More about the UKUSA Agreement, ECHELON and the history of domestic surveillance from James Bamford:
The issue for Europe is not whether UKUSA’s Echelon system is stealing trade secrets from foreign businesses and passing them on to competitors; it is not. The real issue is far more important: it is whether Echelon is doing away with individual privacy—a basic human right. Disembodied snippets of conversations are snatched from the ether, perhaps out of context, and may be misinterpreted by an analyst who then secretly transmits them to spy agencies and law enforcement around the world.
Unlike information on US persons, which cannot be kept longer than a year, information on foreign citizens can be held eternally.
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Unchecked, UKUSA’s worldwide eavesdropping network could become a sort of cyber secret police, without courts, juries, or the right to a defense.
It is my feeling Mr. Bamford is being intentionally vague here. It has yet to be conclusively determined whether or not Bamford actually comes out and clearly exposes the UKUSA agreement in regards to reciprocal domestic espionage as Loftus explicitly does in Secret War. It appears Bamford is merely hinting at and dancing around the issue in Body of Secrets due to access agreements with NSA ? The European Parliament investigation, however, clearly states the US routinely intercepts domestic UK and European communications. See below.
Whether NSA spies on American citizens has long been a troubling question. Its past record is shameful, not only for what the agency did but how it went about it
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The domestic watch list program took on added importance on July 1,1969, when it was granted its own charter and codeword: Minaret. “MINARET information specifically includes communications concerning individuals or organizations,” it said, “involved in civil disturbances, antiwar movements/demonstrations and Military deserters involved in the antiwar movements.” An equally important aspect of Minaret was keeping NSA’s fingerprints off the illegal operations. “Although MINARET will be handled as Sigint [signal intelligence, versus HUMINT, human intelligence] and distributed to Sigint recipients, it will not,” said the charter, “be identified with the National Security Agency.”
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Since taking office in January 1969, Richard Milhous Nixon had waged a two-front war, one in Southeast Asia against North Vietnam and the other at home against a growing army of antiwar activists.
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“Based on my review of the information which we have been receiving at the White House,” Nixon told his spy chiefs…”I am convinced that we are not currently allocating sufficient resources within the intelligence community to the collection of intelligence data on the activities of these revolutionary groups.”
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At Fort Meade, [Louis] Tordella [Deputy Director of the NSA] regarded the change of policy as “nothing less than a heaven-sent opportunity for NSA.” At last, he would be able to turn his massive parabolic antennas inward on the unwitting American public. Following submissions of an “Eyes Only” memorandum entitled “NSA Contribution to Domestic Intelligence” and signed by Gayler, Huston drew up a proposal for Nixon’s signature. It authorized NSA “to program for coverage the communications of US citizens using international facilities.” No warrant or probable cause would be required; anyone’s international telephone calls or telegrams could be intercepted and distributed.
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“…much of the information is particularly useful to the White House.”
Restrictions were also lifted on other spy agencies.
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[Attorney General John Mitchell, at the behest of J Edgar Hoover] eventually convinced Nixon to drop the program; five days after authorizing it, the president withdrew his approval.
At NSA, Tordella and Gayler were angry over Hoover’s protest and the cancellation of the Huston Plan. Nevertheless, they had been conducting domestic intelligence targeting without authorization for many years, and they saw no reason to stop just because the president had formally withdrawn his approval. In fact, the watch lists of American names flowed into NSA faster than ever.
Body of Secrets: Inside the Ultra Secret NSA by James Bamford. Pgs 427-431
Project MINARET
A sister project to Project SHAMROCK, Project MINARET involved the creation of “watch lists” by each of the intelligence agencies and the FBI of those accused of “subversive” domestic activities. The watch lists included such notables as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
After the Supreme Court handed down its 1972 Keith decision,<35> which held that -- while the President could act to protect the country from unlawful and subversive activity designed to overthrow the government -- that same power did not extend to include warrantless electronic surveillance of domestic organizations, pressure came to bear on Project MINARET.<36> Attorney General Elliot Petersen shut down Project MINARET as soon as its activities were revealed to the Justice Department, despite the fact that the FBI (an agency under the Justice Department’s authority) was actively involved with the NSA and other intelligence agencies in creating the watch lists.
Operating between 1967 and 1973, over 5,925 foreigners and 1,690 organizations and US citizens were included on the Project MINARET watch lists. Despite extensive efforts to conceal the NSA’s involvement in Project MINARET, NSA Director Lew Allen testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975 that the NSA had issued over 3,900 reports on the watch-listed Americans.<37> Additionally, the NSA Office of Security Services maintained reports on at least 75,000 Americans between 1952 and 1974. This list included the names of anyone that was mentioned in a NSA message intercept.
Political Uses of ECHELON and UKUSA
However, elected representatives have also become targets of spying by the intelligence agencies. In 1988, a former Lockheed software manager who was responsible for a dozen VAX computers that powered the ECHELON computers at Menwith Hill, Margaret Newsham, came forth with the stunning revelation that she had actually heard the NSA’s real time interception of phone conversations involving South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. Newsham was fired from Lockheed after she filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the company was engaged in flagrant waste and abuse. After a top secret meeting in April 1988 with then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Louis Stokes, Capitol Hill staffers familiar with the meeting leaked the story to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.<47> While Sen. Thurmond was reluctant to pressure for a thorough investigation into the matter, his office revealed at the time that the office had previously received reports that the Senator was a target of the NSA.<48> After the news reports an investigation into the matter discovered that there were no controls or questioning over who could enter target names into the Menwith Hill system.<49>
The NSA, under orders from the Reagan administration, also targeted Maryland Congressman Michael Barnes. Phone calls he placed to Nicaraguan officials were intercepted and recorded, including a conversation he had with the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua protesting the implementation of martial law in that country. Barnes found out about the NSA’s spying after White House officials leaked transcripts of his conversations to reporters. CIA Director William Casey, later implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, showed Barnes a Nicaraguan embassy cable that reported a meeting between embassy staff and one of Barnes’ aides. The aide had been there on a professional call regarding an international affairs issue, and Casey asked for Barnes to fire the aide. Barnes replied that it was perfectly legal and legitimate for his staff to meet with foreign diplomats.
Says Barnes, “I was aware that NSA monitored international calls, that it was a standard part of intelligence gathering. But to use it for domestic political purposes is absolutely outrageous and probably illegal.”<50> Another former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has also expressed his concerns about the NSA’s domestic targeting. “It has always worried me. What if that is used on American citizens?” queried former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini. “It is chilling. Are they listening to my private conversations on my telephone?”<51>
http://fly.hiwaay.net/%7Epspoole/echelon.html
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.
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"The section on surveillance confirms my belief that American intelligence gathering operations present a serious threat to British and European political sovereignty, civil liberties and commercial interests. Peace campaigners and civil liberties champions have not been imagining a disturbing, all-seeing presence in our midst - there is one." Bowe continues to call on the European Parliament to oppose moves by the US to make all private messages sent via the Internet accessible to the NSA.
The European Parliament Investigates ECHELON from the Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)
Signals Intelligence and Human Rights -the ECHELON report
EU investigators 'snubbed' in US (US denies existence of ECHELON)
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