- AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL
CONTROL An Omega Foundation Summary & Options Report
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- For The European Parliament
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- SEPTEMBER 1998
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- AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL
CONTROL
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- A SUMMARY & OPTIONS REPORT
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- This report represents a summarised
version of an interim study, 'An Appraisal of the Technology of Political
Control' (PE 166.499), (referred to throughout this document as the Interim
Political Control Report), prepared by the Omega Foundation in Manchester
and presented to the STOA Panel at its meeting of 18 December 1997 and
to the Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs on 27 January
1998.
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- The Interim Report aroused great interest
and the resultant high-profile press comment throughout the European
Union and beyond, indicates the level of public concern about many of
the innovations detailed by the study. This current report is framed by
the same key objectives as the Interim Report namely:
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- (i) To provide Members of the
European Parliament with a succinct reference guide to recent advances
in the technology of political control;
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- (ii) To identify and describe the
current state of the art of the most salient developments, further
clarifying and updating the areas of the interim report which
have aroused the greatest public concern and comment;
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- (iii) To present MEP's with an
account of current trends both within Europe and Worldwide;
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- (iv) To suggest policy options
covering regulatory strategies for the future democratic control
and management of this technology;
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- (v) To provide some further succinct
background material to inform the Parliament's response to
the proposed declaration by the Commission on electronic evesdropping
which has been put on the agenda for the plenary session of the
European Parliament, on Wednesday 16 September 1998.
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- This report also has seven substantive
sections covering (a) the role and function of the technologies
of political control; (b)recent trends and innovations; (c)crowd control
weapons; (d)new prisoner control technology; (e) new interrogation
and torture technologies; (f)developments in surveillance technology
(including the creation of human recognition and tracking devices
and the evolution of new global police and military telecommunications
interceptions networks; (g)the implications of vertical and
horizontal proliferation of this technology and the need for an
adequate EU response, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties
in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants.
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- Thus, the purpose of this report is
to explore the most recent developments in the technology of political
control and the major consequences associated with their integration
into processes and strategies of policing and internal control.
The report ends each section with a series of policy options
which might facilitate more democratic, open and efficient regulatory
control, including specific areas where further research is needed
to make such regulatory controls effective.
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- A brief look at the historical development
of this concept is instructive. Twenty years ago, the British Society
for Social Responsibility of Scientists (BSSRS) warned about the dangers
of a new technology of political control. BSSRS defined this technology
as "a new type of weaponry"..."It is the product of
the application of science and technology to the problem of neutralising
the state's internal enemies. It is mainly directed at civilian
populations, and is not intended to kill (and only rarely does).
It is aimed as much at hearts and minds as at bodies." For these
scientists, "This new weaponry ranges from means of monitoring
internal dissent to devices for controlling demonstrations; from new
techniques of interrogation to methods of prisoner control. The
intended and actual effects of these new technological aids are both
broader and more complex than the more lethal weaponry they
complement."
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- BSSRS recognised that the weapons
and systems developed and tested by the USA in Vietnam, and by the
UK in its former colonies, were about to be used on the home front
and that the military industrial complex would in the future,
rapidly modify its military systems for police and internal security
use. In other words, a new technology of repression was being
spawned which would find a political niche in Western Liberal democracies.
The role of this technology was to provide a technical fix which
might effectively crush dissent whilst being designed to mask the
level of coercion being deployed. With the advent of the Northern
Irish conflict, the genie was out of the bottle and a new laboratory
for field testing these technologies had emerged.
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- There have been quite awesome changes
in the technologies available to states for internal control since
the first BSSRS publication. Some of these technologies are highly
sensitive politically and without proper regulation can threaten
or undermine many of the human rights enshrined in international
law, such as the rights of assembly, privacy, due process, freedom
of political and cultural expression and protection from torture,
arbitrary arrest, cruel and inhumane punishments and extra-judicial
execution.
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- Proper oversight of developments
in political control technologies is further complicated by the phenomena
of 'bureaucratic capture' where senior officials control their
ministers rather than the other way round. Politicians both at
European and sovereign state level, whom citizens of the community
have presumed will be monitoring any excesses or abuse of this
technology on their behalf, are sometimes systematically denied the
information they require to do that job.
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- 2. THE ROLE & FUNCTION OF
POLITICAL CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES
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- Throughout the Nineties, many governments
have spent huge sums on the research, development, procurement and
deployment of new technology for their police, para-military
and internal security forces. The objective of this development work
has been to increase and enhance each agency's policing capacities.
A dominant assumption behind this technocratisation of the policing
process, is the belief that it has created both a faster policing
response time and a greater cost-effectiveness. The main aim of all
this effort has been to save policing resources by either automating
certain forms of control, amplifying the rate of particular
activities, or decreasing the number of officers required to perform
them.
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- The resultant innovations in
the technology of political control have been functionally designed
to yield an extension of the scope, efficiency and growth of
policing power. The extent to which this process can be judged to
be a legitimate one depends both on one's point of view and the
level of secrecy and accountability built into the overall procurement
and deployment procedures. The full implications of such developments
may take time to assess. It is argued that one impact of this process
is the militarisation of the police and the para-militarisation of
the army as their roles, equipment and procedures begin to overlap.
This phenomena is seen as having far reaching consequences on the
way that future episodes of sub-state violence is handled, and influencing
whether those involved are reconciled, managed, repressed, 'lost'
or efficiently destroyed.
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- What is emerging in certain quarters
is a chilling picture of ongoing innovation in the science and technology
of social and political control, including: semi-intelligent zone-denial
systems using neural networks which can identify and potentially
punish unsanctioned behaviour; the advent of global telecommunications
surveillance systems using voice recognition and other biometric
techniques to facilitate human tracking; data-veillance systems which
can match computer held data to visual recognition systems or identify
friendship maps simply by analysing the telephone and email links
between who calls whom; new sub-lethal incapacitating weapons used
both for prison and riot control as well as in sub-state conflict
operations other than war; new target acquisition aids, lethal
weapons and expanding dum-dum like ammunition which although banned
by the Geneva conventions for use against other state's soldiers, is
finding increasing popularity amongst SWAT and special forces teams;
discreet order vehicles designed to look like ambulances on prime
time television but which can deploy a formidable array of weaponry
to provide a show of force in countries like Indonesia or Turkey,
or spray harassing chemicals or dye onto protestors. Such marking
appears to be kid-glove lin its restraint but tags all protestors
so that the snatch squads can arrest them later, out of the prying
lenses of CNN.
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- Whilst there are many opposing schools
of thought on why these changes are happening now, few doubt
that there are fundamental changes taking place in the types of
tactics, techniques and technologies available to internal
security agencies for policing purposes. Yet many questions remain
unanswered, unconsidered or under-researched. Why for example, did such
a transformation in the technology used for -political control dramatically
change over the last twenty five years? Is there any significance in
the fact that former communist regimes in the Warsaw Treaty Organisation
and continuing centralised economic systems such as China, are
beginning to adopt such technologies? What are the reasons behind
a global convergence of the technology of political control deployed
in the North and South, the East and West?
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- What are the factors responsible
for generating the adoption of such new policing technology -
was it technology push or demand pull? What new tools for policing
lie on the horizon and what are the dynamics behind the process
of innovation and the need for a vast arsenal of different kinds
of technology rather than just a few? Are the many ways this technology
affects the policing process fully understood? Who controls the
patterns of police technology procurement and what are the
corporate influences?
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- The technology of political control
produces a continuum of flexible options which stretch from modern law
enforcement to advanced state suppression. It is multi-functional
and has led to a rapid extension of the scope, efficiency and growth
of policing power, creating policing revolutions both with
Europe, the US and the rest of the world. The key difference being the
level of democratic accountability in the manner in which the technology
is applied. Yet because of a process of technological and decision
drift these instruments of control, once deployed quickly become
'normalised.' Their secondary and unanticipated effects often lead to
a paramilitarisation of the security forces and a militarisation of
the police - often because the companies which produce them service
both markets.
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- 3. RECENT TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
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- Since the 'Technology of Political
Control' was first written (Ackroyd et al.,1977) there has been a
profusion of technological innovations for police, paramilitary,
intelligence and internal security forces. Many of these are simple
advances on the technologies available in the 1970's. Others such
as automatic telephone tapping, voice recognition and electronic tagging
were not envisaged by the original BSSRS authors since they did not
think that the computing power needed for a national monitoring system
was feasible. The overall drift of this technology is to increase
the power and reliability of the policing process, either enhancing
the individual power of police operatives, replacing personnel with
less expensive machines to monitor activity or to automate certain
police monitoring, detection and communication facilities completely.
A massive Police Industrial Complex has been spawned to service the
needs of police, paramilitary and security forces, evidenced by the
number of companies now active in the market.. An overall trend
is towards globalisation of these technologies and a drift towards
increasing proliferation.
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- One core trend has been towards
a militarisation of the police and a paramilitarisation of military
forces in Europe. In some European countries, that trend is reversed,e.g.
in 1996, the Swiss government (Federal Council and the Military
Department) made plans to re-equip the Swiss Army Ordungsdienst
with 118 million Swiss Francs of less-lethal weapons for action
within the country in times of crisis. (These include 12 tanks,
armoured vehicles, teargas, rubber shot and handcuffs). The decision
was made by decree preventing any discussion or intervention.
Their role will be to help police large scale demonstrations or riots
and to police frontiers to 'prevent streams of refugees coming into
Switzerland'.
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- There has also been an increasing
trend towards convergence - the process whereby the technology used
by police and the military for internal security operations, converges
towards being more or less indistinguishable. The term also describes
the trend towards a universal adoption of similar types of technologies
by most states for internal security and policing. Security companies
now produce weapons and communications systems for both military
and the police. Such systems increasingly represent the muscle and
the nervous system of public order squads. Given the potential
civil liberties and human rights implications associated with certain
technologies of political control, there is a pressing need to avoid
the risks of such technologies developing faster than any regulating
legislation. MEP'smay wish to consider how best it should develop
appropriate structures of accountability to prevent undesirable
innovations emerging via processes of technological creep or decision
drift. Towards that end, members of the European Parliament may wish
to consider the following policy options:-
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- 3.1 POLICY OPTIONS
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- (i) Accepting the principle that
the process of innovation of new systems for use in internal social
and political control should be transparent, (i.e. open to appropriate
public and parliamentary scrutiny and be subject to change should unwanted
and unanticipated consequences emerge;
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- (ii) Give consideration to what committee
and procedural changes might be needed to ensure that Members of
the European Parliament are adequately informed on issues relating
to technologies of political control and can effectively act should
the need arise;
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- (iii) Consider if there is a need
to amend the terms of reference of the Civil Liberties and Internal
Affairs Committee to include powers and responsibilities for matters
relating to for example, the civil liberties and human rights
implications of developments in political control technologies such
as:(a) new crowd and prison control weapons and technologies,
lethal and less lethal weapons and ammunition; (b)developments
in surveillance technologies such as data-veillance, electronic
eavesdropping, CCTV, human recognition and tracking systems; (c)
private prisons and related equipment and training;; (d) torture and
interrogation of detainees; (e) any class of technology which has been
shown in the past to be excessively injurious, cruel, inhumane or
indiscriminate in its effects.
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- 4. INNOVATIONS IN CROWD CONTROL WEAPONS
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- The Interim Report critically evaluated
the so called safety of these allegedly 'harmless crowd control weapons.
Using earlier US military data and empirical data on the kinetic
energy of all the commonly available kinetic weapons such as plastic
bullets, it found that much of the biomedical research legitimating
the introduction of current crowd control weapons is badly flawed.
All the commonly available plastic bullet ammunition used in Europe
breaches the severe damage zone of kinetic energy used to assess
such weapons by the US military scientists. (Over 100,000 plastic
bullets were withdrawn in the UK in 1996 for possessing excessive
kinetic energy but according to this report their replacements are
still excessively injurious). The price of protest should not
be death, yet given that these weapons are frequently used
against bystanders in zone clearance operations, this aspect is
particularly important.
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- Likewise there is a need to consider
halting the use of peppergas in Europe until independent evaluation
of its biomedical effects is undertaken. Special Agent Ward the FBI
officer who cleared OC in the USA was found to have taken a $57,000
kickback to give it the OK. Other US military scientists warned
of dangerous side effects including neurotoxicity and a
recent estimate by the International Association of Chief Police
Officers suggested at least 113 peppergas linked fatalities in the
US - predominantly from positional asphyxia. Amnesty International
has said that the use of pepper spray by Californian police against
peaceful environmental activists, is 'cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment of such deliberateness and severity that it is tantamount
to torture." (Police deputies pulled back protestors heads,
opened their eyes and "swabbed" the burning liquid directly
on to their eyeballs).
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- Sometimes when technologies are transferred,
their characteristics also change. For example CS Sprays authorised
for use by the police in the UK from 1996 were five times the concentration
of similar MACE products in the US and have dispersion rates which
are five times faster. This means that they dump twenty five times
as much irritant on a targets face as do US products yet were justified
as being the same. In practice this meant that one former Metropolitan
police instructor Peter Hodgkinson lost between 40-50% of his corneas
after he volunteered to be sprayed at the beginning of trails.
Most police forces in the UK have now adopted the spray which
was authorised before findings on its alleged safety were published.
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- In the early Nineties, much to
the disbelief of serious researchers, a new doctrine emerged in the
US - non-lethal warfare. Its advocates were predominantly science fiction
writers such as (Toffler A., & Toffler,H., 1994) and (Morris,J.,
& Morris,C., 1990,1994), who found a willing ear in the
nuclear weapons laboratories of Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Lawrence
Livermore. The cynics were quick to point out that non-lethal warfare
was a contradiction in terms and that this was really a 'rice-bowls'
initiative, dreamt up to protect jobs in beleaguered weapons laboratories
facing the challenge of life without the cold war.
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- This naive doctrine found a champion
in Col. John Alexander (who made his name in the rather more lethal Phoenix
assassination programmes of the Vietnam War) and subsequently picked
up by the US Defence and Justice Departments. After the controversial
and overly public beating of Rodney King (who was subdued by 'an
electro-shock 'taser' before being attacked); the excessive firepower
deployed by all sides in the Waco debacle (where the police used chemical
agents which failed to end the siege); and the humiliations of the
US military missions in Somalia - America was in search of a magic
bullet which would somehow allow the powers of good to prevail
without anyone being hurt. Yet US doctrine in practice was not that
simple, it was not to replace lethal weapons with 'non-lethal' alternatives
but to augment the use of deadly force, in both war and 'operations
other than war', where the main targets include civilians. A dubious
pandora's box of new weapons has emerged, designed to appear rather
than be safe. Because of the 'CNN factor' they need to be media friendly,
more a case of invisible weapons than war without blood. America
now has an integrated product team consisting of the US Marines,
US Airforce, US Special Operations Command, US Army, US Navy, DOT,
DOJ, DOE, Joint Staff, and CINCS Office of SecDef. Bridgeheads
for this technology are already emerging since one of the roles
of this team is to liaise with friendly foreign governments.
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- Last year, the interim report advised
that the Commission should be requested to report on the existence
of formal liaison arrangements with the US, for introducing advanced
non-lethal weapons into the EU. The urgency of this advice was highlighted
in November 1997 for example, when a special conference on the 'Future
of Non-Lethal Weapons', was held in London. A flavour of what was on
offer was provided by Ms Hildi Libby, systems manager of the US
Army's Non-lethal Material Programme.
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- Ms Libby described the M203 Anti-personnel
blunt trauma crowd dispersal grenade, which hurtles a large
number of small "stinging" rubber balls at rioters. The
US team also promoted acoustic wave weapons that used 'mechanical pressure
wave generation' to 'provide the war fighter with a weapon capable
of delivering incapacitating effects, from lethal to non-lethal';
the non-lethal Claymore mine - a crowd control version of the
more lethal M18A1; ground vehicle stoppers; the M139 Volcano mine which
projects a net (that can cover a football sized field) laced with either
razor blades or other 'immobilisation enhancers' - adhesive or sting;
canister launched area denial systems; sticky foam; vortex ring
guns - to apply vortex ring gas impulses with flash, concussion and
the option of quickly changing between lethal and non-lethal operations;
and the underbarrel tactical payload delivery system - essentially
an M16 which shoots either bullets, disabling chemicals, kinetic
munitions or marker dye.
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- One of the unanticipated consequences
of these weapons is that they offer a flexible response which
can potentially undermine non-violent direct action. Used to inflict
instant gratuitous punishment, their flexibility means that if official
violence does tempt demonstrators to fight back, the weapons are
often just a switch away from street level executions.
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- At their last conference in Lillehammer,
the Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation Pugwash came to the
conclusion that the term 'non-lethal should be abandoned, not only
because it covers a variety of very different weapons but also
because it can be dangerously misleading. "In combat
situations, 'sub-lethal' weapons are likely to be used in co-ordination
with other weapons and could increase overall lethality. Weapons purportedly
developed for conventional military or peacekeeping use are also likely
to be used in civil wars or for oppression by brutal governments."
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- Weapons developed for police use
may encourage the militarisation of police forces or be used for
torture. If a generic term is needed 'less-lethal or pre-lethal
weapons might be preferable." Such misgivings are certainly borne
out by recent developments. US expert Bill Arkin has warned that
the new generation of acoustic weapons can rupture organs, create
cavities in human tissue and produce shockwaves of 170 decibels
and potentially lethal blastwave trauma. Pugwash considered that
"each of the emerging 'less-lethal weapons technologies required
urgent examination and that their development or adoption should
be subject to public review.' Informed by principle 3 and 4 of
the United Nations Basic Principles on The Use of Force & Firearms
, MEP's may wish to consider the following options:-
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- 4.1 POLICY OPTIONS
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- (i) Reaffirm the European Parliamentary
demand of May 1982, for a ban on the use of plastic bullets;
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- (ii) Establish objective criteria
for assessing the biomedical effects of so called non-lethal weapons
that are independent from commercial or governmental research;
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- (iii) Seek confirmation from
the Commission that: Member States are fully aware of their responsibilities
under Principles 3 and 4 of the United Nations Basic Principles on
the Use of Force & Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and to
ask for clarification of exactly what steps individual Member States
are taking to ensure that these are fully met, given the power of
"less-lethal weapons" changes and whether consistent standards
apply;
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- (iv) Request the Commission to report
on the existing liaison arrangements for the second generation of non-lethal
weapons to enter European Union from the USA and call for an independent
report on their alleged safety as well as their intended and unforseen
social and political effects.
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- (v) During the interim period, consider
restricting the deployment by the police, the military or paramilitary
special forces, of US made or licensed 2nd. generation chemical
irritant, kinetic, acoustic, laser, electromagnetic frequency,
capture, entanglement, injector or electrical disabling
and paralysing weapons, within Europe.
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- (vi). Establish the following principles
across all EU Member States:
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- (a) Research on chemical irritants
should be published in open scientific journals before authorization
for any usage is permitted and that the safety criteria for
such chemicals should be treated as if they were drugs rather than
riot control agents;
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- (b) Research on the alleged safety of
existing crowd control weapons and of all future innovations in crowd
control weapons should be placed in the public domain prior to any
decision towards deployment.
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- (c) that deployment of OC (peppergas)
should be halted across the EU until independent non-FBI funded
research has evaluated any risks it poses to health.
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- 5. NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS
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- Some of the equipment described above,
such as the surveillance, area denial and crowd control technologies,
also finds ready use inside permanent prisons and houses of correction.
Other devices such as the area denial, perimeter fencing systems,
portable coils of razor wire, prison transport vehicles with mini
cage cells, to create temporary holding centres. Permanent prisons
are however, literally custom built control environments, where every
act and thing, including the architecture, the behaviour of the prison
officers and daily routines, are functionally organised with that
purpose in mind. Therefore many of the technologies discussed above
are built in to the prison structure and integral to policing
systems used to contain their inmates. For example, area denial
technology, intruder detection equipment and surveillance devices
are instrumental in hermetically sealing high security prisons. If disturbances
develop within a prison, the riot technologies and tactics outlined
above, are also available for use by prison officers. The trend has
been to train specialized MUFTI (Minimum Force Tactical Intervention)
squads for this purpose. Outside Europe, irritant gas has been used
not only to crush revolt but also to punish political detainees or
to eject reticent prisoners from their cells before execution. The
Interim Report describes prison restraint techniques using straitjackets,
body belts, leg shackles, padded cells and isolation units, some
of which infringe the European Convention against Torture.
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- Apart from mechanical restraint, prison
authorities have access to pharmacological approaches for immobilising
inmates, colloquially known as 'the liquid cosh.' These vary from
psychotropic drugs such as anti-depressants, sedatives and powerful hypnotics.
Drugs like largactil or Seranace offer a chemical strait-jacket
and their usage is becoming increasingly controversial as prison populations
rise and larger numbers of inmates are 'treated'. In the USA,
the trend is for punishment to become therapy: 'behaviour modification'
- Pavlovian reward and punishment routines using drugs like
anectine, producing fear or pain, to recondition behaviour. The
possibilities of testing new social control drugs are extensive,
whilst controls are few. Prisons form the new laboratories
developing the next generation of drugs for social reprogramming, whilst
military and university laboratories provide scores of new psychoactive
drugs each year.
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- Critics such as Lilly & Knepper
(1992, 186-7) argue that in examining the international aspects
of crime control as industry, more attention is needed to the changing
activities of the companies which used to provide supplies to
the military. At the end of the cold war, "with defence
contractors reporting declines in sales, the search for new markets
is pushing corporate decision making, it should be no surprise to
see increased corporate activity in criminal justice." Where such
companies previously profited from wars with foreign enemies, they are
increasingly turning to the new opportunities afforded by crime control
as industry.(Christie, 1994).
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- Several European countries are
now experiencing a rapid process of privatisation of prisons by
corporate conglomerations, predominantly from the USA. Some of the
prisons run by these organisations in the US have cultures and control
techniques which are alien to European traditions. Such a process
of privatisation can lead to a bridgehead for importing U.S. corrections
mentality, methods and technologies into Europe and there is a pressing
need to ensure a consensus on what constitutes acceptable practice.
There is a further danger that such privatisation will lead to
cost cutting practices of human warehousing, rather than the more long
term beneficial practice of prisoner rehabilitation.
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- In some European countries, particularly
Britain, where changes in penal policy are leading to a rapid rise
in prison population without additional resources being applied
to the sector, the imperative is to cut costs either through using
technology or by privatising prisons. Already, the UK Prison
Service has compiled a shopping list of computer based options
with existing CCTV surveillance systems being complemented by
geophones, identity recognition technology and forward looking
infra-red systems which can spot weapons and drugs.. Alongside
such proactive technologies, UK prisons will face increasing
pressure to tool up for trouble. Much this weaponry including
the contract for between £950,000 and £2,500,000
of side handled batons, kubotans, riot shields etc. made by the
Prison Service in March 1995, are likely to be originally manufactured
in the United States.
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- The U.S.A adopts a far more militarised
prison regime than anywhere in Europe outside of Northern Ireland.
A massive prison industrial complex has mushroomed to maintain the
strict control regimes that typify American Houses of Correction. The
future prospect is of that alien technology coming here, with very
little in the way of public or parliamentary debate. A few examples
of US prison technologies and proliferation illustrate the dangers.
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- Many prisons in the U.S, use
Nova electronic 50,000 volt extraction shields, electronic stun
prods and most recently the REACT remote controlled stun belts. In 1994,
the US Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to use remote-controlled stun
belts on prisoners considered dangerous to prevent them from
escaping during transportation and court appearances. By May 1996, the
Wisconsin Department of Corrections said that no longer will inmates
be chained together "but will be restrained by the use of stun
belts and individual restraints."
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- Promotional literature from US company
Stun Tech of Cleveland, Ohio, claims that its high pulse stun belt can
be activated from 300 feet. After a warning noise, the Remote Electronically
Activated Control Technology (REACT) belt inflicts a 50,000 volt shock
for 8 seconds. This high pulsed current enters the prisoners left
kidney region then enters the body of the victim along blood channels
and nerve pathways. Each pulse results in a rapid body shock extending
to the whole of the brain and central nervous system. The makers
promote the belt 'for total psychological supremacy..of potentially
troublesome prisoners.' Stunned prisoners lose control of the bladders
and bowels. 'After all, if you were wearing the contraption around
your waist that by the mere push of a button in someone's hand, could
make you defecate or urinate yourself, what would you do from
the psychological standpoint?" Amnesty International wants
Washington to ban the belts because they can be used to torture,
and calls them, 'cruel,inhuman and degrading. "Some officials
say the belts can save money because fewer guards would be needed.
But human rights activists and some jailers oppose them as the
most degrading new measure in an increasingly barbaric field."
(Kilborn,1997) Already, some European countries are in the process
of evaluating stunbelt systems for use here.(Marks, 1996)
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- Without proper licensing and a
clear consensus on what is expected from private prisons in Europe,
multinational private prison conglomerations could act as a bridgehead
for similar sorts of technology to further enter the European crime
control industry. Proper limits need to be set when a licence is
granted with a comprehensive account taken of that company's past
track record in terms of civil liberties, rehabilitation and crisis
management rather than just cost per prisoner held. Amnesty International
in the USA is currently asking the large multi-national prison corporations
to sign up to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and a
similar approach with associated contractual obligations, might prove
to be a useful way forward here in Europe. Members of the European
Parliament may wish to consider the following options:-
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- 5.1 POLICY OPTIONS
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- (i) To let commercial requirements
to make profits from prisoners become the primary criterion in
running Europe's private jails;
-
- (ii). Further examine the use of
kill fencing and lethal area denial systems in all prisons within the
European Union, whether private or public, with a view to their prohibition;
-
- (iii) That the European Parliament
establish a rigorous independent and impartial inquiry into the
use of stun belts, stunguns and shields , and all other types and
variants of electro-shock weapons in Member States, to assess their medical
and other effects in terms of international human rights standards
regulating the treatment of prisoners and the use of force; the inquiry
should examine all known cases of deaths or injury resulting from
the use of these instruments, and the results of the inquiry
should be published without delay
-
- (iv) That the European Commission
be asked to:-
-
- (a). Ensure that the UN Minimum
treatment of prisoners rules banning the use of leg irons on prisoners
are implemented in all EU correctional facilities.
-
- (b). Implement a ban on the introduction
of in-built gassing systems inside European gaols on the basis of
the manufacturers warnings of the dangers of using chemical riot
control agents in enclosed spaces. Restrictions should also be
made on the use of chemical irritants from whatever source in correctional
facilities wherever research has shown that a concentration of that
irritant could either kill or be associated with permanent damage
to health.
-
- (c). Explore legal mechanisms to
ensure that all private prison operations within the European Union
should be subject to a common and consistent licensing regime by
the host member. If adopted, no licence should be granted where proven
human rights violations by that contractor have been made elsewhere. Consideration
might be given to providing a contract mechanism whereby
any failure to secure a licence in one European state should debar
that private prison contractor from bidding for other European contracts
(pending evidence of adequate human rights training and appropriate
improvements in standard operating procedures and controls by that
corporation or company).
-
- (v). Seek agreement between all Member
States to ensure that:
-
- (a) All riot control, prisoner
transport and extraction technology which is in use or proposed for
use in all prisons, (whether state or privately run), should be subject
to prior approval by the competent member authorities on the basis
of independent research;
-
- (b) Automated systems of indiscriminate
punishment such as built in baton round firing mechanisms, should
be prohibited.
-
- (c). The use of electro-shock
restraining devices or other remote control punishment devices including
shock- shields should be immediately suspended in any private or public
prison in the European Union, until and unless independent medical
evidence can clearly demonstrate that their use will not contribute
to deaths in custody, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
-
- 6. INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES
& TECHNOLOGIES
-
- The Interim Report on the variety
of hardware, software and liveware involved in human interrogation
and torture. Millennia of research and development have been
expended in devising ever more cruel and inhumane means of extracting
obedience and information from reluctant victims or achieving
excruciatingly painful and long-drawn-out deaths for those who would
question or challenge the prevalent status quo. What has changed in more
recent times is (i) the increasing requirement for speed in breaking
down prisoners' resistance; (ii) the adoption of sophisticated methods
based on a scientific approach and (iii) a need for invisible torture
which leaves no or few marks which might be used by organisations like
Amnesty International to label a particular government, a torturing
state. Today, the phenomena of torture has grown to a worldwide
epidemic. A report by the Redress Trust, 1996, found that 151 countries
were involved in torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, despite
the fact that 106 states have ratified, acceded to or signed
the Convention Against Torture.
-
- Helen Bamber, Director of the British
Medical Foundation for the Treatment of the Victims of Torture,
has described electroshock batons at 'the most universal modern
tool of the torturers' (Gregory,1995) Recent surveys of torture victims
have confirmed that after systematic beating, electroshock is
one of the most common factors (London, 1993); Rasmussen, 1990).
If one looks at the country reports of Amnesty International, (which
recently published a survey of fifty countries where electric
shock torture and ill treatment has been recorded since 1990), confirm
that electroshock torture is the Esperanto of the most repressive
states. Since publication of the Interim Report, one news story has
uncovered evidence suggesting that Taiwan made electroshock weapons
are being sold with the EC "mark of quality", despite
the resolution passed by the European Parliament seeking a ban on such
devices. There is an urgent need to establish whether this is a bogus
claim or whether there really are people in the Commission building
whose job is to make sure the electro-shock weapons produced by
foreign manufacturers can produce the requisite level of paralysis
& helplessness beloved of torturers every where. Members of the European
Parliament may wish to consider the following policy options:-
-
- 6.1 POLICY OPTIONS
-
- (i). That the Civil Liberties Committee
should receive expert evidence to determine whether:-
-
- (a) New regulations on the nature of
in-depth interrogation training should be agreed which prohibit
export of such techniques to forces overseas known to be involved
in gross human rights violation.
-
- (b) All training of foreign military,
police, security and intelligence forces in interrogation techniques,
can be subject to licence, even if it is provided outside
European territory.
-
- (c) Restrictions on visits to
European MSP related events by representatives of known torturing
states can be effectively implemented.
-
- (ii) The Commission should be requested
to achieve agreement between member States to:
-
- (a) Carry out an investigation of
claims that the EC "mark of quality" is being used to endorse
electroshock devices and Immediately prohibit the transfer of
all electroshock stun weapons to any country where such weapons
are likely to contribute to unlawful killings, or to torture
or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for example by refusing
any export licence where it is proposed that electroshock weapons
will be transferred to a country where persistent torture
or instances of instances of electric shock torture and ill treatment
have been reported;
-
- (b) Introduce and implement new
regulations on the manufacture, sale and transfer of all electroshock
weapons from and into Europe, with a full report to the European Parliament's
Civil Liberties committee made each year. [Special consideration
should be given to controlling the whole procurement process,
covering even the making of contracts of sale, (to prevent a purchase
deal made in a European country being met by a supplier or subsidiary
outside of the EU, in an effort to obviate extant controls)].
-
- (c). Ensure that the proposed
regulations should cover patents and prohibit the patenting of any device
whose sole use would be the violation of human rights, via torture
or the creation of unnecessary suffering. The onus should be on
the patent seeker to show that his patent would not lead to such outcomes.
-
- (v) The European Parliament should
look at commissioning new work to investigate how existing legislation
within member states of the EU, can be brought to bear to prosecute
companies who have been complicit in the supply of equipment used
for torture as defined by the UN convention of torture. This
new work should examine, in conjunction with the Directorate of Human
Rights:-
-
- (a) The extent to which such
technology produced by European companies is being transferred
to human rights violators and the role played by international military,
police and security fairs organised both inside and outside European
Borders;
-
- (b)The possible measures that could
be set in place to monitor and track any technology transfer within
this category and any potential role in this endeavour that might be
played by recognised Non-Governmental Organisations.
-
- 7. DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY
-
- Surveillance technology can be defined
as devices or systems which can monitor, track and assess the
movements of individuals, their property and other assets. Much
of this technology is used to track the activities of dissidents,
human rights activists, journalists, student leaders, minorities,
trade union leaders and political opponents. A huge range of surveillance
technologies has evolved, including the night vision goggles;
parabolic microphones to detect conversations over a kilometre
away; laser versions, can pick up any conversation from a closed window
in line of sight; the Danish Jai stroboscopic camera can take hundreds
of pictures in a matter of seconds and individually photograph
all the participants in a demonstration or March; and the automatic
vehicle recognition systems can tracks cars around a city via
a Geographic Information System of maps.
-
- New technologies which were originally
conceived for the Defence and Intelligence sectors, have after the cold
war, rapidly spread into the law enforcement and private sectors.
It is one of the areas of technological advance, where outdated
regulations have not kept pace with an accelerating pattern of
abuses. Up until the 1960's, most surveillance was low-tech
and expensive since it involved following suspects around from
place to place, using up to 6 people in teams of two working 3
eight hour shifts. All of the material and contacts gleaned had to
be typed up and filed away with little prospect of rapidly cross
checking. Even electronic surveillance was highly labour intensive.
The East German police for example employed 500,000 secret informers,
10,000 of which were needed just to listen and transcribe citizen's
phone calls.
-
- By the 1980's, new forms of electronic
surveillance were emerging and many of these were directed towards
automation of communications interception. This trend was fuelled in
the U.S. in the 1990's by accelerated government funding at the end
of the cold war, with defence and intelligence agencies being
refocussed with new missions to justify their budgets, transferring
their technologies to certain law enforcement applications such as
anti-drug and anti-terror operations. In 1993, the US department
of defence and the Justice department signed memoranda of understanding
for "Operations Other Than War and Law Enforcement"
to facilitate joint development and sharing of technology.
According to David Banisar of Privacy International, "To counteract
reductions in military contracts which began in the 1980's, computer
and electronics companies are expanding into new markets - at
home and abroad - with equipment originally developed for the military.
Companies such as E Systems, Electronic Data Systems and Texas Instruments
are selling advanced computer systems and surveillance equipment
to state and local governments that use them for law enforcement,
border control and Welfare administration."What the East
German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming a
reality in the free world."
-
- 7.1 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)
Surveillance Networks
-
- In fact the art of visual surveillance
has dramatically changed over recent years. Of course police and
intelligence officers still photograph demonstrations and individuals
of interest but increasingly such images can be stored and searched.
Ongoing processes of ultra-miniaturisation mean that such devices
can be made to be virtually undetectable and are open to abuse
by both indivduals, companies and official agencies.
-
- The attitude to CCTV camera networks
varies greatly in the European Union, from the position in Denmark
where such cameras are banned by law to the position in the UK, where
many hundreds of CCTV networks exist. Nevertheless, a common position
on the status of such systems where they exist in relation to
data protection principles should apply in general. A specific consideration
is the legal status of admissibility as evidence, of digital
material such as those taken by the more advanced CCTV systems.
Much of this will fall within data protection legislation if
the material gathered can be searched eg by car number plate or
by time. Given that material from such systems can be seemlessly
edited, the European Data Protection Directive legislation needs
to be implemented through primary legislation which clarifies the law
as it applies to CCTV, to avoid confusion amongst both CCTV data
controllers as well as citizens as data subjects. Primary legislation
will make it possible to extend the impact of the Directive to areas
of activity that do not fall within community law. Articles 3 and 13
of the Directive should not create a blanket covering the use
of CCTV in every circumstance in a domestic context.
-
- A proper code of practice such as
that promoted by the UK based Local Government Information Unit (LGIU,
1996) should be extended to absorb best practice from all EU Member
States to cover the use of all CCTV surveillance schemes operating
in public spaces and especially in residential areas. As a first step
it is suggested that the Civil Liberties Committee formally consider
examining the practice and control of CCTV throughout the member
States with a view to establishing what elements of the various
codes of practice could be adopted for a unified code and an enforceable
legal framework covering enforcement and civil liberties protection
and redress.
-
- 7.2 Algorithmic Surveilance Sysytems
-
- The revolution in urban surveillance
will reach the next generation of control once reliable face recognition
comes in. It will initially be introduced at stationary locations,
like turnstiles, customs points, security gateways etc. to enable
a standard full face recognition to take place. The Interim
Report predicted that in the early part of the 21st. century, facial
recognition on CCTV will be a reality and those countries with CCTV
infrastructures will view such technology as a natural add-on. In fact,
an American company Software and Systems has trialed a system in London
which can scan crowds and match faces against a database of images
held in a remote computer. We are at the beginning of a revolution
in 'algorithmic surveillance' - effectively data analysis via complex
algoritms which enable automatic recognition and tracking. Such
automation not only widens the surveillance net, it narrows the mesh.(See
Norris, C., et. al, 1998)
-
- Similarly Vehicle Recognition Systems
have been developed which can identify a car number plate then track
the car around a city using a computerised geographic information
system. Such systems are now commercially available, for example,
the Talon system introduced in 1994 by UK company Racal at a price of
£2000 per unit. The system is trained to recognise number plates
based on neural network technology developed by Cambridge Neurodynamics,
and can see both night and day. Initially it has been used for
traffic monitoring but its function has been adapted in recent years
to cover security surveillance and has been incorporated in
the "ring of steel" around London. The system can then
record all the vehicles that entered or left the cordon on a particular
day.
-
- It is important to set clear guidelines
and codes of practice for such technological innovations, well
in advance of the digital revolution making new and unforseen opportunities
to collate, analyze, recognise and store such visual images. Already
multifunctional traffic management systems such as 'Traffic Master'
, (which uses vehicle recognition systems to map and quantify congestion),
are facilitating a national surveillance architecture. Such regulation
will need to be founded on sound data protection principles and take
cognizance of article 15 of the 1995 European Directive on the protection
of Individuals and Processing of Personal Data. Essentially this says
that : "Member States shall grant the right of every person
not to be subject to a decision which produces legal effects
concerning him or significantly affects him and which is based solely
on the automatic processing of data." There is much to recommend
the European Parliament following the advice of a recent UK
House of Lords Report (Select Committee Report on Digital Images
as Evidence, 1998). Namely: (i)that the European Parliament
...."produces guidance for both the public and private sectors
on the use of data matching, and in particular the linking of surveillance
systems with other databases; and (ii) That the Data Protection
Registrar be given powers to audit the operation of data matching
systems"
-
- Such surveillance systems raise significant
issues of accountability, particularly when transferred
to authoritarian regimes. The cameras used in Tiananmen Square were
sold as advanced traffic control systems by Siemens Plessey. Yet
after the 1989 massacre of students, there followed a witch hunt
when the authorities tortured and interrogated thousands in
an effort to ferret out the subversives. The Scoot surveillance
system with USA made Pelco cameras were used to faithfully record
the protests. The images were repeatedly broadcast over Chinese
television offering a reward for information, with the result that
nearly all the transgressors were identified. Again democratic accountability
is only the criterion which distinguishes a modern traffic control
system from an advanced dissident capture technology. Foreign companies
are exporting traffic control systems to Lhasa in Tibet, yet Lhasa
does not as yet have any traffic control problems. The problem
here may be a culpable lack of imagination.
-
- 7.3 Bugging & Tapping Devices
-
- A wide range of bugging and tapping
devices have been evolved to record conversations and to intercept
telecommunications traffic. In recent years the widespread practice
of illegal and legal interception of communications and the planting
of 'bugs' has been an issue in many European States. However, planting
illegal bugs is yesterday's technology. Modern snoopers can
buy specially adapted lap top computers, and simply tune in to all
the mobile phones active in the area by cursoring down to their number.
The machine will even search for numbers 'of interest' to see
if they are active. However, these bugs and taps pale into insignificance
next to the national and international state run interceptions networks.
-
- 7.4 National & International Communications
Interceptions Networks
-
- The Interim Report set out in detail,
the global surveillance systems which facilitate the mass supervision
of all telecommunications including telephone, email and fax transmissions
of private citizens, politicians, trade unionists and companies
alike. There has been a political shift in targeting in recent
years. Instead of investigating crime (which is reactive) law
enforcement agencies are increasingly tracking certain social
classes and races of people living in red-lined areas before crime
is committed - a form of pre-emptive policing deemed data-veillance which
is based on military models of gathering huge quantities of low grade
intelligence.
-
- Without encryption, modern communications
systems are virtually transparent to the advanced interceptions equipment
which can be used to listen in. The Interim Report also explained
how mobile phones have inbuilt monitoring and tagging dimensions
which can be accessed by police and intelligence agencies.
For example the digital technology required to pinpoint mobile
phone users for incoming calls, means that all mobile phone users
in a country when activated, are mini-tracking devices, giving their
owners whereabouts at any time and stored in the company's computer
. For example Swiss Police have secretly tracked the whereabouts
of mobile phone users from the computer of the service provider
Swisscom, which according SonntagsZeitung had stored movements of
more than a milion subscribers down to a few hundred metres, and
going back at least half a year.
-
- However, of all the developments covered
in the Interim Report, the section covering some of the constitutional
and legal issues raised by the USA's National Security Agency's access
and facility to intercept all European telecommunications caused the
most concern. Whilst no-one denied the role of such networks in anti
terrorist operations and countering illegal drug, money laudering
and illicit arms deals, alarm was expressed about the scale of the
foreign interceptions network identified in the report and whether
existing legislation, data protection and privacy safeguards in
the Member States were sufficient to protect the confidentiality between
EU citizens, corporations and those with third countries.
-
- Since there has been a certain degree
of confusion in subsequent press reports, it is worth clarifying some
of the issues surrounding transatlantic electronic surveillance
and providing a short history & update on developments
since the Interim Report was published in January 1998. There
are essentially two separate system, namely:
-
- (i) The UK/USA system comprising the
activities of military intelligence agencies such as NSA-CIA in the
USA subsuming GCHQ & MI6 in the UK operating a system known
as ECHELON;
-
- (ii) The EU-FBI system which is
linkeding up various law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, police,
customs, immigration and internal security;
-
- Although the confusion has been further
compounded by the title of item 44 on the agenda for the Plenary session
of the European Parliament on September 16, 1998, in intelligence
terms, these are two distinct "communities" It is worth
looking briefly at the activities of both systems in turn, encompassing,
Echelon, encryption; EU-FBI surveillance and new interfaces with for
example to access to internet providers and to databanks of other
agencies.
-
- 7.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL
EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
-
- The Interim report said that within
Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely
intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring
all target information from the European mainland via the strategic
hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the
crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.
-
- The system was first uncovered in
the 1970's by a group of researchers in the UK (Campbell, 1981).
A recent work by Nicky Hager, Secret Power, (Hager,1996) provides
the most comprehensive details todate of a project known as ECHELON.
Hager interviewed more than 50 people concerned with intelligence
to document a global surveillance system that stretches around the
world to form a targeting system on all of the key Intelsat
satellites used to convey most of the world's satellite phone calls,
internet, email, faxes and telexes. These sites are based at Sugar Grove
and Yakima, in the USA, at Waihopai in New Zealand, at Geraldton
in Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the UK.
-
- The ECHELON system forms part of
the UKUSA system but unlike many of the electronic spy systems
developed during the cold war, ECHELON is designed for primarily
non-military targets: governments, organisations and businesses in virtually
every country. The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately
intercepting very large quantities of communications and then
siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence
aids like Memex. to find key words. Five nations share the results
with the US as the senior partner under the UKUSA agreement of 1948,
Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are very much acting as
subordinate information servicers.
-
- Each of the five centres supply "dictionaries"
to the other four of keywords, Phrases, people and places to
"tag" and the tagged intercept is forwarded straight
to the requesting country. Whilst there is much information gathered
about potential terrorists, there is a lot of economic intelligence,
notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in
the GATT negotiations. But Hager found that by far the main priorities
of this system continued to be military and political intelligence
applicable to their wider interests.
-
- Hager quotes from a"highly
placed intelligence operatives" who spoke to the Observer in London.
"We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we
regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment
in which we operate." They gave as examples. GCHQ interception
of three charities, including Amnesty International and Christian
Aid. "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications
for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In the
case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes
its called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to third world aid,
the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the
three organisations. With no system of accountability, it is difficult
to discover what criteria determine who is not a target.
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