By Keith Newman
The right of governments to pry into private encrypted communications is being revisited as intelligence agencies increase internet surveillance in the wake of the US terrorist attacks.
Within hours of last week’s devastation FBI agents were pushing for internet service providers to install their controversial Carnivore, or DCS1000 email monitoring software. Within a week legislation was passed to broaden the use of the snooping software and to allow other agencies to use similar technologies.
Microsoft’s Hotmail was targeted with particular interest shown in account names with the word Allah and messages in Arabic, according to an engineer at the company.
In February the US claimed followers of former Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden, the prime suspects in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, were using data-hiding ‘steganography’ software to conceal their hate mail on public websites.
The US has already approved a Bill banning encryption software that doesn’t have a "back door" entrance it could peek inside. Now with some officials blaming encryption programs for concealing information that may have exposed the terrorists there’s growing pressure to enforce this.
Apparently even the controversial Echelon global surveillance network gave no clues of the impending kamakaze attack. The activities of Echelon - operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Canadian, UK, Australian and New Zealand intelligence services - are most certainly being stepped up as the world remains on terrorist alert.
While US officials continue to deny its existence, an investigative committee of the European Parliament this month tabled a 108-page report, which after four-years investigation concludes Echelon is real.
It says the spy system, capable of processing three million communications a minute, gives 55,000 British and American operatives access to data gathered by 120 spy satellites worldwide.
While the report failed to deliver hard evidence that the US or Britain were using the global telecommunication-tapping network to conduct industrial espionage, it does list several examples where intelligence officers may have interfered in a commercial contract.
The European Parliament insists that eavesdropping on Europeans is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s asking US and Britain to back off and urging encrypt their private email. Ironically the European states continue to build their own comprehensive electronic eavesdropping network.
Meanwhile New Zealand laws are being reworked for the digital age giving police and security agencies greater powers to track down and prosecute hackers and criminals and to snoop on fax, email and other electronic transmissions.
The Crimes Amendment Bill No 6, along with changes to the Telecommunications Act, likely to pass into law before the end of the year, will make hacking and computer snooping illegal, except when carried out by police, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) or the Government Communications Security Bureau GCSB. Police will still need a warrant.
The Government will pay for each interception but carriers must ensure their networks are compatible with surveillance requirements. Meanwhile the GCSB – our foreign intelligence arm - is about to be given legal status which potentially opens the way for it to share intelligence with local crime-fighting agencies. It’ll also run the Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CCIP), tasked with protecting our key government, financial, utility and commercial networks. The GCSB will share intelligence with the FBI but insists it has no power to investigate individuals.
It’s broader role, continuously eavesdropping for its international partners in the Echelon network, remains a concern. It established a spy base in the back blocks of remote Tangimoana in the lower North Island in 1982 and another at Waihopai, near Blenheim in 1989. Both use the latest hi-tech tracking and decryption technology, plus Echelon Dictionary software designed by the NSA, to indiscriminately sift through millions of business and personal phone calls, faxes, email messages, voice and high frequency communication for key words and phrases.
In some ways it’s great to know you’re being watched when your national welfare and essential infrastructure are at risk. However it’s a worry when we spend millions of dollars spying on ourselves and our Pacific neighbours for offshore agencies when our own police force and its Electronic Crimes Unit are struggling for resources.
The pressure is on to feed Big Brother’s insatiable desire to know everything about everyone. Hackers, child pornographers, industrial spies and those who would involve themselves in any form of terrorism need to be flushed out but who else will get caught in this net and quietly flagged for future reference? The internet is like that – full of distractions.
In times of panic and paranoia we can give away even basic rights in the hope officialdom in its many guises will make things better. Criminal intent must be proven before investigation can begin but once snooping technology is in place at your ISP or on your phone lines there’s a very real likelihood of ‘function creep’.
Fishing expeditions, data matching or trawling for anomalies in private correspondence remain anathema to basic human rights and the principals of privacy despite the growing pressure to sacrifice all for the greater good.
Email: wordman@wordworx.co.nz
Web: http://www.wordworx.co.nz
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