Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-05-Speech-3-009"
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"en.20010905.2.3-009"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, more than a year ago the European Parliament set up a special committee to ascertain whether there was in fact a global interception system for which the US National Security Agency was ultimately responsible and which was able to intercept any communication by telephone, fax or e-mail in Europe. This system is allegedly operated by a group of states which includes one of the Member States of the European Union, namely the United Kingdom. Now that the Cold War is over, the main function of the system appears to be industrial espionage. The system, it is alleged, bears the code name
.
Thirdly, the end does not justify the means. In short, the end is not everything, for each individual case of eavesdropping is an invasion of privacy. It is not a problem of quantity either. Human rights are individual rights; they are not a matter of statistics. Such an invasion of privacy is only permissible on certain conditions. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights is crystal clear in this respect. Briefly, the conditions are as follows: there must be a legal basis for such an operation – it cannot be arbitrary; a value judgment must be made, the breach of privacy being weighed against the morality of its purpose; the operation must be foreseeable, which means that the general public must know that such a system exists, and recourse to interception must only be permitted if there is no alternative. It is, in other words, an
There are Members of this House who agree that it is acceptable for the police to intercept communications in pursuance of a court order for the purpose of criminal prosecution. But in the case of the intelligence services, they call it an infringement of human rights. I fully understand anyone expressing political opposition to this type of action by the secret services. I can see the logic of that. It is not my position, but I can follow their reasoning. But anyone who says it is illegal is disregarding the rulings of our own European Court of Human Rights.
Industrial espionage is certainly not a legitimate reason for intercepting communications. All intelligence services do, of course, deal with economic issues too, examining developments in financial and commodity markets, for example. To that extent most of the services engage in espionage in the economic domain. But we are not criticising them for that. The problem arises when this espionage goes beyond the clarification of general security issues and the intelligence services pass on details to industrialists in their own country in order to give their companies a competitive advantage.
Such behaviour between EU Member States, furthermore, would be incompatible with Community law, because it constitutes a type of prohibited state aid. On the international stage it is more than just an unfriendly act, and between allies it is nothing short of a scandal. Incidentally, intercepting communications is not the preferred method of industrial espionage, which is generally conducted by conventional means. But there are individual cases in which the instrument of interception can be used to great effect.
The United States, as you know, has come in for the heaviest criticism. The United States has always denied that intelligence is passed on directly to US companies. It has admitted, however, that it intercepts detailed communications concerning major contracts that are open to international tender. The argument used to justify these measures is that European companies would offer bribes and that there is a need for a defence against this.
This position, to put it very politely and diplomatically, must be scrutinised. First of all, we know that US corporations engage in bribery too. In the latest Bribe Payers Index published by Transparency International, the United States occupies a mid-table position among the world’s major exporting countries.
Secondly, this type of thing is now prohibited within the OECD by a Convention, which the Member States of the European Union have transposed into national law. For the United States, despite this, to remain entrenched in the cowboy mentality which holds that might is right would be a denial of the principle that such problems can be solved by formal international agreements.
Thirdly, if it is true that the American intelligence agencies do not engage in detailed industrial espionage, why is there no law in the United States of America that proscribes such activity by intelligence agencies? Why ever not?
The real political problem, basically, is that, in the European public debate, the United States is considered capable of such measures. The political problem highlighted by this whole issue is the prevalence of profound mistrust. This mistrust has to be weeded out.
This, Mr President, was a difficult investigative mission, because the European Parliament has no access at all under any circumstances to the files of the intelligence services of the EU Member States, let alone access to details of the activities of American agencies. However, after a year of painstaking investigation, we are able to communicate the following to the House without any lingering shadow of doubt: first of all, there is no intelligence system operated by the secret services of any one state by means of which any communication in Europe can be intercepted. This allegation must be consigned to the domain of creative journalism! The assertion is not made any more credible by the fact that it is repeated, and regrettably so, in a study commissioned by the European Parliament, a fact that lends it a certain cachet of respectability.
We have developed a host of proposals, some of which relate to the monitoring of the intelligence services here in Europe, to a code of conduct for the EU Member States and the like. Ultimately, however, it all boils down to one simple main problem: the protection of privacy is guaranteed by the national legal systems, but communications are becoming increasingly international. There is no world government to protect them. This is one of the many problems posed by globalisation. We must reach agreements and enshrine them in international law so that privacy is protected worldwide.
Apart from this, a second problem remains, a problem to which I referred at the start of the report with the Latin tag
meaning ‘But who will watch these watchmen?’ That is the perennial problem.
What we are looking at here is not what we were expected to find. Telecommunications obey the laws of physics, and without access to the media of communication it is impossible to intercept the messages they carry. The secret services do not possess magic powers with which they can alter the laws of physics! The second point we are able to make, however, is that there is indeed an interception system, and these are its characteristics: it operates globally and is run by an intelligence alliance comprising the parties to the UKUSA Agreement, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There is nothing coincidental about this combination of states, which has its roots in the Second World War. By and large, it only has access to intercontinental communications which are transmitted with the aid of communications satellites or undersea cables serving the UKUSA countries.
Communications within Europe, therefore, are scarcely affected, but communications with African, Arabic and Latin American countries most certainly are. We do not know exactly how much local radio communication can be intercepted by embassies, but it is evident that this does not represent the bulk of intelligence operations. By way of contrast to police surveillance operations, which always target an individual or a clearly defined group of people, the system concerning us here intercepts every communication to which it has access and feeds it into a computer search engine. On the basis of a catalogue of search terms, the search engine selects those communications that are likely to be of interest to the intelligence services. In other words, the system works like a vacuum cleaner and the intelligence services operate the filter. In technical terms this is known as strategic communications monitoring.
The search engine can identify telephone numbers, the voices of prime targets and the content of e-mails and typed faxes. Given the present state of the art, these search engines will not be able to interpret handwritten faxes and spoken messages in the foreseeable future, which means that these forms of communication cannot be automatically processed by the intelligence services. In addition, we have evidence that the system does indeed have the code name
. Its name, however, is irrelevant. It might just as well be called Rumpelstiltskin; the important thing for us is what it does.
These are the findings, and let me add that we are not simply hypothesising. We can back up these statements with a strong chain of evidence that could stand up in a court of law. Those who wish to know precise details will have to read the report for themselves. Suffice to say that, if we had made any false allegations in this report, you can safely assume that the intelligence services of the countries in question would have been only too delighted to take us apart in public! This they did not do, which speaks volumes.
How do we assess these findings? One of our assessment criteria must be to ask what our own services actually do. That is not the sole criterion, but it must be taken into consideration if we intend to hold an honest debate on this subject. Most of the intelligence services in the EU Member States engage in strategic communications monitoring.
Only Austria, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal do not use such technology.
Secondly, it goes without saying that the purpose for which strategic monitoring is used will also affect our assessment. If it is targeted at internationally organised crime, drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, the arms trade, terrorism, proliferation or sanctions busting, or if it is used to protect national security, there can be no questioning the legitimacy of its purpose as such. But if it is being used to spy on foreign companies in order to tip the competitive balance in favour of domestic industries, that is quite a different matter."@en1
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"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes"1
"ultima ratio."1
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