Control" means every dark thing the
imagination conjures up in response.
Listed as the number one priority of "key objectives" in the "Interim
Study," as the report is also known, was:
(i) To provide Members of the European Parliament with a succinct
reference guide to recent advances in the technology of political
control....
One must be aware that the contents of this document do not come from
some spy groupie that tends toward wildly impossible claims like a spy
satellite that can photograph a grain of sand ten feet under ground. This is
an official document of the parliamentary arm of the European Union, a
political entity ostensibly vying with the United States for world power.
Under the heading, "DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY," the STOA
report says:
Surveillance technology can be defined as devices or systems which
can monitor, track and assess the movements of individuals, their
property and other assets. Much of this technology is used to
track the activities of dissidents, human rights activists,
journalists, student leaders, minorities, trade union leaders and
political opponents. [emphasis supplied]
(Note that in that short list of surveillance targets there can be found not
a single group that represents anything but a lawful exercise of liberties
in a free nation).
A huge range of surveillance technologies has evolved, including
the night vision goggles; parabolic microphones to detect
conversations over a kilometre away; laser versions, can pick up
any conversation from a closed window in line of sight; the Danish
Jai stroboscopic camera can take hundreds of pictures in a matter
of seconds and individually photograph all the participants in a
demonstration or March; and the automatic vehicle recognition
systems can track cars around a city via a Geographic Information
System of maps.
New technologies which were originally conceived for the Defense
and Intelligence sectors have after the cold war rapidly spread
into the law enforcement and private sectors.
The report continues by emphasizing the need for the advanced technology
so that they will not encounter the manpower bottleneck as did the East
Germans, requiring them to employ "500,000 secret informers, 10,000 of which
were needed just to listen to and transcribe citizens' phone calls."
This astounding document, dispensed with the seemingly casual, prosaic
attitude one would assume when changing a light bulb, pursues further the
idea that people other than themselves are merely highly evolved animals in
their personal zoo--kept there not so much for their entertainment value, as
for the safety and security of the zookeepers.
In 1993, the STOA report says, the U.S. departments of Justice and
Defense entered into an agreement for the sharing of technology to be used
in "Operations Other Than War and Law Enforcement." Anyone with an intellect
greater than that of an aphid knows on whom they desire to ply that
technology. Categories "Other War and Law Enforcement" can only mean an
enormously intrusive surveillance of the common citizen--the "masses"--the
non-elite "zoo" that must be kept track of.
"'To counteract reductions in military contracts which began in the
1980's,'" the Interim Report quotes David Banisar of Privacy International,
"'computer and electronics companies are expanding into new markets - at
home and abroad - with equipment originally developed for the military.'"
STOA cites American companies such as "E Systems, Electronic Data
Systems and Texas Instruments," which are scrambling to recover market share
lost when their golden goose, the Cold War, died. These corporations "are
selling advanced computer systems and surveillance equipment to state and
local governments that use them for law enforcement, border control and
Welfare administration."
Welfare administration? Can one possibly imagine, in a world
increasingly being directed toward a massive semi-welfare state, why they
would want to apply such technology to "welfare administration"?-- unless
they plan to have everyone enrolled--and track their every move.
In what seems to have been an involuntary spasm of candor, the European
Parliamentary document further quotes Banisar as saying, "'What the East
German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming a reality in
the free world.'"
STOA's Interim Report reveals:
...police and intelligence officers still photograph
demonstrations and individuals of interest but increasingly such
images can be stored and searched. Ongoing processes of
ultra-miniaturisation mean that such devices can be made to be
virtually undetectable and are open to abuse by both individuals,
companies and official agencies.
They readily admit that current technology permits "material from such
systems [to] be seamlessly edited." Translated, that means that any
technician with the right equipment can tamper with data to make "evidence"
appear to be anything they want. They can, for example, modify the digitized
data from surveillance cameras, so pervasive in England, and place any
person or vehicle in any setting or location they choose--and even Steven
Speilburg couldn't tell the difference.
Under STOA's subheading, "Algorithmic Surveillance Systems" is the
following for which the adjective "ominous" seems somehow grossly
inadequate:
The revolution in urban surveillance will reach the next
generation of control once reliable face recognition comes in. It
will initially be introduced at stationary locations, like
turnstiles, customs points, security gateways etc. to enable a
standard full face recognition to take place. The Interim Study
predicted that in the early part of the 21st. century,
[It must be noted that at this posting the 21st century is less than 400
days away.]
facial recognition on CCTV will be a reality and those countries
with CCTV infrastructures will view such technology as a natural
add-on. In fact, an American company Software and Systems has
trialed a system in London which can scan crowds and match faces
against a database of images held in a remote computer. We are at
the beginning of a revolution in 'algorithmic surveillance' -
effectively data analysis via complex algorithms which enable
automatic recognition and tracking. Such automation not only
widens the surveillance net, it narrows the mesh.(See Norris, C.,
et. al, 1998). [emphasis supplied]
Narrowing "the mesh" simply means the ability of a surveillance analysis
computer to discriminate between very similar objects, such as identical
twins or a vehicle whose only distinguishing feature might be a scratch or
dent in the fender. With the advent of super computers that perform billions
of instructions per second this data can be run and results obtained in time
frames on the order of thousands of a second.
The EU's STOA report illustrates how even the most elusive "target" will
be no match for the eyes of Big Brother:
Similarly Vehicle Recognition Systems have been developed which
can identify a car number plate then track the car around a city
using a computerised geographic information system. Such systems
are now commercially available, for example, the Talon system
introduced in 1994 by UK company Racal at a price of �2000 per
unit. The system is trained to recognise number plates based on
neural network technology developed by Cambridge Neurodynamics,
and can see both night and day. Initially it has been used for
traffic monitoring but its function has been adapted in recent
years to cover security surveillance and has been incorporated in
the "ring of steel" around London. The system can then record all
the vehicles that entered or left the cordon on a particular day.
A great part of this technology is currently in place. "Already
multifunctional traffic management systems such as 'Traffic Master' (which
uses vehicle recognition systems to map and quantify congestion), are
facilitating a national surveillance architecture," says the European
Parliament report.
An example of the misuse to which these systems will be applied was seen
in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. "The cameras used in Tiananmen
Square were sold as advanced traffic control systems by Siemens Plessey. Yet
after the 1989 massacre of students, there followed a witch hunt when the
authorities tortured and interrogated thousands in an effort to ferret out
the subversives. The Scoot surveillance system with USA made Pelco cameras
were used to faithfully record the protests. The images were repeatedly
broadcast over Chinese television offering a reward for information, with
the result that nearly all the transgressors were identified." [ibid.]
In its presentation this "Interim Study" by the EU's parliament seems to
carry with it the overtone that America is being seamlessly woven into the
entire concept. By its own wording the study details "the global
surveillance systems which facilitate the mass supervision of all
telecommunications including telephone, email and fax transmissions of
private citizens, politicians, trade unionists and companies alike." [ibid.]
[emphasis supplied]
The same Globalist order that brought this nation "political
correctness" and the redefinition "hate" have now stepped over their own
line. The STOA report claims that "there has been a political shift in
targeting in recent years. Instead of investigating crime (which is
reactive) law enforcement agencies are increasingly tracking certain social
classes and races of people living in red-lined areas before crime is
committed - a form of pre-emptive policing deemed data-veillance which is
based on military models of gathering huge quantities of low grade
intelligence."
"Pre-emptive policing" can mean such things as the gathering of more
people with a particular skin color at a street corner than police are
comfortable with, thus placing the First Amendment's guarantee of "the right
of the people peaceably to assemble" in serious jeopardy--not to mention
presumption of innocence.
With this technology it appears that America is intent on showing the
former Soviet Union where it went wrong and how it should be done. Those
that determine the progress and direction of One World government set the
minorities against the majorities and one race at the throat of another.
They accomplish this by continually drawing the attention of each to the
other, emphasizing the differences and unfairness of each group. And while
the attention of those factions is diverted because they are made to busily
watch each other, the "zoo keepers" are busy watching the inmates of their
world asylum.
One of the ingenious ways in which they have accomplished this is to
make cell phones cheaper and cheaper. First, they made them the status
symbol of the upper class thus creating a desire in the lower strata of
society. Then they make the increasingly ubiquitous objects available to
virtually anyone. This reporter, in a recent visit to the Palestinian West
Bank, was amazed to see even some of the lower income Arabs in possession of
cellular telephones. These instruments, formerly relegated to the category
of "Yuppie toys" and well-to-do businessmen are becoming the modern tracking
devices of the New Order.
The EU's STOA report "also explained how mobile phones have inbuilt
monitoring and tagging dimensions which can be accessed by police and
intelligence agencies. For example, the digital technology required to
pinpoint mobile phone users for incoming calls, means that all mobile phone
users in a country when activated, are mini-tracking devices, giving their
owners whereabouts at any time and stored in the company's computer. For
example, Swiss Police have secretly tracked the whereabouts of mobile phone
users from the computer of the service provider Swisscom, which according to
SonntagsZeitung had stored movements of more than a million subscribers down
to a few hundred metres, and going back at least half a year."
CODE NAME: ECHELON -- Spying For a World Community
The European Parliament's STOA report makes some amazingly forthright
revelations:
2.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Interim Study said that within Europe, all e-mail, telephone
and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United
States National Security Agency [NSA], transferring all target
information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of
London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial
hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.
The system was first uncovered in the 1970s by a group of
researchers in the UK (Campbell, 1981). A recent work by Nicky
Hager, Secret Power, (Hager,1996) provides the most comprehensive
details to date of a project known as ECHELON. Hager interviewed
more than 50 people concerned with intelligence to document a
global surveillance system that stretches around the world to form
a targeting system on all of the key Intelsat satellites used to
convey most of the world's satellite phone calls, internet,
e-mail, faxes and telexes. These sites are based at Sugar Grove
and Yakima, in the USA, at Waihopai in New Zealand, at Geraldton
in Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the UK.
"An astonishing number of people have told [Nicky Hager] things that I, as
Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told...It
is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little." --David
Lange, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1984-89 [9]
Nicky Hager, the author cited in the EU report, began writing about
ECHELON after being approached by members of New Zealand's Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), "the nation's equivalent of the US
National Security Agency (NSA)," Hager says. He claims that "various
intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too
long....
"Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold
War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments,
organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It
potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes
within) countries anywhere in the world."[9]
Hagar describes how ECHELON uses a computerized "dictionary" on which
the NSA's massive super-computer complex runs nearly instant analysis,
searching for key words contained in data transmissions. This Orwellian
system illustrates the use of the United States as the Globalist's muscle
and nerve center of economic/political activities. "Whenever the Dictionary
encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords," Hager
reveals, "it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the
headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even
sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign
agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA
no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their
soil."
Located at Fort Meade, Maryland, the National Security Agency[10] is
such a super-secret organization that for some twenty years after its
creation, the government would not even acknowledge its existence--in spite
of the presence of its enormous headquarters building and the fact that it
consumes about 80% of the U.S. intelligence budget, far outstripping the
CIA. To make their presence appear more benign they refer to their
headquarters as the "campus," thus giving the world's premier spy agency a
sort of collegiate ambiance.
Established in 1952 by Presidential Directive from President Truman, the
NSA was organized under the Defense Department. It is in charge of the most
sophisticated of electronic intelligence gathering, code making and code
breaking. Nearly all of American intelligence satellites (intelsats) are
under its control. The agency even claims that its research and development
are directly responsible for the advent of computers as we know them today.
A statement found on NSA's website asserts that, "It is said that NSA is
one of the largest employers of mathematicians in the United States and
perhaps the world." "It is said" is intelligence-speak for "that's true, but
we aren't officially claiming it."
Also found on their server is a very sobering (if not downright scary)
thought: "the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the final authority over
all intelligence collection and analysis." [ibid.]
To read NSA's promotional literature makes the agency sound much like
something the Boy Scouts might operate if they had a spy organization.
As mentioned above, the NSA coordinates numerous data link facilities
around the world that gather massive amounts of electronic information, and
that information will be disposed of in ways that naturally benefit the
United States. While it is accepted that any nation will naturally look out
for its own best interests, America, however, has been at the forefront of
complaining to other countries that government protectionism of their own
industries makes for a grossly unlevel playing field. What the U.S. doesn't
mention, in its covert hypocrisy, is that the massive array of
super-technical American intelligence is being used to assure this nation's
dominance in the international business arena.
The STOA Interim Report claims that the use of ESCHELON "has benefited
U.S. companies involved in arms deals, strengthened Washington's position in
crucial World Trade organization talks with Europe during a 1995 dispute
with Japan over car part exports. According to the Financial Mail On Sunday,
'key words identified by U.S. experts include the names of
inter-governmental trade organizations and business consortia bidding
against US companies....' It has also been suggested that in 1990 the U.S.
broke into secret negotiations and persuaded Indonesia that U.S. giant AT&T
be included in a multi-billion dollar telecom deal that at one point was
going entirely to Japan's NEC.'"[8]
The Sunday Times...reported allegations that conversations between
the German company Volkswagen and General Motors were intercepted
and the French have complained that Thompson-CSF, the French
electronics company, lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil
with a radar system because the Americans intercepted details of
the negotiations and passed them on to U.S. company Raytheon,
which subsequently won the contract. Another claim is that Airbus
Industrie lost a contract worth $1 billion to Boeing and McDonnel
Douglas because information was intercepted by American spying.
Other newspapers such as Liberation (21 April 1998) and Il
Mondo (20 March 1998), identify the network as an Anglo-Saxon Spy
network because of the UK-USA axis. [ibid.]
Most of these data collection stations are run secretly, not because of
national security but because, as in Britain and the United States,
collection of such data is illegal. "British researcher Duncan Campbell has
described how the U.S. Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into
the British Telecom microwave network..." an illegal act by British law.
[ibid.]
Lest one think that this Globalist Spy vs. Spy is restricted to only a
single venue, "The situation is further complicated by counter allegations
in the French magazine Le Point, that the French are systematically spying
on American and other allied countries' telephone and cable traffic via the
Helios 1A Spy satellite. (Times, June 17 1998)." [ibid.]
"With capabilities so secret and so powerful," says Nicky Hager in his
book Secret Power almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group
of current 'highly placed intelligence operatives' from the GCHQ [British
Government Communications Headquarters] spoke to the London Observer: 'We
feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be
gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we
operate.' They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three charitable
organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the
Observer reported: 'At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their
communications for a routine target request,' the GCHQ source said. In the
case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes it is
called Mayfly."
These British GCHQ agents were able to vividly demonstrate the system to
the journalist from the London Observer. They keyed in a code and specific
trigger words that were assigned to Third World aid which apparently
resulted in displaying the private telex communications of three
organizations. Hager said that what they had demonstrated was "a fairly
precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works....
"Mike Frost's expose' of Canadian 'embassy collection' operations
described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory that can 'listen' to
telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken," Hager continues.
"Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and
accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers.
Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from the
masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for analysts
back at agency headquarters."[8]
The European Union's parliamentary arm in their official STOA report
expressed some concern about America's immensely powerful spying
capabilities. "No proper Authority in the USA," the Interim Report
concluded, "would allow a similar EU spy network to operate from American
soil without strict limitations, if at all." Well, duh!
Nor is the EU about to fail in following America's lead in spying on its
own citizens. "In February 1997, Statewatch [a "widely respected UK based
civil liberties monitoring and research organization"] reported that the EU
had secretly agreed to set up an international telephone tapping network via
a secret network of committees established under the 'third pillar' of the
Maastricht Treaty...." EU agencies have also entered into agreements with
the FBI on electronics surveillance. The STOA quotes a Guardian report of
February, '97 which "reflects concern among European Intelligence agencies
that modern technology will prevent them from tapping private
communications. 'EU countries' it says, should agree on 'international
interception standards set at a level that would ensure encoding or
scrambled words can be broken down by government agencies.' Official reports
say that the EU governments agreed to co-operate closely with the FBI in
Washington. Yet earlier minutes of these meetings suggest that the original
initiative came from [surprise] Washington." [ibid.]
"BLACK BOX DECISION MAKING:
...a new global military-intelligence state"
Statewatch concludes that 'it is the interface of the ECHELON
system and its potential development on phone calls combined with
the standardisation of 'tappable communications centres and
equipment being sponsored by the EU and the USA which presents a
truly global threat over which there are no legal or democratic
controls.'(Press release 25.2.97) In many respects what we are
witnessing here are meetings of operatives of a new global
military-intelligence state. It is very difficult for anyone to
get a full picture of what is being decided at the executive
meetings setting this 'Transatlantic agenda.' Whilst Statewatch
won a ruling from the Ombudsman for access on the grounds that the
Council of Ministers 'misapplied the code of access,' for the time
being such access to the agendas have been denied. Without such
access, we are left with 'black box decision making.'[8]
OPEN SKIES: A Two-way Looking Glass
In a previous WINDS article[[11] a strange new twist on the "friendly
skies" was discussed. The Open Skies treaty, instituted by the Bush
Administration, provides for overflights by foreign aircraft for the stated
purpose of promoting an openness between nations and easier verification of
arms control compliance. Other reasons, however, lie beneath the surface of
this apparent magnanimous treaty.
Because of the illegality of most acts of domestic surveillance and the
odious nature to Americans of virtually all that is legal, what scenario
could better play itself out than to provide foreign aircraft with
intelligence gathering opportunities they need, and then have that foreign
entity provide this country with data they gather on American citizens.
There is, after all, no law forbidding such foreign intelligence gathering.
The U.S. would, of course, reciprocate and provide Open SkiesTreaty
signatories with data the U.S. gathers on those country's citizens. Neat,
clean and elegant--and virtually invisible.
According to the August, '97 article published on The WINDS, America is
even providing these foreign governments with the equipment necessary to spy
on American citizens. One such piece of equipment, among others, that was
approved for this surveillance is synthetic aperture radar (SAR) which can
penetrate any weather and render a photographic quality image swath ten
miles wide of whatever the aircraft overflies. This technology was developed
by Sandia National Laboratories who has also developed aircraft pods for the
Synthetic Aperture Radar for Open Skies (SAROS) program specifically
designed for foreign aircraft to mount the equipment.
As the nations of the earth struggle to make themselves omniscient (all
knowing) by means of their super-computer networks, they seek also to become
omnipotent, the sole proprietors over the minds and consciences of men. This
is a prerogative that has heretofore been jealously guarded by a Power far
higher in authority than any formed by man. That prerogative is still
jealously guarded and men are even now beginning to witness the wrath of
that jealousy that is driven by love for those against whom such technology
is arrayed.
A very similar plan was once before formulated in antiquity when mankind
decided to build himself a structure--a New World Order--that would "reach
unto heaven" and to make a name for himself lest he "be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth." This first attempt to "reach unto
heaven"--to usurp universal power--was looked upon by their Creator Who
remarked, "...now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have
imagined to do." His response was to confuse their language, creating the
diverse tongues of the earth. Now, the universal language of the
international computer network seeks to reverse that decree made by
Omnipotence. Again Babylon raises it head against Heaven and just as when
King David met with judgment when he sought to number Israel as his own
kingdom, so is this earth being met with judgment as its governments seek to
create their sovereign One World Kingdom and become unified against Heaven
in enslaving the souls of men.
It is easy enough to maintain the mindset that all this may affect the
"other guy" because HE is doing things he shouldn't, but we are law-abiding.
What few realize is that mountains of legislation in the last
century-and-half have made illegal a multitude of perfectly normal and moral
actions. Neither that legislative tidal wave, nor the technology to enforce
it, will stop until every activity on the part of every citizen that
exhibits any behavior or thinking independent of government control is
declared illegal.
In a current WINDS article[12] about government requiring that banks
"profile" all of their customers and report any "suspicious" activity, the
comment is made that "once a person is 'flagged' by a profiling system,
he/she essentially must prove that he/she is innocent of wrongdoing." Anyone
who has played that game of proving one's innocence with the IRS already
knows where it leads. When a government is so obsessed with its own survival
that it becomes this fearful of its citizens' freedoms and rights, the
doctrine of presumption of innocence disappears and any activity deemed
"suspicious" becomes a declaration of guilt.
Again, the driving document of the globalist's demonstrates its far
reaching insight when it talks about its system "which possesses millions of
eyes ever on the watch and unhampered by any limitations whatsoever. Our
international rights will then wipe out national rights..." Protocol No. 2,
Paragraph 1.
Who would ever have thought that those "millions of eyes" would be glass
eyes that are mounted on light poles or eyes wired into our telephones that
we carry with us?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES:
1. Reuters, October 8, 1998.
2. House Resolution 3694, 105th Congress.
3. Democracy Betrayed Means New Wiretapping Powers, by Solveig Bernstein,
CATO Institute, October 2, 1996.
4. Death Penalty Sought for Fourth Amendment, The WINDS, June, 1997.
5. Inside America's Secret Court, by Patrick S. Poole, Free Congress
Research and Education Foundation, Center for Technology Policy.
6. Congress plans National Wiretap Week, by Laura W. Murphy, Director,
ACLU National Office (Op-ed published in the Los Angeles Daily
Journal, 3/96).
7. "The Catch-22 Law," by Benjamin Wittes, The Washington Post, April 21,
1998, page A21.
8. AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL, Scientific and
Technological Options Assessment (STOA), Interim Study, Executive
Summary, September 1998.
9. Exposing the Global Surveillance System, CovertAction
Quarterly, Winter,1998 / Secret Power, Nicky Hager, Craig Potton
Publishing, New Zealand, 1996.
10. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
11. Open Skies and "White Lies" Treaty, The WINDS, August 12, 1997.
12. FDIC to Force Banks to Spy on Customers, The WINDS, November 29, 1998.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FURTHER READING: Because of the sheer volume of information obtained during
research on this subject, the greater part could not be included. Because of
this, it is highly recommended that at least the following source be read
due to considerable relevant information contained in them.
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL, STOA Interim Study
Executive Summary September 1998.
Inside America's Secret Court by Patrick S. Poole
Secret Power, by Nicky Hager, Craig Potton Publishing, New Zealand, 1996.
(still in print)
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