EU group denounces U.S. spying E-mail, faxes being monitored

Steve Kettmann / SF Chronicle 30jul01

• American Civil Liberties Union maintains www.echelonwatch.org

Brussels -- Echelon, an alleged U.S. satellite surveillance system, is getting more and more attention from the rest of world, particularly European Union lawmakers.

A year ago, when the European Parliament established a temporary committee to investigate Echelon, most Americans had not heard of the system. It is reportedly operated by the U.S. National Security Agency in association with the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Governments are questioning what e-mails, faxes and phone calls the NSA was tapping into.

But despite the concern, the European Parliament committee charged with investigating the situation concluded its congress in Strasbourg, France, earlier this month with little concrete action agreed upon.

In its resolution, the committee condemned Echelon's existence and agreed to step up meaningful rhetorical pressure on the United States. Some EU officials wanted more.

Giuseppe Di Lello Finuoli of Italy, one of three vice chairmen, protested the committee's emphasis on legalisms, saying such language would not prevent Europeans from having their e-mail, faxes and phone conversations monitored by nosy Americans, along with their English-speaking partners, England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Di Lello Finuoli said he believes Echelon will continue to operate with impunity. "That failure to protect European citizens will have been endorsed by the failure to take action," Di Lello Finuoli said through the official translator.

Here in the United States, the National Security Agency, which reportedly operates the Echelon system, declined to comment even generally when queried by a reporter on the topic of Echelon. But former CIA Director James Woolsey confirmed the existence of the system in a news conference in March -- and also confirmed that the U.S. government spies on European business for certain purposes.

Speaking at a news conference for foreign journalists, Woolsey said that because of a "national culture . . . of bribery" in Europe, the U.S. government was justified in using reconnaissance satellites to monitor communications. Comments such as Woolsey's have increased opposition to Echelon in the United States.

"We've gone past the point where Echelon is 'X-Files' material and can be dismissed as paranoia," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which maintains the www.echelonwatch.org  Web site. "It's been the intercession of the European Parliament that has forced the issue out into the open and forced the United States government to admit that Echelon exists."

He applauded the committee's emphasis on looking at governmental surveillance as a question of violating citizens' basic rights to privacy -- and on the question of how agencies that "operate in the dark without any significant oversight" can be regulated. "What really needs to happen next is a committee of the U.S. Congress that's not tied to the intelligence agencies needs to take a close look at Echelon," Steinhardt said. "They are the only ones with the subpoena power and the security clearance to bring the NSA to the table. Only the U.S. Congress has the capability to ferret out the truth."

Set up last July, the European Parliament committee was at first attacked as a do-nothing show committee that would not dare raise politically dangerous accusations. Instead, the Echelon committee made repeated headlines in Europe as it called on expert witnesses to discuss the alleged system's ability to monitor phone calls, faxes and e-mails in Europe and the rest of the world. Most explosively, it painted a convincing picture of the United States using this capability to engage in industrial espionage and assist U.S. corporations.

The committee's rapporteur or spokesman, Gerhard Schmid of Germany, stopped short of specifically charging the United States with industrial espionage in his report, explaining that he fell just short of definitive proof for such allegations. "It's not up to the rapporteur to say what he thinks the Americans are doing, it is to say what I know the Americans are doing," Schmid said during the committee's last scheduled meeting in Brussels.

In Strasbourg, the Echelon committee approved the final wording of its resolution calling on the United Nations and the United States to push for international monitoring of satellite-operated surveillance systems, among other steps. Accurately mapping the work of intelligence agencies may not be possible. But enough detail has emerged from the work of the committee -- and a few journalists -- to paint a thorough picture of the system known as Echelon, though even the name remains somewhat uncertain.

Author James Bamford explained in his book "Body of Secrets" that the NSA created software in the 1970s to sort through the voluminous information coming in from listening posts around the world and dubbed the software Echelon. Duncan Campbell, a British journalist, has been reporting on Echelon for years, and his work helped turn it into an international controversy.

By signing National Security Directive 67, he wrote, former President George Bush instructed the CIA and NSA in March 1992 to spy on foreign countries to "level the playing field." The Clinton administration went further, establishing an "Advocacy Center" with links to both U.S. corporations and intelligence services.

According to figures released by the Advocacy Center -- and cited by Campbell, who testified to the Echelon committee -- the use of intelligence agencies to detect "unfair" business practices cost France nearly $17 billion of trade during the 1990s. Germany was next at $4 billion.

Steve Kettmann covers technology issues from Berlin.