DIPLOMACY BY DECEPTION
12 -
Notes on Surveillance
The United States and Britain work very closely to spy on their
citizens and on foreign governments. This applies to all traffic:
commercial, diplomatic and private communications. Nothing is sacred
and nothing is beyond the reach of the National Security Agency (NSA)
and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who are in a
joint partnership to illegally monitor telephone, telex, fax,
computer and voice transmissions on a massive scale.
These two agencies have the expertise to eavesdrop on anyone at any
time. Every day 1 million communications are picked up by GCHQ
listening posts in Menwith Hill in Yorkshire and Morwenstow,
Cornwall, in England. These stations are run by the NSA in order to
get around British laws that forbid national security snooping on
its citizens. Technically, GCHQ is not breaking British law as the
interceptions are carried out by the NSA.
The GCHQ/NSA computers look for trigger words which are flagged and
stored. This is a simple procedure, given the fact that all
communications come through as digital pulses. This applies to the
written and spoken word alike. Then, the flagged messages are
analyzed, and if there is anything that interests these agencies,
further investigations are launched. The fact that the entire
operation is illegal, does not stop either agency from their
self-appointed task.
The NSA's "HARVEST" computers can read 460 million characters a
second, or the equivalent of 5000-300-page books. Presently it is
estimated by intelligence sources that the "HARVEST" computers used
by GCHQ and NSA intercept more that 80 million calls per year, of
which 2.5 million are flagged and stored for additional scrutiny.
The two agencies have a large staff of specialists who scour the
world, finding and evaluating new products that could be used to
safeguard individual privacy, which they then find ways and means to
breakdown.
A big challenge came with the advent of cellular phones. At present
cellular phone traffic is "tapped" by listening to cell signals
(which are designed for billing purposes) and the various cell codes
which have their own identification, are backtracked so that the
origin of the call can be traced. But the new generation A5 cellular
phones pose a serious problem for government snooping.
These new phones have an A5 scrambling code which is very closely
related to military scrambling systems, which makes it virtually
impossible for government agencies to decipher messages and to trace
the origin of the call. At present it would take surveillance teams
at GCHQ and the NSA 5 months to unscramble messages transmitted via
A5 cellular phones.
The government say this will seriously hamper its efforts to fight
the drug trade and organized crime, a lame old excuse that few
people accept. Nothing is said about the fact that in the course of
such anticrime measures, the rights of citizens to privacy are
grossly violated.
Now the NSA, the FBI and GCHQ are demanding that cellular phones
with the existing A5 scrambler be recalled for "modifications."
Although they do not say so, government needs to have the same
accessibility to private transmissions that it has had up to the
advent of the A5 scrambler system. So, government agencies in
Britain and America are demanding that the A5 cellular scrambler
system be replaced with an A5X system, giving them a "trapdoor" into
formerly secure cellular phones.
Phone calls by landline (local calls) are easily intercepted by
being "switched " to a clearing house run by the NSA and GCHQ. Long
distance calls do not present a problem, as they are generally
relayed by microwave towers and can readily be plucked out of the
air.
In addition, the NSA also has its
RHYOLITE satellites which
have the capability to pick up every conversation being transmitted
by telex, microwave, radiotronic wave, VHF and or UHF signals.
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