[WSIS CS-Plenary] Merry Xmas brought to you by the NSA

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Dear Ralf and all
Just some comments on your e-mail;
The report to the EP wasn't from Duncan Campbell (he is a journalist and never wasn't a MEP) but -as I mentioned in my earlier mail- from Gerhard Schmid. It's title is "Report on the existence of a global interception system of private and economic communications (ECHELON interception system)", drafted by the "Temporary committee on the interception system ECHELON" and published on July 11, 2001. Unfortunately this report failed to create an enquiry committee, instead setting up an "ad hoc committee" with much less power and efficiency (its outcome was the 12 June 2002 Directive on communication protection). I'd particularly draw your attention to Part 2 of this Report which contains the opinion/recommendation of members of minority groups, the list of experts auditioned by the Committee, an exhaustive list of source documents as well as different appendixes on legal and jurisdictional aspects of communication interception in Europe and in the world.  
The debate on Echelon took really place a year after the Report was published.  During this sittng I attended, the President of the Commission (Prodi) proposed the Council and the Commission to take joint decisons upon "Network security" based on a "European security culture", in partnership with the industry and universities for technical choices. Commissionner Likkanen explained the reasons for intercepting communications ("September 11 has changed the world"), announced the creation of a Forum (sic) and referred to the Telecommunication Council in December (2002) for addressing network security. The following debate was mainly focused on the need for a strong(er) reaction of the Commission and underlined that much time was waisted and nothing had been done by European authorities.
Probably the national gouvernments -i.e. the European Council- didn't reach a sufficient agreement for a "stronger" European reaction, since the UK but also Germany are involved in the ECHELON system. And France has its own "big ears", although their role is far less extensive.
But all that is quite usual in gouvernmemntal spheres. I repeat that CS  didn't set this very big issue on its agenda during the four years WSIS process and this bothers me and worries me much more. I'm sorry, Ralf : even if some special CS working groups at some extent dealt with "security" and "privacy", the outcomes of these meetings never mentioned ECHELON (unless there were some conficential ones!) and were brought in our plenary or C&T meetings. 
That's why I propose this to change in the coming WSIS follow-up process, as I mentioned it in my earlier mail.
Best regards
Jean-Louis Fullsack. 


> Message du 27/12/05 00:11
> De : "Ralf Bendrath" 
> A : plenary at wsis-cs.org, "WSIS Privacy&Security WG" 
> Copie à : 
> Objet : Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Merry Xmas brought to you by the NSA
> 
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> _______________________________________
> 
> mclauglm at po.muohio.edu wrote:
> > FYI: Almost anything you might want to know about Echelon may be found
> > here: http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
> 
> The Report by Duncan Campbell for the European Parliament "Interception
> Capabilities 2000" that kicked off the EU Echelon debate (that in the end
> led nowhere) is available here: 
> 
> 
> The surveillance aspects of the information society have of course been 
> dealt with in the CS Privacy and Security Working Group, chaired by Karen 
> Banks and myself. But we already had a hard time to convince the 
> governments to at least mention the fundamental human right to privacy in 
> the WSIS documents. It would have been hopeless to try to make them speak 
> about Echelon and NSA surveillance, when even the European Parliament 
> could not push anybody here (and that was with much more public interest 
> and news coverage then)...
> 
> But if you look at the recently endorsed EU plans to store all Internet 
> and telephone connection data for 2 years and longer, and think about the 
> NSA's and others' datamining programmes, you can get really scared.
> More about this EU "data retention" directive: 
> http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com:81/index.php/Main_Page
> 
> Best, Ralf
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