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French Prosecutor Opens Echelon Probe
gillbates writes: "A French prosecutor is conducting an investigation into the workings of the Echelon system. The article is here, and it details how France is concerned that Echelon is being used for invading its citizens' privacy. France lost a contract with Saudi Arabia due to Echelon, and knows it. How much else will they learn? My question is: What's going to happen to U.S./European relations when they find out the truth about Echelon?" SWroclawski [Updated 6 July 2000 by timothy: sorry 'bout the spelling, Serge! :) ]
points out this link to BBC Coverage, noting "France's laws on privacy are very strict and in a world where one's rights of privacy are being challenged all the time, it's good to see one country taking a stand."
I can't really tell from your post what you're trying to say. But just in case, have a look at this:
Main Entry: humor
Pronunciation: 'hyü-m&r, 'yü-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English humour, from Middle French humeur, from Medieval Latin & Latin; Medieval Latin humor, from Latin humor, umor moisture; akin to Old Norse vokr damp, Latin humEre to be moist, and perhaps to Greek hygros wet
Date: 14th century
...
3 a : that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous b : the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous c : something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing
synonym see WIT
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Before we all get on the "France is standing up to government intrusion" bandwagon, let's remember that France is well-known for "borrowing" travelling executives' laptops at customs, long enough to copy the entire hard drive. And they have, at least once, completely trashed the hotel rooms of major aerospace executives during the Paris airshow to gather information.
Further, their "invading our citizens' privacy" complaints are ironic in light of their own law requiring private encryption keys to be held by third parties so the government can snoop.
Hell, they took a privacy-killing concept we invented and have repeatedly discarded as a bad idea, and implemented it as law. Fix that before you bitch about us, France.
EPIC has called France's encryption policies "perhaps the most restrictive in the world next to Russia".
They require a license to *IMPORT* crypto, and even DES keys are required to be deposited with the government.
Yeah, big on privacy, those French.
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France is just twanked because Echelon caught them on a little deal with Brazil not too long ago. (read it here)
If you are included in the ECHELON network, like the UK and Ireland, then everything is just peachy...else, you cry foul. What of the countries that are in the "network" that are spying on their own companies? Is this suddenly OK?--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
If France was actually taking the path of righteousness here, I'd applaud them. However, they are primarily upset because it's not their system. Most of their civil service is wildy inefficient - often by design, since it allows them to hire more civil servants - but their own spies are top notch. And they don't have laws against bribery to gain foreign contracts, such as the US has for its companies. Its not the privacy concerns that bother the French here, its getting caught.
French foreign policy since WWII has mostly been based on repeated iterations of the question "Will it piss off the English-speakers?" I'll admit that this approach is probably as valid as anything else, and they have certainly been consistent and fair in its application, but basing relations with the rest of the world on a grudge over holding a losing ticket in the dominant culture sweepstakes is not terribly praiseworthy. Sorry.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
There was an item in the UK newspapaper "The Independent" last Sunday which dealt with habitual US usage of Echelon and the American intelligence services to give unfair trade advantages to American companies in competition with European countries.
Are they scared American companies can't succeed on their own merits, or something?
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
Take a look at
http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/hoc2.jpg
This is a letter from my MP on the RIP issue. The first line states :
The Bill is designed to ensure that the intercept regime, which already exists, takes proper account of technological developments.
This is a letter from a member of parliament in England, on official House of Commons letterhead paper. (take a look at hoc1.jpg for proof)
So what's to investigate ? =:-0
/* Wayne Pascoe
Hypocritical or not, two wrongs don't make a right. Let 'em fight Echelon. I think that if my government is spying on French civilians, then they are probably spying on American civilians too.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"France's laws on privacy are very strict and in a world where one's rights of privacy are being challanged all the time, it's good to see one country taking a stand."
Yeah, and encryption is so tightly regulated there that nobody can keep a secret. So, they seem to want to at least be able to listen in.
Eh...
I have to say, I've always harbored concerns about the FISA courts (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), which are essentially a shadow judiciary that supposedly oversees, reviews, and approves FED intelligence wiretapping within the US. Congress has been looking into it sporadically since the 1997 wiretap report, but though they find abuses left and right, and issue sternly worded rebukes, they haven't taken any action yet.
The last I heard, the FISA court had never refused a single one of the 15,000 requests for domestic surveillance made of it, and only a tiny handful (under 10, IIRC) had even had to resubmit, and requests have been skyrocketing since 1993 (averaging about 250/yr in the 15 years from 1978-1993, but currently at 1000+/yr per Freedom of Information Act documents) Meanwhile, 'normal court' wiretap warrants have grown only several percent a year. (*)
The NY Times and other newspapers have written about the FISA system, but the Web has made me lazy (and besides, how many of you would look up a dead tree citation) so here are two URLs [Artcle I] [Article II]. You can find much more info with a G oogle Search for [FISA wiretap] (without brackets).
BTW, if you're interested in such things, you should look at the many articles on the huge increase in state wiretaps and the LA County DA's investigation of massive illegal wiretapping by the LAPD
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
:wq
Yes, and a communications disruption can mean only one thing -- invasion.
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
France has been in the forefront of government-sponsored economic espionage for some time, so this whole "Echelon is bad" is fairly hypocritical
:) Still, if even half of the stuff I've read about Echelon's capabilities are true...it's kinds frightening to realize that my weekly calls to Mom could possibly be in the voice analyzer right now. Perhaps it's time to take a cue from another slashdot posters Sig...
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Sigh. Everytime I read an article similar to this one, I become more and more convinced that I must be a Libiterian. The Horror!
president bomb threat Iraq Oklahoma City fertilizer diesel Waco
by your attitude towards French anti-fascist censorship. The French
laws do not try to make general distinctions between good speech and
bad speech, they specifically target Nazi propaganda (including Nazi
and Vichy memorabilia) and holocaust denial.
If the KKK had tyrannised the US in the same way that Fascists did
in Germany and France, I would not take a smugly superior attitude
towards anti-KKK censorship in the US.
Back to the thread, I think it would be hypocritical for the French
intelligence services to complain about the CIA. It is right and
proper for the French justice system to do the same.
Coincidentally, the European Parliament is due to decide in Strasbourg Wednesday whether to set up a commission to investigate whether Echelon infringes the rights of European citizens and industries.
Anyone know of any investigations on how it infringes on the rights of US citizens?
Or do we supposedly still not know about it?
The RIP bill requiring ISPs to fit the often-mentioned "black boxes" is, I'm afraid, a myth. The bit of bill which has been taken as requiring black boxes (section 12.1) reads "The Secretary of State may by order provide for the imposition by him ... of such obligations as it appears to him reasonable to impose for the purpose of securing that it is and remains practicable for requirements to provide assistance in relation to interception warrants to be imposed and complied with."
Apart from the fact that this is in appallingly bad English, it seems to say that if the police need an ISP to help them tap someone's traffic then the ISP must comply. Is it really that shocking? Okay the wording "measures which appear reasonable to the Secretary of State" is a bit open-ended, but it only applies to the execution of particular warrants. I dislike the bill very much, I have written to my MP to protest about it, it is flawed in a thousand different ways, but it does not require the installation of any "black boxes" to copy all net traffic to GCHQ.
Check out this :
Australia Admits to sigint
Good on the aussies.
--
--
Andy
Crypto is allowed with keys up to 128 bits - only the software used has to be registered with the gov (as is PGP). Crypto used to be limited to 40 bits keys only a while ago, and Netscape had a 40 bits key version available for France. But it still had crypto.
Paper by Kenneth Neil Cukier, Communications Week International on Frenchelon.
Also mentioned in this issue of Cryptome.
Actually there was a guy named Jesus who was crucified in Palastine. Maybe you meant that he wasn't a deity, but he did exist.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
...or rather, half-facts
I remember reading a lot about Echelon (mostly suspicions, though) a while ago in c't magazine (German).
If you like, you can try to find it somewhere on http://www.heise.de/ct/
From what I remember, Echelon is believed to have enormous computer systems and electronic spy stations (in England; Germany; Australia; US (obviously) and somewhere else).
They said they only spied on the East Bloc and assured the German government they weren't spying on Germans at all, but interestingly enough they had rented the rooms right above the Frankfurt main post (including huge telephone arrays) for decades and only moved out a few years ago.
I think it has also been proved (at least there are strong rumors) that the NSA (which is not mentioned in the US constitution, controlled directly by the President and financed through black accounts) was used to gather information about 10.000s of anti-Vietnam activists in the 70s; this information was then used to sue them.
The French aren't all nice guys either. Remember the Rainbow Warrior? This was the original Greenpeace Ship which was bombed and sunk by French agents.
Two people lost their lives.
When the US wanted an high-speed train, there were two possibilities: the French TGV or the German ICE. Strangely, the French always offered slightly lower prices than the Germans although in the selectins neither party was supposed to know the other's prices. The US bought the TGV. It has since been discovered that the French secret service found out about the prices.
Also, the CEO and the board of the French government-owned Oil company Elf are traditionally ex-secret service types. If you look at your newspapers, you can find their works now. In Germany, there's a huge scandal at the moment because ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl obviously has ordered important documents about the vending of the East-German Leuna refinery to Elf to be destroyed.
It's the same wherever you look, just that not everybody gets caught.
It makes me sick.
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Actually what happend was that the United States flat out told the French ambassador that either (a) France must stop these black bag jobs, or (b) the United States will turn over it's survellance information gathered on French companies (and French companies only) to US companies, in order to keep the playing field level.
France did not stop.
Seriously, can you imagine Gendarme Ludovic Cruchot pulling off what you're implying?
That must be the French strategy... export lots of comical caricatures of your police and in the meantime build up your secret police into an international menace. Much like Canada.
=)
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Another important question is, what's going to happen when Americans find out what is going on? Less than a year ago, on 60 Minutes, a woman stated that she had heard Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina on a telephone wire tap in an Echelon center (I believe it was in Britain). Any such intrusion is not only in breach of Echelon's internal policy as stated by the NSA (no spying on US citizens) but a severe breach of the Senator's civil rights.
If I recall correctly, the basic point of that story was that American intelligence is using Echelon stations in Britain (and the foreign agents running them) to get around the rule that bans surveillance on U.S. citizens.
After this current round of accusations, the story has been all over the mainstream media outlets.
The answer to the question above is nothing. On the whole, Americans just don't give a damn. In fact, they seem to like the idea of their intelligence looking after them, despite the inherent risks and problems it creates.
I have talked with all my friends, some of them extremely well-informed and intelligent people, and I could barely get an ounce of concern out of them.
The prosecutor's move is quite demagogic, he only wants people to think "Hey, look at me, I'm not afraid to fight Echelon !". But his action is bullshit, he already knows he can't do anything : Do you think he can go to Washington DC and invetigate in the Pentagon, or to London to invetigate the MI5 ?
come on guy, this is the story of a prosecutor who is looking for fame !
By hthe way, I think the French govt and the French secret service don't support him, they are rather embarrassed by his action. Legal action is not the way things are done in the secret service world.
right and we love to tell you so' that pisses me off. The KKK may not
be nice, but they are not in the same league as the Fascists: the
experience is just not comparable. Hate literature, especially tied
to historical revisionism and pseudo-science, is one of the better
arguments against free speech, and it does not do good to be
complacent about it.
It's like explaining why it is right that a violent rapist should
go free on an issue of due process to his victim: that just might be
right, but only an asshole would say that it is all due to High
Principles of Justice.
France has the worlds 4th largest economy (after US, Japan and Germany) - larger than China, India and Russia combined according to The Economist book of Vital World Statistics I have on my desk.
Plus it's a nuclear power, the world's leading commercial satellite launcher and the second largest producer of commercial aircraft. World's most popular tourist destination. Huge energy, water, electronics and comms industry (can you say Vivendi?)
And it can call (sort of) on the backing of the other EU states.
So how is it small? Can't imagine you would say that if China or Russia pulled the same stunt...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
:-
I don't think that the advantage of free speech in opposing hate
crimes lies in `defeating bad ideas'. I think it is mostly
ineffective in this regard. The great strength of freedom of speech
is that it avoids giving these groups the advantage of appearing to be
persecuted.
Today, I think the holocaust denial laws in France and Germany
should be struck of the statute books. But when they were drafted,
surviving fascists were still dangerous in Europe (not least due to
the enlightened policy of the US in supporting them as good
anti-communists).
In the end, if them kicking up a fuss can result in ALL nations co-existing and co-habiting the same planet WITHOUT waging full-scale wars over who's turn it is to take the trash out, then I don't give a damn who complains or why, only that they did.
Sure, I'm a dreamer to think that nations can ever move out of the social stone age. But it's not from a lack of ability. It's a lack of want. If there were votes to be had, by creating sane nations, then they'd do so. And if this continuing scandal persuades voters that sanity is worth the effort, that could happen. Maybe.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
BTW, do any Brits think it is a gross breach of sovereignty to have foreign bases in the UK? I mean, how would Americans feel if foreigners set up a military base here? Maybe there are foreign bases in the US and it's just a NATO thing...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
I find it funny that there is an ISP/ld provider/telephone provider called Eschelon.
I can just imagine the slogan. "Eschelon telecom. We're listening"
Before we all get on the "France is standing up to government intrusion" bandwagon, let's remember that France is well-known for "borrowing" travelling executives' laptops at customs, long enough to copy the entire hard drive. And they have, at least once, completely trashed the hotel rooms of major aerospace executives during the Paris airshow to gather information.
France has been in the forefront of government-sponsored economic espionage for some time, so this whole "Echelon is bad" is fairly hypocritical.
For further information, check out Secure Computing's April 1998 issue (the first hit I got from google, I'm sure there's plenty more out there): http://www .westcoast.com/securecomputing/1998_04/cover/cover .html#French.
david.
or it will be if the allegations of espionage are verified. Thanks to US willingness to invoke WTO regulations and charge penalties for Europe's just support of carribean banana farmers, the game is hotting up. United, even only economically, Europe now has plenty of stick to make the Boss of the World take note. As well, and this is unfortunate, there's an almost bigoted suspicion of America's intentions inside Europe, and plenty of people/lawyers/officials willing to "take up arms" against the US. If these allegations prove true it will only verify what a lot of Europeans have belived a long time: that you can't trust Uncle Sam.
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The UK government's Regulation of Investigatory powers (see notes on it here) has got it exactly right. It going to insist that every UK ISP fits hooks to their infrastructure to allow them to tap e-mails and web traffic, at the ISPs expense. Not only that, but they are enshrining it in law, and talking about it publicly !
....)
Now that's open government for you....... It dosen't solve the problem of your diminishing privacy, but, being British, they are nice enough and fair enough to tell you about it first.
(.....Sh*t - where is the HTML irony tag when you need it
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
2) In the 70's/80's, there was (and is) a pervasive attitude of denial and stubborn skepticism (both in the public and the intelligence community itself) regarding ECHELON, the NSA -- the CIA was the 'designated bad guy' in the post Watergate/Allende/Whitlaw era:
3) Without meaning any criticism of France, the fact is that they have been very well aware of ECHELON for decades. Like most governments, they often use such "investigations" for public relations purposes. Does anyone really think that the French (oe anyone) conducts *genuine* intel review/investigation in the public eye like this? Or that a federal prosecutor is the best qualified to ferret out these facts?
4) (personal observation, possibly unjustified) It's always seemed to me that the SDECE is far more adept -- and interested -- in espionage than counter-espionage. I can only speculate on why that is (*if* it is), but it's beem something that I've been noticing consistently since I learned (in the late 70's) about the theft of the Concorde plans from France in the late 60's (to forestall the inevitable rejoinders: yes, I know there were some significant aerodynamic differences between the Concorde and the 'Concordski' (TU-144), but the former Soviet team leaders have admitted to using the design as a basis, they just couldn't utilize the plans properly, as they have admitted in Western interviews such as this one on the PBS show, Nova [transcript], and many earlier ones I'm not going to bother tracking down). Paradoxically, the Concordski flew before the Concord did.)
Comments, clarification, and additional details are solicited, as always.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I'm curiouse what makes ANYONE think that suddenly the US government will make all sorts of information about Echelon, that will allow them to gain information regarding the functionality, type of data it expects, etc??
Let them inquire. It'll be denied. Nothing more to say, really.
'Common guys, we KNOW you do it, fess up.'
'Nope, we don't. Never heard of such a thing.'
'But we KNOW!!'
'Nope, we don't. Never heard of such a thing.'
(continue untill france gets bored)
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
What do the Yakuza have to do with this?? :)
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
If Big Bro is watching me then I hope he's getting a cheap thrill. They are going to get a whole load of noise before they find any signal in my life. If I'm using such easily intercepted stuff as email for anything critical or secret (like, for example, details of a bid for a contract or anything like that) then of course its going to be GNUPGed with the highest key length my version can generate. In the absence of back doors in the algorithm (which is why I prefer open source - better coders than I have already looked at it in detail and if there were holes I'd have read about it on BUGTRAQ) then the data I'm protecting is not invulnerable but by the time anyone has managed to crack it I'd hope it would be obsolete. Somebody wants to wiretap me? Good luck hearing anything to make it worth your while. Of course, unless you're the government and able to make the laws fit whatever you want to do if you get caught you're in a world of hurt. I can live with that. Government agencies already have so many resources for finding out about people that the addition of things such as Echelon doesnt really make that much difference although it may improve their accuracy.
Dont know about you but I'd rather if folks were going to be looking over my shoulder they got it right rather than confusing me with somebody that has the same name that happens to be a serial goat-rapist believed to be hiding out somewhere in Montana. In all seriousness, with minimal info to start from any governmental agency can find out all they need about you. Provided there are controls in place to ensure the info is accurate and open to challenge it doesnt really matter how they get it, because they COULD find it out anyway, Echelon or not. Unfortunately with recent reports of the use of "secret evidence" by government agencies in the US it seems those controls are not in place... The problem is not Echelon or any other info-collecting tool, its what is done with the info afterwards. Do you trust 'em? I sure dont.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
And always remember: freedom and linguistic inventiveness grow out the barrel of a gun.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
What if they find out that Eschelon is real and responsible for them losing out on those contracts? What will they do about it? Maybe they'll pass a law requiring all French to be rude to US citizens. Oh... wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What's going to happen to U.S./European relations ?
The real question is rather What's going to happen to GB/European relations ?
Indeed the whole mess is rather directed toward GB.
Because of its situation inside Europe (as a member)and the fact that communications were intercepted for the US from Great britain is really perceive as a trahison...
All European knows that each country practise Economic Intelligence (French DGSE was even pointed out before) the problem isn't really Intelligence but rather the real commintment of GB in the Europe.
Especially in those times were the French President M. CHIRAC) is proposing the idea of a pionneer group (France and Germany) dedicated to make Europe grow faster and stronger...
The real commitment of GB (which has a special status in Europe and has never hide its anti-Europe opinions) is the real question...
Anyone who believes that the French are not engaged in espionage against the United States and that information does not make it to state-owned or quasi-governmental entities like Airbus, is naive. My sense is that they don't like the scale, style and effectiveness of the eavesdropping.
All countries engage in espionage. Due largely to resources, some are more effective than others. It is also meet to remember that nation-states do not have friends, but national interests. I'm not saying that I like the Echelon program, just that we are not alone in the pursuit.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I'd like to see all of the patriotic American nationalists that we have in this country, flying their red white and blue on their pick-up trucks and snapping at any two-bit 'hippy' that dares suggest America isn't the greatest nation in the world, react to having every bit of communication recorded and played back to them, from their email and letters to their phone calls.
And - damn it, I'm going to pimp this book again. DATABASE NATION by Simson Garfinkel. This book should be read by every geek, grocery clerk, grandmother, businessman and government official. While it is not the most in-depth book, it is the best brush with which to paint a general over-view of the demise of privacy to those who are otherwise completely oblivious to it.
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seumas.com
This bill allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to enter, modify, delete or copy data as well as disabling any cryptography one may be running, in order to make it easier for them to get future data. Despite the Attorney General, Daryl William's reassurances that the legislation was "designed to ensure an appropriate balance between individual privacy and the public interest in effective law enforcement and national security;" and that an access warrant is required in these cases, I am fearful of the abuses that are bound to follow. Under this act, ASIO will be allowed to cover up the fact that they hacked into the system and will not be subject to the Crimes Act that forbids computer hacking in Australia surely raising the possibility of framing dissenters and now under the auspices of business, perhaps conduct industrial espionage.
Have these recent laws been instituted in order to legitimise hacking by the Australian Government and pave the way for the legal usage of Echelon by the Australian government? Is there some greater conspiracy I am failing to foresee? I hope not, otherwise my future civil liberties online are already under great jeopardy.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
I was going to ask that. All I've ever seen is websites and the odd TV coverage, from conspiracy-nut types. I've never seen any reasonable, rationally presented evidence about it.
At time, the claims made about Echelon's capabilities defy belief - can we really be expected to believe that, for example, they've have automatic monitoring of calls since the mid-70s, or anything similar?
Two words: Absolutely Nothing.
Why? First of all, the British were willing co-conspirators in all of this. There's a scapegoat inside the European community waiting for us.
Secondly, every other European nation that counts has just as barbaric national security measusers as Echelon. They may not actually be Echelon, but they're concerned about the almighty National Security as much as we are too. They understand why we need Echelon.
Thirdly, France is a muckracker. Nobody else in the community cares, and France can't do anything on its own without the support of the community.