European Parliament Opens Probe of Global Spying to Muted European Reaction

European reaction to the revelations has been “rather meager,” said Le Monde journalist Jacques Follorou. Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger called for wide public debate on mass surveillance but said that discussion can’t happen without the information provided by journalists. Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who published information on Prism obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, was scheduled to take part in the hearing via videoconference from Brazil but was unable to appear.

Echelon began as a system for intercepting private and commercial satellite transmissions run by the “Five Eyes” countries -- Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K and the U.S. -- whose existence was detailed in a 2001 report by a European Parliament temporary committee (http://bit.ly/14n7uT5). It’s still around, and has grown, said Duncan Campbell, an investigative journalist and author of a report to Parliament, “Interception Capabilities 2000.” But it’s only a small part of the mass surveillance taking place, he said. Now, the critical point is to get access to fiber cables, he said. One surprising development is that Sweden has joined the original five nations, and it has access to cables no other country can get, he said.

Given that Parliament proved Echelon’s existence in 2000, why was nothing done to stop it? The report was published two months before the September 11 attacks, and, out of understandable solidarity with the U.S., no one wanted to put the document on the table for discussion, said European Parliament member Carlos Coelho, of the European People’s Party and Portugal, who authored the legislative report on Echelon. Prism gives Coelho a “feeling of déjà vu,” he said. The main difference between the current situation and Echelon is the level of technology, he said.

Prism is just one of several access programs, Appelbaum said. Prism is a system in which people in organizations are complicit in helping governments intercept data, either under legislation such as the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Skype have systems inside or attached to their networks that intercept communications -- or via national security letters or similar documents that allow monitoring of any activities individuals conduct with an organization and vice versa, he said.

On another level, there are systems such as the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) program Tempora, which Appelbaum called an “upstream” program because it involves monitoring the entire Internet entering and leaving Britain. Prism and Tempora are “passive,” but there is also an “active” program, Genie, for use when intelligence services want to know what someone is up to but can’t monitor him upstream or through a business, he said. In that case, they break into computer systems via programs such as XKeystroke, he said. In addition, there is the “Five Eyes Program,” which allows varying levels of access into other countries’ surveillance databases, he said. There’s a planetary surveillance system that’s not answerable to the people, Appelbaum said. He called for better encryption through decentralized, secure communications systems.

In July, Le Monde revealed a massive system for storage of personal data in France that wasn’t subject to any judicial scrutiny, the paper’s Follorou said. In France, all technological means available for intercepting electronic signals are in the hands of the national intelligence service, not stored separately as with GCHQ and NSA, he said. For journalists, the big issue is scrutiny, he said. The French database stores information for years and it’s used not just for intelligence services operating outside France, but also by in-country intelligence agencies, he said. Many people seem to be working on the principle that data requesters are acting lawfully, but there’s that parallel system with no scrutiny, he said. There’s also no national entity authorized to approve intercepts of metadata, he said.

The July revelations emerged to little reaction, Follorou said. In a country like France, a strongly centralized state, people don’t find it strange for the government to carry out such activities, he said. The public is more focused on the technological means of interception than on legal or privacy concerns, he said. Parliament members appear to believe that those intercepting information are merely defenders of the republic, he said. Every country reacts in its own way, but in Europe the reaction to the spying scandal has been “rather meager,” he said. If France stepped up to the plate and put pressure on the U.S., Washington might respond more robustly, he said.

Placing entire populations under some form of surveillance is new, hasn’t been debated properly, and won’t be until the information is publicly available to sustain the debate, said Rusbridger, who said The Guardian will have “enormous legal bills” arising from publishing Snowden’s leaked materials. Old-world espionage was state-on-state, and involved a targeted activity with targeted techniques, he said. In the last 10-15 years, it has become a partnership of states and corporations that the world is just beginning to glimpse from the Snowden documents, he said. Anyone who uses digital equipment is put under surveillance, and such spying shouldn’t happen without consent, which isn’t possible without the relevant information, he said. It’s up to lawmakers in all countries in the free world to consider the balance between security and privacy and how to maintain oversight of spy systems, he said.

The LIBE report on the mass surveillance of EU citizens could see a committee vote at the end of December and plenary action in January, committee chairman Juan Fernando López Aguilar, of the Socialists and Democrats and Spain, said.