How Secure are your Business Communications?

A three-part look at who is reading your mail and listening to your calls.

Part 1

Over the last few years, much publicity has been given to hackers, whose illegal entry to accounts has sometimes caused damage and loss. It is possible to secure sites against such occasional intrusion and once hackers are caught, in some countries the penalties can be severe.

There is far more offensive (and illegal) surveillance being carried out using a system developed in the Cold War by the security services of nations outside Thailand. This continual monitoring impinges on personal and business communications in Thailand: not only of e-mail but telephone and fax communications too.

Plans, initially put forward by the FBI but enthusiastically taken up by European law enforcement agencies, may also ensure that digital telephony--phone sets and networks--include chips that allow police to monitor and track users.

Since the mid-1980s, information has been available about the surveillance system called Echelon, run jointly by the security services of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, under an agreement known as UKUSA. The system allows these nations to monitor and select for analysis telephone, fax and e-mail communications. Much of the e-mail (and e-commerce) generated in Thailand is subject to monitoring by Echelon.

The sheer volume of such messaging means that it is impossible to monitor messages individually, so Echelon uses the power of computers, and a concept called a "dictionary" to search thousands of messages a time for key words and phrases; or for names (sender or recipient) or other parameter that may be chosen by the security service involved. As there are five nations, there are five dictionaries--each with its own selection parameters. A message identified as having content of possible significance may be analysed in detail.

Although there has been some information about Echelon available for several years, investigations in New Zealand were among the first to reveal the breadth of surveillance. Journalists there managed to film inside the station at Waihopai. They found that the whole operation was automatic.

The New Zealand station, along with Yakima in Washington state monitors cross-Pacific satellite traffic; Sugar Grove in Virginia, along with Morwenstow in Britain monitors the Atlantic region; Geraldston in Australia monitors traffic in the South Asia region as well as cross-Pacific communications by satellite; Shoal Bay near Darwin monitors the South-east Asia region. Thus most of Thailand's communications will be monitored by the Australian stations.

The stations monitor satellites which are in geostationary orbit above the equator--they appear to be fixed in one point above the earth. It is less easy for them to monitor the 16 satellites in the Iridium system. These move relative to the Earth. A number of sources, including Australia's Channel Nine, on which the head of Australia's Intelligence and Security, Bill Blick was interviewed, revealed that much of the information extracted from the messaging is sent direct to the United States without any local supervision. Duncan Campbell, writing in The Age puts the figure at 80% for messages intercepted at the Australian station near Geraldton. These are sent directly to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or NSA (National Security Agency), without ever being seen or read in Australia."

Not all telephone communication is by satellite. Undersea cable has also been compromised. The United States has converted submarines and equipped them with the technology to attach special listening pods to the cables. Communications thus gathered are similarly run through the Echelon dictionaries. Not only are the cables insecure, but so are the microwave links that feed them and transfer telephone communications around the country. Although the United States has kept tight-lipped about the whole system and denies that there is any abuse, the nature of recent, and more public, disclosures has ensured that more questions are being asked. Among those querying the use of Echelon is Senator Barr of Georgia in the discussion on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000--the annual rubber stamp-- held on May 13 this year.

In introducing an amendment specifically related to the use of Echelon and the information it provided, Mr Barr spoke of "efforts by the intelligence community to deny proper information" to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and to allow them to carry out their "meaningful oversight responsibilities."

Senator Barr, in tabling the amendment that would require the security forces to report to the House, was only concerned, however, with the surveillance conducted on American citizens, especially if that were conducted by one of the other members of the UKUSA group. His concern, while praiseworthy, failed to touch any of the surveillance that those five nations carry out on each other. Nor did it take any note of the illicit surveillance carried out on countries that are not members of the alliance.

For further information, e-mail to Graham K. Rogers.