_______________
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and you
stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
"There is but one thing in the world really worth pursuing - the knowledge of God."
Robert H. Benson
Are the Citizens Criminals or are World Governments?
This October, Congress passed a sweeping piece of legislation designed to keep track of the activities of those the government fears most. Foreign terrorists? No. Domestic terrorists? No. Then perhaps the over inflated fantasy of those "dangerous" militia movements? No. Who then? Those the government fears most are the American people.
"Without debate or notice," says an October 8th report published by Reuters, "U.S. lawmakers...approved a proposal long sought by the FBI that would dramatically expand wiretapping authority -- an idea Congress openly rejected three years ago." [1]
What Reuters is referring to is House Resolution 3694 which passed Congress and, as mentioned, without fanfare of any kind, was signed into law by President Clinton October 20th, becoming Public Law #105- 272. [2]
"The conference report was easily adopted by the House Wednesday," Reuters went on to say, "despite an objection to the wiretapping provision from Georgia Republican Bob Barr, and by the Senate Thursday. Neither the House nor the Senate had included the provision, known as roving wiretap authority, in their versions of the intelligence bill." That was added later in closed committee.
Roving wiretaps are those that are not limited by former legal constraints to just one telephone line per court order. Where previously each wiretap had to be approved by a judge (at least on the surface), these hybrid wiretaps are more of a carte blanche authority of the courts to tap into any line that law enforcement agencies think even might be used by, or is in the immediate vicinity of, a suspect. And, of course, the definition of "suspect" is itself suspect--being whatever those agencies define at any given moment.
"'Roving wiretaps are a major expansion of current government surveillance power,' said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. 'To take a controversial provision that affects the fundamental constitutional liberties of the people and pass it behind closed doors shows a shocking disregard for our democratic process.' FBI officials said they needed to be able to get roving wiretap authority more easily to catch criminals taking advantage of new telecommunications technologies." [ibid.]
House Resolution 3694
Entitled Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, H.R. 3694 rests much of its authority on Executive Order 12333 established by President Reagan in December of 1981. Title VI, Section 403 of the act states that the Attorney General can authorize wiretaps on an "emergency basis" without the approval of a judge. It requires only that a judge be notified of the intention and that the tap is allowed for 48 hours without judicial permission.
Not incidentally, the term "emergency" is not defined in the bill and therefore can be whatever the Attorney General desires it to be. As will be shown later, it can be easily deduced from this that the government is merely authorizing itself by paper legislation what it has already been doing for some time. What this bill has resulted in, among other things, is a major erosion of the dividing line in the separation of powers. The authority to approve wiretapping has been effectively shifted from the judiciary to the executive branch of government, thereby creating a further blurring of the vital division establishing that constitutional separation of powers--the protective barrier that divides the three main components of government in this country.
It was the intention of the framers of the Constitution to establish a certain tension between the legislative, judicial and executive branches for the purpose of making government, to a degree, self-regulating. As those divisions become weaker and less substantial, government becomes more independent from the will of the people. When those divisions are finally erased, this nation will be in the full clutch of a dictatorship--at least one more easily recognizable than the present one.
In a seemingly prophetic portent of things to come the CATO Institute, a Washington-based conservative think tank, reported that "...the 1994 Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)...gave the FBI extraordinary power to demand that telephone companies rebuild their networks to make wiretapping easier. The FBI is already straining at the bounds of its authority," the report continues, "at one point demanding to be able to tap one in every hundred phone conversations simultaneously. Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.) has fought to keep the FBI accountable." [3]
In a previous WINDS article it was revealed that "when CALEA passed in 1994, it promised to reimburse regional carriers for embedding a common law enforcement interface into the backbone of their call switching networks. Instead of restoring law enforcement to their old vantage ground, the new requirements would give police immediate access into the nerve center of the regional telephone carrier - a massive leap past what they had before. Where before law enforcement had to work to find the correct copper wire to tap into, now they are asking for the equivalent of requiring every new home to be built with listening devices in the walls in case they want to eavesdrop someday." [4]
The CATO Institute, reporting on proposed legislation clear back in October of 1996 commented, "Other measures proposed for passage...include a provision allowing law enforcement officers to use 'roving wiretaps' without getting permission from a court to do so. This means that the police could tap your phone without a warrant if they saw someone they think might be a criminal enter your house or place of business. Another proposed rule would allow investigators to use 'emergency' wiretaps, which can be used for 48 hours without a warrant, even when there is no emergency."
Their fears were realized, of course, with the passage of House Resolution 3694.
"Supporters of the new roving wiretap rule have succeeded in concealing its impact from the public. The media has widely reported that the roving wiretap proposal would allow investigators to eavesdrop on criminals who are moving from phone to phone to evade interception. But federal law already permits this type of wiretap -- when investigators have satisfied a court that it is necessary. Requiring police to get the permission of a judge is essential to protect the privacy of the innocent. According to yearly reports filed with Congress by the Administrative Office of United States Courts (AO), over 80 percent of calls intercepted by wiretaps are innocent; roving wiretaps intercept an even higher percentage of calls placed by innocent parties who are not suspected of any crime. The new proposal would do away with judicial safeguards." [ibid.]
The author of the CATO article, Solveig Bernstein, makes a growingly apparent observation when he says, "The natural tendency of any bureaucracy is to expand. If a government program fails, the administrators insist this was not their fault -- they simply needed more money, more power, and more guns. In the wake of the TWA disaster and the Atlanta bombing, running true to bureaucratic form, law enforcement interests promise they can offer us perfect security, if only we give them more power."
The power Mr. Bernstein refers to does not replicate itself like the government's magic computer money; where once you had 'x' amount of power and now you have 2x. Power is not given, it is given away. When a nation's citizens "give" more power to government they "give away" that power in the form of less freedom, less privacy for themselves resulting in less accountability by their government to the citizen--and any less accountability than presently exists approaches zero.
To highlight that attitude of unaccountability Bernstein says that "the Senate appears ready to play into their hands, even though polls show that 70 percent of Americans think wiretaps should be banned." Isn't it interesting how when polls agree with the government's desires, they are used to justify their actions, but totally ignored when it does not serve them?
THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT
(Another Paper Shredder for the Constitution)
"In a highly restricted room inside the Department of Justice Building in Washington D.C. resides a federal court that meets in complete secrecy," begins an essay by Patrick S. Poole, former Deputy Director for the Center for Technology Policy, a division of the Washington-based Free Congress Foundation. [5]
In his article entitled, "Inside America's Secret" Court Mr. Poole reveals the workings of a legal entity known by few Americans but whose workings can, in Poole's words, "result in criminal charges, convictions and prison sentences for US citizens, their writs and rulings [being] permanently sealed from review by those accused of crimes and from any substantive civilian review."
This court handles wiretap and other surveillance requests along with physical search warrants for the U.S. Intelligence community and the Department of Justice. The FISC is the direct offspring of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, legislation that resulted from the increasing acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. It was chartered by President Jimmy Carter in Executive Order 12139 which appears to be the first real endowment of authority upon the Attorney General for initiating wiretaps without court order.
"During the 20-year tenure of the FISC," Poole claims, "the court has received over 10,000 applications for covert surveillance and physical searches. To date, not a single application has been denied....The FISA court issues more surveillance and physical search orders," the essay reveals, "than the entire federal judiciary combined." [ibid.] [emphasis supplied]. Also of interest, Poole points out, is that there is a separate FISC appeals court that, in twenty years of its existence, "has never heard a case."
"...The records of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts show that federal electronic intercepts have increased 30-40 percent since Clinton took office, and no federal magistrate has turned down a federal request for an intercept order since 1988."[6]
In 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno expanded the Justice Department's power beyond mere wiretapping to the issuing of warrantless physical searches which resulted, after the fact, in Congress' broadening Justice's authority to do so by passing the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1995.
"This expansion also included the power for evidence gathered in FISA surveillance and searches to be used in criminal proceedings. However, all information regarding the order and any evidence obtained under the order are permanently sealed and classified 'top secret.' The effect of this provision has been that US citizens are being charged with crimes in federal court and not allowed to review the evidence against them, nor are their attorneys permitted to see the warrants that authorized the search." [5]
"Many constitutional scholars and civil liberty advocates," Poole claims, "note that the overly broad powers of the FISA statute and court authority are in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and general warrants. With such a powerful weapon against citizens‚ Constitutional liberties, many opponents of the court argue that Congress should conduct extensive oversight of the court. But congressional oversight of the FISA court is virtually non-existent." [ibid.]
The sole oversight report for all of 1997 consisted of just two paragraphs, but which showed an exponential increase in approved surveillance orders, says the Center for Technology Policy report. There has been "a sharp increase in FISC orders...since the ascendance of the Clinton Administration."
The FISC clearly violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment against "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," not to mention the part of that amendment that guarantees against warrants without probable cause.
As mentioned previously, the secret court seals all evidence from the eyes of both the accused and his attorney's, thus violating the Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial by jury. Poole relates an instance of one Richard Johnson in which "the judge instructed the jury that evidence against Johnson existed, and yet would not be presented for 'national security' reasons, requiring the jury to rely on the 'testimony' of the judge. This prevented Johnson's attorneys from challenging evidence that was not available to them but was testified to by the judge himself." [ibid.] This sort of procedure also makes the legal privilege of the defendant's attorneys to cross-examine witnesses realistically impossible.
A writer for the Washington Post claims "the FISA standard is constitutional" because it is to be used for counterintelligence probes and not for criminal investigations.[7] But according to Mr. Poole "to date, over 90 criminal cases have resulted from evidence gathered under a FISC order."
In addition to the constitutional violations, Poole claims that the Clinton Administration has used "the top secret court to gain economic information and data for political party contributors...." This is indeed an interesting twist on the definition of what constitutes "national security."
THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY:
What Do They Have In Common?
The European Parliament, the governing body elected by the member nations of the emerging European Community (AKA, the European Common Market, European Economic Community, et. al.) commissioned a special report from its panel on Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA), which was published in its final form in September of this year. Considering its contents the report carries a justifiably ominous title: An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control. [8] When one peruses the document, it is found that the term "Political Control" means every dark thing the imagination conjures up in response.
Listed as the number one priority of "key objectives" in the "Interim Study," as the report is also known, was:
(i) To provide Members of the European Parliament with a succinct reference guide to recent advances in the technology of political control....
One must be aware that the contents of this document do not come from some spy groupie that tends toward wildly impossible claims like a spy satellite that can photograph a grain of sand ten feet under ground. This is an official document of the parliamentary arm of the European Union, a political entity ostensibly vying with the United States for world power.
Under the heading, "DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY," the STOA report says:
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. [emphasis supplied]
(Note that in that short list of surveillance targets there can be found not a single group that represents anything but a lawful exercise of liberties in a free nation).
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 track cars around a city via a Geographic Information System of maps.
New technologies which were originally conceived for the Defense and Intelligence sectors have after the cold war rapidly spread into the law enforcement and private sectors.
The report continues by emphasizing the need for the advanced technology so that they will not encounter the manpower bottleneck as did the East Germans, requiring them to employ "500,000 secret informers, 10,000 of which were needed just to listen to and transcribe citizens' phone calls."
This astounding document, dispensed with the seemingly casual, prosaic attitude one would assume when changing a light bulb, pursues further the idea that people other than themselves are merely highly evolved animals in their personal zoo--kept there not so much for their entertainment value, as for the safety and security of the zookeepers.
In 1993, the STOA report says, the U.S. departments of Justice and Defense entered into an agreement for the sharing of technology to be used in "Operations Other Than War and Law Enforcement." Anyone with an intellect greater than that of an aphid knows on whom they desire to ply that technology. Categories "Other War and Law Enforcement" can only mean an enormously intrusive surveillance of the common citizen--the "masses"--the non-elite "zoo" that must be kept track of.
"'To counteract reductions in military contracts which began in the 1980's,'" the Interim Report quotes David Banisar of Privacy International, "'computer and electronics companies are expanding into new markets - at home and abroad - with equipment originally developed for the military.'"
STOA cites American companies such as "E Systems, Electronic Data Systems and Texas Instruments," which are scrambling to recover market share lost when their golden goose, the Cold War, died. These corporations "are selling advanced computer systems and surveillance equipment to state and local governments that use them for law enforcement, border control and Welfare administration."
Welfare administration? Can one possibly imagine, in a world increasingly being directed toward a massive semi-welfare state, why they would want to apply such technology to "welfare administration"?-- unless they plan to have everyone enrolled--and track their every move.
In what seems to have been an involuntary spasm of candor, the European Parliamentary document further quotes Banisar as saying, "'What the East German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming a reality in the free world.'"
STOA's Interim Report reveals:
...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 individuals, companies and official agencies.
They readily admit that current technology permits "material from such systems [to] be seamlessly edited." Translated, that means that any technician with the right equipment can tamper with data to make "evidence" appear to be anything they want. They can, for example, modify the digitized data from surveillance cameras, so pervasive in England, and place any person or vehicle in any setting or location they choose--and even Steven Speilburg couldn't tell the difference.
Under STOA's subheading, "Algorithmic Surveillance Systems" is the following for which the adjective "ominous" seems somehow grossly inadequate:
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 Study predicted that in the early part of the 21st. century,
[It must be noted that at this posting the 21st century is less than 400 days away.]
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 algorithms which enable automatic recognition and tracking. Such automation not only widens the surveillance net, it narrows the mesh.(See Norris, C., et. al, 1998). [emphasis supplied]
Narrowing "the mesh" simply means the ability of a surveillance analysis computer to discriminate between very similar objects, such as identical twins or a vehicle whose only distinguishing feature might be a scratch or dent in the fender. With the advent of super computers that perform billions of instructions per second this data can be run and results obtained in time frames on the order of thousands of a second.
The EU's STOA report illustrates how even the most elusive "target" will be no match for the eyes of Big Brother:
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.
A great part of this technology is currently in place. "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," says the European Parliament report.
An example of the misuse to which these systems will be applied was seen in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. "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." [ibid.]
In its presentation this "Interim Study" by the EU's parliament seems to carry with it the overtone that America is being seamlessly woven into the entire concept. By its own wording the study details "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." [ibid.] [emphasis supplied]
The same Globalist order that brought this nation "political correctness" and the redefinition "hate" have now stepped over their own line. The STOA report claims that "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."
"Pre-emptive policing" can mean such things as the gathering of more people with a particular skin color at a street corner than police are comfortable with, thus placing the First Amendment's guarantee of "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" in serious jeopardy--not to mention presumption of innocence.
With this technology it appears that America is intent on showing the former Soviet Union where it went wrong and how it should be done. Those that determine the progress and direction of One World government set the minorities against the majorities and one race at the throat of another. They accomplish this by continually drawing the attention of each to the other, emphasizing the differences and unfairness of each group. And while the attention of those factions is diverted because they are made to busily watch each other, the "zoo keepers" are busy watching the inmates of their world asylum.
One of the ingenious ways in which they have accomplished this is to make cell phones cheaper and cheaper. First, they made them the status symbol of the upper class thus creating a desire in the lower strata of society. Then they make the increasingly ubiquitous objects available to virtually anyone. This reporter, in a recent visit to the Palestinian West Bank, was amazed to see even some of the lower income Arabs in possession of cellular telephones. These instruments, formerly relegated to the category of "Yuppie toys" and well-to-do businessmen are becoming the modern tracking devices of the New Order.
The EU's STOA 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 to SonntagsZeitung had stored movements of more than a million subscribers down to a few hundred metres, and going back at least half a year."
CODE NAME: ECHELON -- Spying For a World Community
The European Parliament's STOA report makes some amazingly forthright revelations:
2.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Interim Study said that within Europe, all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency [NSA], 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 1970s 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 to date 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, e-mail, 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.
"An astonishing number of people have told [Nicky Hager] things that I, as Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told...It is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little." --David Lange, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1984-89 [9]
Nicky Hager, the author cited in the EU report, began writing about ECHELON after being approached by members of New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), "the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA)," Hager says. He claims that "various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long....
"Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world."[9]
Hagar describes how ECHELON uses a computerized "dictionary" on which the NSA's massive super-computer complex runs nearly instant analysis, searching for key words contained in data transmissions. This Orwellian system illustrates the use of the United States as the Globalist's muscle and nerve center of economic/political activities. "Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords," Hager reveals, "it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil."
Located at Fort Meade, Maryland, the National Security Agency[10] is such a super-secret organization that for some twenty years after its creation, the government would not even acknowledge its existence--in spite of the presence of its enormous headquarters building and the fact that it consumes about 80% of the U.S. intelligence budget, far outstripping the CIA. To make their presence appear more benign they refer to their headquarters as the "campus," thus giving the world's premier spy agency a sort of collegiate ambiance.
Established in 1952 by Presidential Directive from President Truman, the NSA was organized under the Defense Department. It is in charge of the most sophisticated of electronic intelligence gathering, code making and code breaking. Nearly all of American intelligence satellites (intelsats) are under its control. The agency even claims that its research and development are directly responsible for the advent of computers as we know them today.
A statement found on NSA's website asserts that, "It is said that NSA is one of the largest employers of mathematicians in the United States and perhaps the world." "It is said" is intelligence-speak for "that's true, but we aren't officially claiming it."
Also found on their server is a very sobering (if not downright scary) thought: "the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the final authority over all intelligence collection and analysis." [ibid.]
To read NSA's promotional literature makes the agency sound much like something the Boy Scouts might operate if they had a spy organization.
As mentioned above, the NSA coordinates numerous data link facilities around the world that gather massive amounts of electronic information, and that information will be disposed of in ways that naturally benefit the United States. While it is accepted that any nation will naturally look out for its own best interests, America, however, has been at the forefront of complaining to other countries that government protectionism of their own industries makes for a grossly unlevel playing field. What the U.S. doesn't mention, in its covert hypocrisy, is that the massive array of super-technical American intelligence is being used to assure this nation's dominance in the international business arena.
The STOA Interim Report claims that the use of ESCHELON "has benefited U.S. companies involved in arms deals, strengthened Washington's position in crucial World Trade organization talks with Europe during a 1995 dispute with Japan over car part exports. According to the Financial Mail On Sunday, 'key words identified by U.S. experts include the names of inter-governmental trade organizations and business consortia bidding against US companies....' It has also been suggested that in 1990 the U.S. broke into secret negotiations and persuaded Indonesia that U.S. giant AT&T be included in a multi-billion dollar telecom deal that at one point was going entirely to Japan's NEC.'" [8]
The Sunday Times...reported allegations that conversations between the German company Volkswagen and General Motors were intercepted and the French have complained that Thompson-CSF, the French electronics company, lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil with a radar system because the Americans intercepted details of the negotiations and passed them on to U.S. company Raytheon, which subsequently won the contract. Another claim is that Airbus Industrie lost a contract worth $1 billion to Boeing and McDonnel Douglas because information was intercepted by American spying. Other newspapers such as Liberation (21 April 1998) and Il Mondo (20 March 1998), identify the network as an Anglo-Saxon Spy network because of the UK-USA axis. [ibid.]
Most of these data collection stations are run secretly, not because of national security but because, as in Britain and the United States, collection of such data is illegal. "British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the U.S. Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network..." an illegal act by British law. [ibid.]
Lest one think that this Globalist Spy vs. Spy is restricted to only a single venue, "The situation is further complicated by counter allegations in the French magazine Le Point, that the French are systematically spying on American and other allied countries' telephone and cable traffic via the Helios 1A Spy satellite. (Times, June 17 1998)." [ibid.]
"With capabilities so secret and so powerful," says Nicky Hager in his book Secret Power almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group of current 'highly placed intelligence operatives' from the GCHQ [British Government Communications Headquarters] spoke to the London Observer: '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 charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the Observer reported: '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 it is called Mayfly."
These British GCHQ agents were able to vividly demonstrate the system to the journalist from the London Observer. They keyed in a code and specific trigger words that were assigned to Third World aid which apparently resulted in displaying the private telex communications of three organizations. Hager said that what they had demonstrated was "a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works....
"Mike Frost's expose' of Canadian 'embassy collection' operations described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory that can 'listen' to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken," Hager continues. "Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers. Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from the masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for analysts back at agency headquarters."[8]
The European Union's parliamentary arm in their official STOA report expressed some concern about America's immensely powerful spying capabilities. "No proper Authority in the USA," the Interim Report concluded, "would allow a similar EU spy network to operate from American soil without strict limitations, if at all." Well, duh!
Nor is the EU about to fail in following America's lead in spying on its own citizens. "In February 1997, Statewatch [a "widely respected UK based civil liberties monitoring and research organization"] reported that the EU had secretly agreed to set up an international telephone tapping network via a secret network of committees established under the 'third pillar' of the Maastricht Treaty...." EU agencies have also entered into agreements with the FBI on electronics surveillance. The STOA quotes a Guardian report of February, '97 which "reflects concern among European Intelligence agencies that modern technology will prevent them from tapping private communications. 'EU countries' it says, should agree on 'international interception standards set at a level that would ensure encoding or scrambled words can be broken down by government agencies.' Official reports say that the EU governments agreed to co-operate closely with the FBI in Washington. Yet earlier minutes of these meetings suggest that the original initiative came from [surprise] Washington." [ibid.]
"BLACK BOX DECISION MAKING:
...a new global military-intelligence state"Statewatch concludes that 'it is the interface of the ECHELON system and its potential development on phone calls combined with the standardisation of 'tappable communications centres and equipment being sponsored by the EU and the USA which presents a truly global threat over which there are no legal or democratic controls.'(Press release 25.2.97) In many respects what we are witnessing here are meetings of operatives of a new global military-intelligence state. It is very difficult for anyone to get a full picture of what is being decided at the executive meetings setting this 'Transatlantic agenda.' Whilst Statewatch won a ruling from the Ombudsman for access on the grounds that the Council of Ministers 'misapplied the code of access,' for the time being such access to the agendas have been denied. Without such access, we are left with 'black box decision making.'[8]
OPEN SKIES: A Two-way Looking Glass
In a previous WINDS article [11] a strange new twist on the "friendly skies" was discussed. The Open Skies treaty, instituted by the Bush Administration, provides for overflights by foreign aircraft for the stated purpose of promoting an openness between nations and easier verification of arms control compliance. Other reasons, however, lie beneath the surface of this apparent magnanimous treaty.
Because of the illegality of most acts of domestic surveillance and the odious nature to Americans of virtually all that is legal, what scenario could better play itself out than to provide foreign aircraft with intelligence gathering opportunities they need, and then have that foreign entity provide this country with data they gather on American citizens. There is, after all, no law forbidding such foreign intelligence gathering. The U.S. would, of course, reciprocate and provide Open SkiesTreaty signatories with data the U.S. gathers on those country's citizens. Neat, clean and elegant--and virtually invisible.
According to the August, '97 article published on The WINDS, America is even providing these foreign governments with the equipment necessary to spy on American citizens. One such piece of equipment, among others, that was approved for this surveillance is synthetic aperture radar (SAR) which can penetrate any weather and render a photographic quality image swath ten miles wide of whatever the aircraft overflies. This technology was developed by Sandia National Laboratories who has also developed aircraft pods for the Synthetic Aperture Radar for Open Skies (SAROS) program specifically designed for foreign aircraft to mount the equipment.
As the nations of the earth struggle to make themselves omniscient (all knowing) by means of their super-computer networks, they seek also to become omnipotent, the sole proprietors over the minds and consciences of men. This is a prerogative that has heretofore been jealously guarded by a Power far higher in authority than any formed by man. That prerogative is still jealously guarded and men are even now beginning to witness the wrath of that jealousy that is driven by love for those against whom such technology is arrayed.
A very similar plan was once before formulated in antiquity when mankind decided to build himself a structure--a New World Order--that would "reach unto heaven" and to make a name for himself lest he "be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." This first attempt to "reach unto heaven"--to usurp universal power--was looked upon by their Creator Who remarked, "...now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." His response was to confuse their language, creating the diverse tongues of the earth. Now, the universal language of the international computer network seeks to reverse that decree made by Omnipotence. Again Babylon raises it head against Heaven and just as when King David met with judgment when he sought to number Israel as his own kingdom, so is this earth being met with judgment as its governments seek to create their sovereign One World Kingdom and become unified against Heaven in enslaving the souls of men.
It is easy enough to maintain the mindset that all this may affect the "other guy" because HE is doing things he shouldn't, but we are law-abiding. What few realize is that mountains of legislation in the last century-and-half have made illegal a multitude of perfectly normal and moral actions. Neither that legislative tidal wave, nor the technology to enforce it, will stop until every activity on the part of every citizen that exhibits any behavior or thinking independent of government control is declared illegal.
In a current WINDS article [12] about government requiring that banks "profile" all of their customers and report any "suspicious" activity, the comment is made that "once a person is 'flagged' by a profiling system, he/she essentially must prove that he/she is innocent of wrongdoing." Anyone who has played that game of proving one's innocence with the IRS already knows where it leads. When a government is so obsessed with its own survival that it becomes this fearful of its citizens' freedoms and rights, the doctrine of presumption of innocence disappears and any activity deemed "suspicious" becomes a declaration of guilt.
Again, the driving document of the globalist's demonstrates its far reaching insight when it talks about its system "which possesses millions of eyes ever on the watch and unhampered by any limitations whatsoever. Our international rights will then wipe out national rights..." Protocol No. 2, Paragraph 1.
Who would ever have thought that those "millions of eyes" would be glass eyes that are mounted on light poles or eyes wired into our telephones that we carry with us?
REFERENCES:
- Reuters, October 8, 1998.
- House Resolution 3694, 105th Congress.
- Democracy Betrayed Means New Wiretapping Powers, by Solveig Bernstein, CATO Institute, October 2, 1996.
- Death Penalty Sought for Fourth Amendment, The WINDS, June, 1997.
- Inside America's Secret Court, by Patrick S. Poole, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Center for Technology Policy.
- Death Penalty Sought for Fourth Amendment, Congress plans National Wiretap Week, by Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU National Office (Op-ed published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, 3/96).
- "The Catch-22 Law," by Benjamin Wittes, The Washington Post, April 21, 1998, page A21.
- AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL, Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA), Interim Study, Executive Summary, September 1998.
- Exposing the Global Surveillance System, CovertAction Quarterly, Winter,1998 / Secret Power, Nicky Hager, Craig Potton Publishing, New Zealand, 1996.
- The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
- Open Skies and "White Lies" Treaty, The WINDS, August 12, 1997
- FDIC to Force Banks to Spy on Customers, The WINDS, November 29, 1998.
FURTHER READING: Because of the sheer volume of information obtained during research on this subject, the greater part could not be included. Because of this, it is highly recommended that at least the following source be read due to considerable relevant information contained in them.
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL, STOA Interim Study Executive Summary September 1998.
Inside America's Secret Court by Patrick S. Poole
Secret Power, by Nicky Hager, Craig Potton Publishing, New Zealand, 1996. (still in print)
Written 12/01/98