The New Dark Age

Comment: Actually, there were many of us who were also arguing and "railing" that such "lurking" had been present for quite sometime. You had to connect the dots by going back to the 1960s and 70s reports and the evolution of ECHELON,  not least MAIN CORE and the evidence from Danny Casolaro But hey, let's not quibble.

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Antiwar

For years, this space has been arguing – railing, really – that the ideological and legal currents unleashed by America’s response to the 9/11 attacks have been leading us down the road to dictatorship: see here, here, here, and here. Back in those halcyon days, circa 2007 and much earlier, it was easy to dismiss such charges as the mental effluvia of the somewhat overwrought libertarian imagination: after all, if we’re headed for an authoritarian order of Orwellian proportions, then where are the Thought Police?

What we didn’t know was that they were lurking in the woodwork all along – spying on us, recording our phone calls, scooping up our emails, and tracking our every move. We didn’t know about the National Security Agency’s data dragnet: we hadn’t heard of PRISM, or any of the other programs that allow government snoops to sniff out dissidents and other "subversives" who might be "linked" to "terrorism."

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. 

I take very cold comfort in having been right about this, because, for one, it’s actually much worse than I thought it would be. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, and the government’s reaction, we have an ominous new development in the works, one I never foresaw: the criminalization of journalism.

The Washington Post reported, the other day, on an exchange between FBI Director James Comey and his Republican interlocutor, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, reproducing the relevant and most striking part in full. The occasion was Tuesday’s session of a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on "Worldwide Threats," with Rogers questioning Comey on the Snowden documents:

"REP. ROGERS: You – there have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material – is that a crime?

DIRECTOR COMEY: Yes, it is.

ROGERS: And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government – would that be a crime?

COMEY: It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a news-gathering and news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.

ROGERS: So if I’m a newspaper reporter for – fill in the blank – and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?

COMEY: Right, if you’re a newspaper report[er] and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime."
You can see where this is going, but let’s stop for a moment and check Comey’s premises: who has stolen what from whom? This is the real question at the heart of the debate over the Snowden revelations, and as usual the inhabitants of that Bizarro World known as Washington, D.C., have turned reality on its head. It was Snowden who blew the whistle on the real thieves: the NSA and the government officials who presided over the wholesale hijacking of our privacy in brazen violation of the Fourth Amendment. If anyone is "hocking" "stolen property" it is the government, which has contracted out its illegal surveillance programs to private vendors who profit from Washington’s crimes against the American people. 

Read more

 

Echelon spy network revealed

Listening in to your phone calls and reading your emails
 

By Andrew Bomford of BBC Radio 4's PM programme, 3 November, 1999,
 

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Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet. It sounds like science fiction, but it's true.
Two of the chief protagonists - Britain and America - officially deny its existence. But the BBC has confirmation from the Australian Government that such a network really does exist and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for an inquiry.

On the North Yorkshire moors above Harrogate they can be seen for miles, but still they are shrouded in secrecy. Around 30 giant golf balls, known as radomes, rise from the US military base at Menwith Hill.

Linked to the NSA

Inside is the world's most sophisticated eavesdropping technology, capable of listening-in to satellites high above the earth.

The base is linked directly to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Mead in Maryland, and it is also linked to a series of other listening posts scattered across the world, like Britain's own GCHQ.

The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding.

Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition. They home in on a long list of key words, or patterns of messages. They are looking for evidence of international crime, like terrorism.

Open Oz

The network is so secret that the British and American Governments refuse to admit that Echelon even exists. But another ally, Australia, has decided not to be so coy.

The man who oversees Australia's security services, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security Bill Blick, has confirmed to the BBC that their Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) does form part of the network.

"As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security", he said.

Asked if they are then passed on to countries like Britain and America, he said: "They might be in certain circumstances."

But the system is so widespread all sorts of private communications, often of a sensitive commercial nature, are hoovered up and analysed.

Journalist Duncan Campbell has spent much of his life investigating Echelon. In a report commissioned by the European Parliament he produced evidence that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.

"There's no safeguards, no remedies, " he said, "There's nowhere you can go to say that they've been snooping on your international communications. Its a totally lawless world."

Breaking the silence
Both Britain and America deny allegations like this, though they refuse to comment further. But one former US army intelligence officer has broken the code of silence.

Colonel Dan Smith told the BBC that while this is feasible, it is not official policy: "Technically they can scoop all this information up, sort through it, and find what it is that might be asked for," he said. "But there is no policy to do this specifically in response to a particular company's interests."

Legislators on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to sit up and take notice. Republican Congressman Bob Barr has persuaded congress to open hearings into these and other allegations.

In December he is coming to Britain to raise awareness of the issue. In an interview with the BBC he accused the NSA of conducting a broad "dragnet" of communications, and "invading the privacy of American citizens."

He is joined in his concerns by a small number of politicians In Britain. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has tabled a series of questions about Menwith Hill, but has been met with a wall of silence.

"There's no doubt it's being used as a listening centre," he said, "There's no doubt it's being used for US interests, and I'm not convinced that Britain's interests are being best served by this."