-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- It Came From Ft. Meade Echelon Lives! And Europe Is Mad The Anglo-American electronic eavesdropping network. BRITAIN and the US are facing unprecedented legal and political challenges from their European allies over a secret Anglophone spy network. Newly declassified American documents last week provided the first official confirmation that the global electronic eavesdropping operation exists. The Echelon surveillance system - run by five English-speaking nations but dominated by the US - is reportedly capable of monitoring telephone, fax and email communications relayed by satellite anywhere in the world. The network is a legacy of the Cold War intelligence showdown with the communist bloc. But there are allegations in west European nations that Echelon is being abused by US espionage chiefs to spy on individuals and to pass on commercial secrets to American businesses. Britain's role has come under fierce fire as it is the only European member of the UK/USA alliance that operates the system. Canada, Australia and New Zea land subsequently joined the grouping that London formed with America in 1947 to pool security information. The sprawling Menwith Hill listening station in North Yorkshire is the most important international site for America's National Security Agency (NSA), the lead player in Echelon. A new report into Echelon's electronic surveillance commissioned by the European Parliament will fuel the row when MEPs debate its findings next week. The document lists high-profile cases in which American companies allegedly won contracts heading for European firms after NSA intercepted conversations. The Airbus consortium and Thomson CSF of France were among the reported losers. In Asia, the US used information gathered from its bases in Australia to win a half share of a significant Indonesian trade contract for AT&T that communication intercepts showed was initially going to NRC of Japan, according to a former NSA agent, Wayne Madsen, on Australian television last year. A lawsuit against the US and Britain is being launched in France, judicial and parliamentary investigations have begun in Italy, and German parliamentarians have demanded an inquiry. In the US, a Congressional investigation into the Echelon system starts this year amid concerns over possible privacy violations. A spokesman for the government reform committee said: "American people not only have the right to privacy, they have the right to know about it if their privacy is infringed." The committee will be able to issue subpoenas to federal officials and employees of NSA to compel them to give evidence. Although a 1996 book by a New Zealand whistleblower and an earlier 1997 report to the European Parliament disclosed the existence of Echelon, there had been no official confirmation in Britain or America until declassified US defence department papers were posted on the Internet last week. The first reference to the "highly controversial programme . . . codenamed Echelon" came in a 1991 document relating to military Sigint (signals intelligence) units at Sugar Grove in West Virginia. Despite the release, NSA continued to refuse to confirm or deny Echelon's existence. The Home Office did not respond to inquiries about Echelon last week. Senior British intelligence officials have, however, denied that there is a "word spotting" search system that allows calls of intelligence interest to be selected by the use of key words or names. The report, to be presented to the European Parliament's civil liberties committee on February 22, agrees that "word spotting" does not exist. Instead, the millions of satellite communications monitored each day are reportedly sifted by so-called "dictionary" computers that check messages against a database of targets such as names, topics, addresses and telephone numbers. If there is a match, the intercepts are relayed to security agents for analysis. The biggest data-collection centre is at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Virginia, while Britain's largest centre is GCHQ in Cheltenham. The investigations will throw embarrassing light on the clandestine Anglophone listening operation. The biggest challenge seems likely in France, where strict privacy laws mean that it is necessary to prove only that an attempt to breach the privacy of an individual has been made, not that the intrusion was harmful. A leading Parisian law firm said said last week that it would file the French equivalent of a class action suit to sue the US and Britain, representing individuals and firms that claim they have lost contracts because of "theft of information". David Natas, a lawyer specialising in computer crime, said: "The French are extremely angry. They should tear down the listening stations in Cornwall." In Italy, parliament's secret services committee has opened an inquiry, as have magistrates in Rome. Carlo Sarzana, an assistant chief preliminary judge, said of NSA's intercepts: "The scope is not military." But there are plenty in Washington who believe that NSA is simply doing its duty, and say that European secret services pursue the same policy. One congressional insider said: "The French are like whining babies. They always seem to find a reason for any of their failures." The London Telegraph, February 13, 2000 The Lone Gunman Who Shot Kennedy The Lone Teenager Who Shut Down Yahoo The FBI really, really, really wants that new money for wiretaps. A LONE teenager could be responsible for the attacks that closed some of the world's leading commercial and news web sites last week, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. A search for the supposed hackers who temporarily shut down sites such as CNN.com, Amazon, Yahoo and the internet auction house eBay is focusing away from organised criminals or international "cyber-terrorists". Despite the apparent complexity of the assault, experts say it involved widely available and inexpensive software. "A 15-year-old kid could launch these attacks," said Ron Dick, the head of computer investigations at the FBI. "This is not something that requires a great deal of sophistication." In a series of attacks, web sites worth billions of dollars were overwhelmed with erroneous data on three successive days last week, blocking public access for several hours. The hunt for those responsible is complicated because possibly hundreds of computers, many on university campuses, were manipulated to magnify the scale of the attack. Officials at the University of California in Santa Barbara said they had discovered that illegal software had been planted in one of its computers and had probably been used to close down CNN for several hours on Tuesday. They believed that the software had been sent down a telephone link rather than from inside the university. A spokesman described the computer as "a run of the mill desktop machine, slightly old". Security officials at Stanford University, California, say one of their computers was used to funnel huge streams of data used in other attacks. Computers at the University College of Los Angeles were hijacked for the attack on Amazon. The FBI has refused to comment on claims by CNN that it was focusing on several undisclosed locations in Oregon and California as the source of the attacks on its site. The electronic bombardment began on Monday and shut down Yahoo, the information site which is the most visited on the World Wide Web. The most serious attack was only revealed on Friday. Realnames.com, which provides a simplified searching system for the Web, said credit card details and other personal data belonging to up to 20,000 customers might have been stolen during its attack. Keith Teare, chief executive of Realnames, said he believed that the tidal wave of data that overwhelmed his systems might have been a smokescreen to plunder valuable information. The company uses an electronic "firewall" to protect credit card numbers, but this was breached as engineers struggled with other tasks. Although technology is available to block attacks using data streams, companies are reluctant to use it because it slows access to their sites. Government agencies in America have become increasingly concerned at the vulnerability of the nation's computer network to disruption. President Clinton will soon meet leading computer security experts at the White House, with last week's incidents at the top of the agenda. Mr Clinton recently allocated more than �1.25 billion ($2 billion) to protect America's most impor tant computer networks from disruption. There is a growing fear that international terrorists and hostile governments, in particular the Chinese, are developing cyber attacks as a new dimension in warfare by disrupting military weapons and communications networks and hitting America's economic infrastructure. Among last week's targets was Buy.com, an internet store, which was hit as it floated on the New York Stock Exchange. The attacks are held partly responsible for a drop in share prices on Wednesday, but the FBI has indicated that it does not think foreign governments or terrorists were behind the assault. It is, however, using US Intelligence networks to assist in the manhunt. The investigation is complicated because those responsible took care to cover their "electronic fingerprints" - clues in the data which could lead back to the source computer. The hacker is believed to have planted illegal software in perhaps 20 or 30 third-party host computers which then bombarded the sites affected with messag es requesting information from what appeared to be thousands of other machines. Because these electronic addresses did not exist, the web sites hit rapidly became clogged as its systems attempted to reply. If caught, those responsible could face prison sentences of between five and 10 years and fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. However the electronic trail may now be too cold to be of any use. Experts warn that the perpetrator may never be caught, unless he is turned in by a relative or friend. The London Telegraph, February 13, 2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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