The first document I looked at is entitled “Legal Standards for the Intelligence Community in Conducting Electronic Surveillance.” This is a report submitted to Congress in February, 2000. The opening paragraph states ” Electronic surveillance is conducted by elements of the Intelligence Community for foreign intelligence and foreign counterintelligence purposes. Because of its potential intrusiveness and the implications for the privacy of United States persons, such surveillance is subject to strict regulation by statute, and Executive Order, and close scrutiny. The applicable legal standards for the collection, retention, or dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons reflect a careful balancing between the needs of the government for such intelligence and the protection of the rights of U.S. persons, consistent with the reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment, as determined by factual circumstance.” Well now, that makes me feel better. The reader should keep in mind that the fourth amendment protects us from UNREASONABLE searches. The surveillance being strictly regulated by statute, Executive Order, and close scrutiny makes me feel great too. The document goes on to discuss the statutes and regulations governing information collected , and that Intelligence Agencies may request assistance from foreign governments in the collection of that information.
ECHELON is a project and system that originates in 1971. This system is operated by five nations: Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. These countries work together in accordance with an agreement between the US and the UK in 1947. ECHELON sifts through the majority of information passed through the internet and phone lines. Once information is gathered, it is sent to processing centers in Denver, Colorado(US), Men with Hill, England, Australia, and Germany. There is a computer system that information is filtered through called DICTIONARY that searches for keywords. While the United States has refused to comment on the program, two reports have been released which were commissioned by the European Parliament about it. The first of these reports, entitled “An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control,” stated that ECHELON is designed for primarily non-military targets, and gleans information from virtually every country. It is divided into seven sections. Here are direct quotes from the report about the section topics.
- The role and function of the technology of political control;
- Recent trends and innovations (including the implications of globalization, militarization of police equipment, convergence of control systems deployed worldwide and the implications of increasing technology and decision drift);
- Developments in surveillance technology (including the emergence of new forms of local, national and international communications interceptions networks and the creation of human recognition and tracking devices);
- Innovations in crowd control weapons (including the evolution of a 2nd. generation of so called ‘less-lethal weapons’ from nuclear labs in the USA).
- The emergence of prisoner control as a privatized industry, whilst state prisons face increasing pressure to substitute technology for staff in cost cutting exercises and the social and political implications of replacing policies of rehabilitation with strategies of human warehousing.
- The use of science and technology to devise new efficient mark-free interrogation and torture technologies and their proliferation from the US & Europe.
- The implications of vertical and horizontal proliferation of this technology and the need for an adequate political response by the EU, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants.
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