[Paleopsych] Omega Foundation: An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control
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An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control
http://www.nrc.nl/W2/Lab/Echelon/stoa2sept1998.html#1
[Thanks to Laird for this. Note the date. But remember that Michel Foucault,
who died in 1984, was already predicting the coming of the surveillance
society. Can anyone report on how far technology has advanced since 1998? The
website is in Dutch, and I can't evaluate it for its sanity. But the report,
whether written by site members or not, seems sober.
[Dossier Codenaam Echelon is given as the header of the document, whatever that
means.]
An Omega Foundation Summary & Options Report For The European Parliament
SEPTEMBER 1998
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. THE ROLE & FUNCTION OF POLITICAL CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES
3. RECENT TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
* 3.1 POLICY OPTIONS
4. INNOVATIONS IN CROWD CONTROL WEAPONS
* 4.1 POLICY OPTIONS
5. NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS
* 5.1 POLICY OPTIONS
6. INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES & TECHNOLOGIES
* 6.1 POLICY OPTIONS
7. DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY
* 7.1 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance Networks
* 7.2 Algorithmic Surveilance Sysytems
* 7.3 Bugging & Tapping Devices
* 7.4 National & International Communications Interceptions Networks
7.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
7.4.2 EU-FBI GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
7.5 Policy Options
8. REGULATION OF HORIZONTAL PROLIFERATION
* 8.1 POLICY OPTIONS
9. CONCLUSIONS
Annex 1 Bibliography
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL
A SUMMARY & OPTIONS REPORT
This report represents a summarised version of an interim study, 'An
Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control' (PE 166.499),
(referred to throughout this document as the Interim Report), prepared
by the Omega Foundation in Manchester and presented to the STOA Panel
at its meeting of 18 December 1997 and to the Committee on Civil
Liberties and Internal Affairs on 27 January 1998.
The Interim Report aroused great interest and the resultant
high-profile press comment throughout the European Union and beyond,
indicates the level of public concern about many of the innovations
detailed by the study. This current report is framed by the same key
objectives as the Interim Report
, namely:-
(i) To provide Members of the European Parliament with a succinct
reference guide to recent advances in the technology of political
control;
(ii) To identify and describe the current state of the art of the
most salient developments, further clarifying and updating the
areas of the interim report which have aroused the greatest public
concern and comment;
(iii) To present MEP's with an account of current trends both
within Europe and Worldwide;
(iv) To suggest policy options covering regulatory strategies for
the future democratic control and management of this technology;
(v) To provide some further succinct background material to inform
the Parliament's response to the proposed declaration by the
Commission on electronic evesdropping which has been put on the
agenda for the plenary session of the European Parliament, on
Wednesday 16 September 1998.
This report also has seven substantive sections covering (a) the role
and function of the technologies of political control; (b)recent
trends and innovations; (c)crowd control weapons; (d)new prisoner
control technology; (e) new interrogation and torture technologies;
(f)developments in surveillance technology (including the creation of
human recognition and tracking devices and the evolution of new global
police and military telecommunications interceptions networks; (g)the
implications of vertical and horizontal proliferation of this
technology and the need for an adequate EU response, to ensure it
neither threatens civil liberties in Europe, nor reaches the hands of
tyrants.
Thus, the purpose of this report is to explore the most recent
developments in the technology of political control and the major
consequences associated with their integration into processes and
strategies of policing and internal control. The report ends each
section with a series of policy options which might facilitate more
democratic, open and efficient regulatory control, including specific
areas where further research is needed to make such regulatory
controls effective.
A brief look at the historical development of this concept is
instructive. Twenty years ago, the British Society for Social
Responsibility of Scientists (BSSRS) warned about the dangers of a new
technology of political control. BSSRS defined this technology as "a
new type of weaponry"..."It is the product of the application of
science and technology to the problem of neutralising the state's
internal enemies. It is mainly directed at civilian populations, and
is not intended to kill (and only rarely does). It is aimed as much at
hearts and minds as at bodies." For these scientists, "This new
weaponry ranges from means of monitoring internal dissent to devices
for controlling demonstrations; from new techniques of interrogation
to methods of prisoner control. The intended and actual effects of
these new technological aids are both broader and more complex than
the more lethal weaponry they complement."
BSSRS recognised that the weapons and systems developed and tested by
the USA in Vietnam, and by the UK in its former colonies, were about
to be used on the home front and that the military industrial complex
would in the future, rapidly modify its military systems for police
and internal security use. In other words, a new technology of
repression was being spawned which would find a political niche in
Western Liberal democracies. The role of this technology was to
provide a technical fix which might effectively crush dissent whilst
being designed to mask the level of coercion being deployed. With the
advent of the Northern Irish conflict, the genie was out of the bottle
and a new laboratory for field testing these technologies had emerged.
There have been quite awesome changes in the technologies available to
states for internal control since the first BSSRS publication. Some of
these technologies are highly sensitive politically and without proper
regulation can threaten or undermine many of the human rights
enshrined in international law, such as the rights of assembly,
privacy, due process, freedom of political and cultural expression and
protection from torture, arbitrary arrest, cruel and inhumane
punishments and extra-judicial execution.
Proper oversight of developments in political control technologies is
further complicated by the phenomena of 'bureaucratic capture' where
senior officials control their ministers rather than the other way
round. Politicians both at European and sovereign state level, whom
citizens of the community have presumed will be monitoring any
excesses or abuse of this technology on their behalf, are sometimes
systematically denied the information they require to do that job.
2. THE ROLE & FUNCTION OF POLITICAL CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES
Throughout the Nineties, many governments have spent huge sums on the
research, development, procurement and deployment of new technology
for their police, para-military and internal security forces. The
objective of this development work has been to increase and enhance
each agency's policing capacities. A dominant assumption behind this
technocratisation of the policing process, is the belief that it has
created both a faster policing response time and a greater
cost-effectiveness. The main aim of all this effort has been to save
policing resources by either automating certain forms of control,
amplifying the rate of particular activities, or decreasing the number
of officers required to perform them.
The resultant innovations in the technology of political control have
been functionally designed to yield an extension of the scope,
efficiency and growth of policing power. The extent to which this
process can be judged to be a legitimate one depends both on one's
point of view and the level of secrecy and accountability built into
the overall procurement and deployment procedures. The full
implications of such developments may take time to assess. It is
argued that one impact of this process is the militarisation of the
police and the para-militarisation of the army as their roles,
equipment and procedures begin to overlap. This phenomena is seen as
having far reaching consequences on the way that future episodes of
sub-state violence is handled, and influencing whether those involved
are reconciled, managed, repressed, 'lost' or efficiently destroyed.
What is emerging in certain quarters is a chilling picture of ongoing
innovation in the science and technology of social and political
control, including: semi-intelligent zone-denial systems using neural
networks which can identify and potentially punish unsanctioned
behaviour; the advent of global telecommunications surveillance
systems using voice recognition and other biometric techniques to
facilitate human tracking; data-veillance systems which can match
computer held data to visual recognition systems or identify
friendship maps simply by analysing the telephone and email links
between who calls whom; new sub-lethal incapacitating weapons used
both for prison and riot control as well as in sub-state conflict
operations other than war; new target acquisition aids, lethal weapons
and expanding dum-dum like ammunition which although banned by the
Geneva conventions for use against other state's soldiers, is finding
increasing popularity amongst SWAT and special forces teams; discreet
order vehicles designed to look like ambulances on prime time
television but which can deploy a formidable array of weaponry to
provide a show of force in countries like Indonesia or Turkey, or
spray harassing chemicals or dye onto protestors. Such marking appears
to be kid-glove lin its restraint but tags all protestors so that the
snatch squads can arrest them later, out of the prying lenses of CNN.
Whilst there are many opposing schools of thought on why these changes
are happening now, few doubt that there are fundamental changes taking
place in the types of tactics, techniques and technologies available
to internal security agencies for policing purposes. Yet many
questions remain unanswered, unconsidered or under-researched. Why for
example, did such a transformation in the technology used for
-political control dramatically change over the last twenty five
years? Is there any significance in the fact that former communist
regimes in the Warsaw Treaty Organisation and continuing centralised
economic systems such as China, are beginning to adopt such
technologies? What are the reasons behind a global convergence of the
technology of political control deployed in the North and South, the
East and West?
What are the factors responsible for generating the adoption of such
new policing technology - was it technology push or demand pull? What
new tools for policing lie on the horizon and what are the dynamics
behind the process of innovation and the need for a vast arsenal of
different kinds of technology rather than just a few? Are the many
ways this technology affects the policing process fully understood?
Who controls the patterns of police technology procurement and what
are the corporate influences?
The technology of political control produces a continuum of flexible
options which stretch from modern law enforcement to advanced state
suppression. It is multi-functional and has led to a rapid extension
of the scope, efficiency and growth of policing power, creating
policing revolutions both with Europe, the US and the rest of the
world. The key difference being the level of democratic accountability
in the manner in which the technology is applied. Yet because of a
process of technological and decision drift these instruments of
control, once deployed quickly become 'normalised.' Their secondary
and unanticipated effects often lead to a paramilitarisation of the
security forces and a militarisation of the police - often because the
companies which produce them service both markets.
3. RECENT TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
Since the 'Technology of Political Control' was first written (Ackroyd
et al.,1977) there has been a profusion of technological innovations
for police, paramilitary, intelligence and internal security forces.
Many of these are simple advances on the technologies available in the
1970's. Others such as automatic telephone tapping, voice recognition
and electronic tagging were not envisaged by the original BSSRS
authors since they did not think that the computing power needed for a
national monitoring system was feasible. The overall drift of this
technology is to increase the power and reliability of the policing
process, either enhancing the individual power of police operatives,
replacing personnel with less expensive machines to monitor activity
or to automate certain police monitoring, detection and communication
facilities completely. A massive Police Industrial Complex has been
spawned to service the needs of police, paramilitary and security
forces, evidenced by the number of companies now active in the
market.. An overall trend is towards globalisation of these
technologies and a drift towards increasing proliferation.
One core trend has been towards a militarisation of the police and a
paramilitarisation of military forces in Europe. In some European
countries, that trend is reversed,e.g. in 1996, the Swiss government
(Federal Council and the Military Department) made plans to re-equip
the Swiss Army Ordungsdienst with 118 million Swiss Francs of
less-lethal weapons for action within the country in times of crisis.
(These include 12 tanks, armoured vehicles, teargas, rubber shot and
handcuffs). The decision was made by decree preventing any discussion
or intervention. Their role will be to help police large scale
demonstrations or riots and to police frontiers to 'prevent streams of
refugees coming into Switzerland'.
There has also been an increasing trend towards convergence - the
process whereby the technology used by police and the military for
internal security operations, converges towards being more or less
indistinguishable. The term also describes the trend towards a
universal adoption of similar types of technologies by most states for
internal security and policing. Security companies now produce weapons
and communications systems for both military and the police. Such
systems increasingly represent the muscle and the nervous system of
public order squads. Given the potential civil liberties and human
rights implications associated with certain technologies of political
control, there is a pressing need to avoid the risks of such
technologies developing faster than any regulating legislation.
MEP'smay wish to consider how best it should develop appropriate
structures of accountability to prevent undesirable innovations
emerging via processes of technological creep or decision drift.
Towards that end, members of the European Parliament may wish to
consider the following policy options:-
3.1 POLICY OPTIONS
(i) Accepting the principle that the process of innovation of new
systems for use in internal social and political control should be
transparent, (i.e. open to appropriate public and parliamentary
scrutiny and be subject to change should unwanted and unanticipated
consequences emerge;
(ii) Give consideration to what committee and procedural changes might
be needed to ensure that Members of the European Parliament are
adequately informed on issues relating to technologies of political
control and can effectively act should the need arise;
(iii) Consider if there is a need to amend the terms of reference of
the Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs Committee to include powers
and responsibilities for matters relating to for example, the civil
liberties and human rights implications of developments in political
control technologies such as:(a) new crowd and prison control weapons
and technologies, lethal and less lethal weapons and ammunition;
(b)developments in surveillance technologies such as data-veillance,
electronic eavesdropping, CCTV, human recognition and tracking
systems; (c) private prisons and related equipment and training;; (d)
torture and interrogation of detainees; (e) any class of technology
which has been shown in the past to be excessively injurious, cruel,
inhumane or indiscriminate in its effects.
4. INNOVATIONS IN CROWD CONTROL WEAPONS
The Interim Report critically evaluated the so called safety of these
allegedly 'harmless crowd control weapons.
Using earlier US military data and empirical data on the kinetic
energy of all the commonly available kinetic weapons such as plastic
bullets, it found that much of the biomedical research legitimating
the introduction of current crowd control weapons is badly flawed. All
the commonly available plastic bullet ammunition used in Europe
breaches the severe damage zone of kinetic energy used to assess such
weapons by the US military scientists. (Over 100,000 plastic bullets
were withdrawn in the UK in 1996 for possessing excessive kinetic
energy but according to this report their replacements are still
excessively injurious). The price of protest should not be death, yet
given that these weapons are frequently used against bystanders in
zone clearance operations, this aspect is particularly important.
Likewise there is a need to consider halting the use of peppergas in
Europe until independent evaluation of its biomedical effects is
undertaken. Special Agent Ward the FBI officer who cleared OC in the
USA was found to have taken a $57,000 kickback to give it the OK.
Other US military scientists warned of dangerous side effects
including neurotoxicity and a recent estimate by the International
Association of Chief Police Officers suggested at least 113 peppergas
linked fatalities in the US - predominantly from positional asphyxia.
Amnesty International has said that the use of pepper spray by
Californian police against peaceful environmental activists, is
'cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of such deliberateness and
severity that it is tantamount to torture." (Police deputies pulled
back protestors heads, opened their eyes and "swabbed" the burning
liquid directly on to their eyeballs).
Sometimes when technologies are transferred, their characteristics
also change. For example CS Sprays authorised for use by the police in
the UK from 1996 were five times the concentration of similar MACE
products in the US and have dispersion rates which are five times
faster. This means that they dump twenty five times as much irritant
on a targets face as do US products yet were justified as being the
same. In practice this meant that one former Metropolitan police
instructor Peter Hodgkinson lost between 40-50% of his corneas after
he volunteered to be sprayed at the beginning of trails. Most police
forces in the UK have now adopted the spray which was authorised
before findings on its alleged safety were published.
In the early Nineties, much to the disbelief of serious researchers, a
new doctrine emerged in the US - non-lethal warfare. Its advocates
were predominantly science fiction writers such as (Toffler A., &
Toffler,H., 1994) and (Morris,J., & Morris,C., 1990,1994), who found a
willing ear in the nuclear weapons laboratories of Los Alamos, Oak
Ridge and Lawrence Livermore. The cynics were quick to point out that
non-lethal warfare was a contradiction in terms and that this was
really a 'rice-bowls' initiative, dreamt up to protect jobs in
beleaguered weapons laboratories facing the challenge of life without
the cold war.
This naive doctrine found a champion in Col. John Alexander (who made
his name in the rather more lethal Phoenix assassination programmes of
the Vietnam War) and subsequently picked up by the US Defence and
Justice Departments. After the controversial and overly public beating
of Rodney King (who was subdued by 'an electro-shock 'taser' before
being attacked); the excessive firepower deployed by all sides in the
Waco debacle (where the police used chemical agents which failed to
end the siege); and the humiliations of the US military missions in
Somalia - America was in search of a magic bullet which would somehow
allow the powers of good to prevail without anyone being hurt. Yet US
doctrine in practice was not that simple, it was not to replace lethal
weapons with 'non-lethal' alternatives but to augment the use of
deadly force, in both war and 'operations other than war', where the
main targets include civilians. A dubious pandora's box of new weapons
has emerged, designed to appear rather than be safe. Because of the
'CNN factor' they need to be media friendly, more a case of invisible
weapons than war without blood. America now has an integrated product
team consisting of the US Marines, US Airforce, US Special Operations
Command, US Army, US Navy, DOT, DOJ, DOE, Joint Staff, and CINCS
Office of SecDef. Bridgeheads for this technology are already emerging
since one of the roles of this team is to liaise with friendly foreign
governments.
Last year, the interim report advised that the Commission should be
requested to report on the existence of formal liaison arrangements
with the US, for introducing advanced non-lethal weapons into the EU.
The urgency of this advice was highlighted in November 1997 for
example, when a special conference on the 'Future of Non-Lethal
Weapons', was held in London. A flavour of what was on offer was
provided by Ms Hildi Libby, systems manager of the US Army's
Non-lethal Material Programme.
Ms Libby described the M203 Anti-personnel blunt trauma crowd
dispersal grenade, which hurtles a large number of small "stinging"
rubber balls at rioters. The US team also promoted acoustic wave
weapons that used 'mechanical pressure wave generation' to 'provide
the war fighter with a weapon capable of delivering incapacitating
effects, from lethal to non-lethal'; the non-lethal Claymore mine - a
crowd control version of the more lethal M18A1; ground vehicle
stoppers; the M139 Volcano mine which projects a net (that can cover a
football sized field) laced with either razor blades or other
'immobilisation enhancers' - adhesive or sting; canister launched area
denial systems; sticky foam; vortex ring guns - to apply vortex ring
gas impulses with flash, concussion and the option of quickly changing
between lethal and non-lethal operations; and the underbarrel tactical
payload delivery system - essentially an M16 which shoots either
bullets, disabling chemicals, kinetic munitions or marker dye.
One of the unanticipated consequences of these weapons is that they
offer a flexible response which can potentially undermine non-violent
direct action. Used to inflict instant gratuitous punishment, their
flexibility means that if official violence does tempt demonstrators
to fight back, the weapons are often just a switch away from street
level executions.
At their last conference in Lillehammer, the Nobel Peace Prize winning
organisation Pugwash came to the conclusion that the term 'non-lethal
should be abandoned, not only because it covers a variety of very
different weapons but also because it can be dangerously misleading.
"In combat situations, 'sub-lethal' weapons are likely to be used in
co-ordination with other weapons and could increase overall lethality.
Weapons purportedly developed for conventional military or
peacekeeping use are also likely to be used in civil wars or for
oppression by brutal governments."
Weapons developed for police use may encourage the militarisation of
police forces or be used for torture. If a generic term is needed
'less-lethal or pre-lethal weapons might be preferable." Such
misgivings are certainly borne out by recent developments. US expert
Bill Arkin has warned that the new generation of acoustic weapons can
rupture organs, create cavities in human tissue and produce shockwaves
of 170 decibels and potentially lethal blastwave trauma. Pugwash
considered that "each of the emerging 'less-lethal weapons
technologies required urgent examination and that their development or
adoption should be subject to public review.' Informed by principle 3
and 4 of the United Nations Basic Principles on The Use of Force &
Firearms , MEP's may wish to consider the following options:-
4.1 POLICY OPTIONS
(i) Reaffirm the European Parliamentary demand of May 1982, for a ban
on the use of plastic bullets;
(ii) Establish objective criteria for assessing the biomedical effects
of so called non-lethal weapons that are independent from commercial
or governmental research;
(iii) Seek confirmation from the Commission that: Member States are
fully aware of their responsibilities under Principles 3 and 4 of the
United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force & Firearms by Law
Enforcement Officials and to ask for clarification of exactly what
steps individual Member States are taking to ensure that these are
fully met, given the power of "less-lethal weapons" changes and
whether consistent standards apply;
(iv) Request the Commission to report on the existing liaison
arrangements for the second generation of non-lethal weapons to enter
European Union from the USA and call for an independent report on
their alleged safety as well as their intended and unforseen social
and political effects.
(v) During the interim period, consider restricting the deployment by
the police, the military or paramilitary special forces, of US made or
licensed 2nd. generation chemical irritant, kinetic, acoustic, laser,
electromagnetic frequency, capture, entanglement, injector or
electrical disabling and paralysing weapons, within Europe.
(vi). Establish the following principles across all EU Member States:
(a) Research on chemical irritants should be published in open
scientific journals before authorization for any usage is
permitted and that the safety criteria for such chemicals should
be treated as if they were drugs rather than riot control agents;
(b) Research on the alleged safety of existing crowd control
weapons and of all future innovations in crowd control weapons
should be placed in the public domain prior to any decision
towards deployment.
(c) that deployment of OC (peppergas) should be halted across the
EU until independent non-FBI funded research has evaluated any
risks it poses to health.
5. NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS
Some of the equipment described above, such as the surveillance, area
denial and crowd control technologies, also finds ready use inside
permanent prisons and houses of correction. Other devices such as the
area denial, perimeter fencing systems, portable coils of razor wire,
prison transport vehicles with mini cage cells, to create temporary
holding centres. Permanent prisons are however, literally custom built
control environments, where every act and thing, including the
architecture, the behaviour of the prison officers and daily routines,
are functionally organised with that purpose in mind. Therefore many
of the technologies discussed above are built in to the prison
structure and integral to policing systems used to contain their
inmates. For example, area denial technology, intruder detection
equipment and surveillance devices are instrumental in hermetically
sealing high security prisons. If disturbances develop within a
prison, the riot technologies and tactics outlined above, are also
available for use by prison officers. The trend has been to train
specialized MUFTI (Minimum Force Tactical Intervention) squads for
this purpose. Outside Europe, irritant gas has been used not only to
crush revolt but also to punish political detainees or to eject
reticent prisoners from their cells before execution. The Interim
Report describes prison restraint techniques using straitjackets, body
belts, leg shackles, padded cells and isolation units, some of which
infringe the European Convention against Torture.
Apart from mechanical restraint, prison authorities have access to
pharmacological approaches for immobilising inmates, colloquially
known as 'the liquid cosh.' These vary from psychotropic drugs such as
anti-depressants, sedatives and powerful hypnotics. Drugs like
largactil or Seranace offer a chemical strait-jacket and their usage
is becoming increasingly controversial as prison populations rise and
larger numbers of inmates are 'treated'. In the USA, the trend is for
punishment to become therapy: 'behaviour modification' - Pavlovian
reward and punishment routines using drugs like anectine, producing
fear or pain, to recondition behaviour. The possibilities of testing
new social control drugs are extensive, whilst controls are few.
Prisons form the new laboratories developing the next generation of
drugs for social reprogramming, whilst military and university
laboratories provide scores of new psychoactive drugs each year.
Critics such as Lilly & Knepper (1992, 186-7) argue that in examining
the international aspects of crime control as industry, more attention
is needed to the changing activities of the companies which used to
provide supplies to the military. At the end of the cold war, "with
defence contractors reporting declines in sales, the search for new
markets is pushing corporate decision making, it should be no surprise
to see increased corporate activity in criminal justice." Where such
companies previously profited from wars with foreign enemies, they are
increasingly turning to the new opportunities afforded by crime
control as industry.(Christie, 1994).
Several European countries are now experiencing a rapid process of
privatisation of prisons by corporate conglomerations, predominantly
from the USA. Some of the prisons run by these organisations in the US
have cultures and control techniques which are alien to European
traditions. Such a process of privatisation can lead to a bridgehead
for importing U.S. corrections mentality, methods and technologies
into Europe and there is a pressing need to ensure a consensus on what
constitutes acceptable practice. There is a further danger that such
privatisation will lead to cost cutting practices of human
warehousing, rather than the more long term beneficial practice of
prisoner rehabilitation.
In some European countries, particularly Britain, where changes in
penal policy are leading to a rapid rise in prison population without
additional resources being applied to the sector, the imperative is to
cut costs either through using technology or by privatising prisons.
Already, the UK Prison Service has compiled a shopping list of
computer based options with existing CCTV surveillance systems being
complemented by geophones, identity recognition technology and forward
looking infra-red systems which can spot weapons and drugs.. Alongside
such proactive technologies, UK prisons will face increasing pressure
to tool up for trouble. Much this weaponry including the contract for
between £950,000 and £2,500,000 of side handled batons, kubotans, riot
shields etc. made by the Prison Service in March 1995, are likely to
be originally manufactured in the United States.
The U.S.A adopts a far more militarised prison regime than anywhere in
Europe outside of Northern Ireland. A massive prison industrial
complex has mushroomed to maintain the strict control regimes that
typify American Houses of Correction. The future prospect is of that
alien technology coming here, with very little in the way of public or
parliamentary debate. A few examples of US prison technologies and
proliferation illustrate the dangers.
Many prisons in the U.S, use Nova electronic 50,000 volt extraction
shields, electronic stun prods and most recently the REACT remote
controlled stun belts. In 1994, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons
decided to use remote-controlled stun belts on prisoners considered
dangerous to prevent them from escaping during transportation and
court appearances. By May 1996, the Wisconsin Department of
Corrections said that no longer will inmates be chained together "but
will be restrained by the use of stun belts and individual
restraints."
Promotional literature from US company Stun Tech of Cleveland, Ohio,
claims that its high pulse stun belt can be activated from 300 feet.
After a warning noise, the Remote Electronically Activated Control
Technology (REACT) belt inflicts a 50,000 volt shock for 8 seconds.
This high pulsed current enters the prisoners left kidney region then
enters the body of the victim along blood channels and nerve pathways.
Each pulse results in a rapid body shock extending to the whole of the
brain and central nervous system. The makers promote the belt 'for
total psychological supremacy..of potentially troublesome prisoners.'
Stunned prisoners lose control of the bladders and bowels. 'After all,
if you were wearing the contraption around your waist that by the mere
push of a button in someone's hand, could make you defecate or urinate
yourself, what would you do from the psychological standpoint?"
Amnesty International wants Washington to ban the belts because they
can be used to torture, and calls them, 'cruel,inhuman and degrading.
"Some officials say the belts can save money because fewer guards
would be needed. But human rights activists and some jailers oppose
them as the most degrading new measure in an increasingly barbaric
field." (Kilborn,1997) Already, some European countries are in the
process of evaluating stunbelt systems for use here.(Marks, 1996)
Without proper licensing and a clear consensus on what is expected
from private prisons in Europe, multinational private prison
conglomerations could act as a bridgehead for similar sorts of
technology to further enter the European crime control industry.
Proper limits need to be set when a licence is granted with a
comprehensive account taken of that company's past track record in
terms of civil liberties, rehabilitation and crisis management rather
than just cost per prisoner held. Amnesty International in the USA is
currently asking the large multi-national prison corporations to sign
up to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and a similar
approach with associated contractual obligations, might prove to be a
useful way forward here in Europe. Members of the European Parliament
may wish to consider the following options:-
5.1 POLICY OPTIONS
(i) To let commercial requirements to make profits from prisoners
become the primary criterion in running Europe's private jails;
(ii). Further examine the use of kill fencing and lethal area denial
systems in all prisons within the European Union, whether private or
public, with a view to their prohibition;
(iii) That the European Parliament establish a rigorous independent
and impartial inquiry into the use of stun belts, stunguns and shields
, and all other types and variants of electro-shock weapons in Member
States, to assess their medical and other effects in terms of
international human rights standards regulating the treatment of
prisoners and the use of force; the inquiry should examine all known
cases of deaths or injury resulting from the use of these instruments,
and the results of the inquiry should be published without delay
(iv) That the European Commission be asked to:-
(a). Ensure that the UN Minimum treatment of prisoners rules banning
the use of leg irons on prisoners are implemented in all EU
correctional facilities.
(b). Implement a ban on the introduction of in-built gassing
systems inside European gaols on the basis of the manufacturers
warnings of the dangers of using chemical riot control agents in
enclosed spaces. Restrictions should also be made on the use of
chemical irritants from whatever source in correctional facilities
wherever research has shown that a concentration of that irritant
could either kill or be associated with permanent damage to
health.
(c). Explore legal mechanisms to ensure that all private prison
operations within the European Union should be subject to a common
and consistent licensing regime by the host member. If adopted, no
licence should be granted where proven human rights violations by
that contractor have been made elsewhere. Consideration might be
given to providing a contract mechanism whereby any failure to
secure a licence in one European state should debar that private
prison contractor from bidding for other European contracts
(pending evidence of adequate human rights training and
appropriate improvements in standard operating procedures and
controls by that corporation or company).
(v). Seek agreement between all Member States to ensure that:
(a) All riot control, prisoner transport and extraction technology
which is in use or proposed for use in all prisons, (whether state
or privately run), should be subject to prior approval by the
competent member authorities on the basis of independent research;
(b) Automated systems of indiscriminate punishment such as built in
baton round firing mechanisms, should be prohibited.
(c). The use of electro-shock restraining devices or other remote
control punishment devices including shock- shields should be
immediately suspended in any private or public prison in the
European Union, until and unless independent medical evidence can
clearly demonstrate that their use will not contribute to deaths
in custody, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment.
6. INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES & TECHNOLOGIES
The Interim Report on the variety of hardware, software and liveware
involved in human interrogation and torture.
Millennia of research and development have been expended in devising
ever more cruel and inhumane means of extracting obedience and
information from reluctant victims or achieving excruciatingly painful
and long-drawn-out deaths for those who would question or challenge
the prevalent status quo. What has changed in more recent times is (i)
the increasing requirement for speed in breaking down prisoners'
resistance; (ii) the adoption of sophisticated methods based on a
scientific approach and (iii) a need for invisible torture which
leaves no or few marks which might be used by organisations like
Amnesty International to label a particular government, a torturing
state. Today, the phenomena of torture has grown to a worldwide
epidemic. A report by the Redress Trust, 1996, found that 151
countries were involved in torture, inhuman or degrading treatment,
despite the fact that 106 states have ratified, acceded to or signed
the Convention Against Torture.
Helen Bamber, Director of the British Medical Foundation for the
Treatment of the Victims of Torture, has described electroshock batons
at 'the most universal modern tool of the torturers' (Gregory,1995)
Recent surveys of torture victims have confirmed that after systematic
beating, electroshock is one of the most common factors (London,
1993); Rasmussen, 1990). If one looks at the country reports of
Amnesty International, (which recently published a survey of fifty
countries where electric shock torture and ill treatment has been
recorded since 1990), confirm that electroshock torture is the
Esperanto of the most repressive states. Since publication of the
Interim Report, one news story has uncovered evidence suggesting that
Taiwan made electroshock weapons are being sold with the EC "mark of
quality", despite the resolution passed by the European Parliament
seeking a ban on such devices. There is an urgent need to establish
whether this is a bogus claim or whether there really are people in
the Commission building whose job is to make sure the electro-shock
weapons produced by foreign manufacturers can produce the requisite
level of paralysis & helplessness beloved of torturers every where.
Members of the European Parliament may wish to consider the following
policy options:-
6.1 POLICY OPTIONS
(i). That the Civil Liberties Committee should receive expert evidence
to determine whether:-
(a) New regulations on the nature of in-depth interrogation training
should be agreed which prohibit export of such techniques to
forces overseas known to be involved in gross human rights
violation.
(b) All training of foreign military, police, security and
intelligence forces in interrogation techniques, can be subject to
licence, even if it is provided outside European territory.
(c) Restrictions on visits to European MSP related events by
representatives of known torturing states can be effectively
implemented.
(ii) The Commission should be requested to achieve agreement between
member States to:
(a) Carry out an investigation of claims that the EC "mark of quality"
is being used to endorse electroshock devices and Immediately
prohibit the transfer of all electroshock stun weapons to any
country where such weapons are likely to contribute to unlawful
killings, or to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,
for example by refusing any export licence where it is proposed
that electroshock weapons will be transferred to a country where
persistent torture or instances of instances of electric shock
torture and ill treatment have been reported;
(b) Introduce and implement new regulations on the manufacture,
sale and transfer of all electroshock weapons from and into
Europe, with a full report to the European Parliament's Civil
Liberties committee made each year. [Special consideration should
be given to controlling the whole procurement process, covering
even the making of contracts of sale, (to prevent a purchase deal
made in a European country being met by a supplier or subsidiary
outside of the EU, in an effort to obviate extant controls)].
(c). Ensure that the proposed regulations should cover patents and
prohibit the patenting of any device whose sole use would be the
violation of human rights, via torture or the creation of
unnecessary suffering. The onus should be on the patent seeker to
show that his patent would not lead to such outcomes.
(v) The European Parliament should look at commissioning new work to
investigate how existing legislation within member states of the EU,
can be brought to bear to prosecute companies who have been complicit
in the supply of equipment used for torture as defined by the UN
convention of torture. This new work should examine, in conjunction
with the Directorate of Human Rights:-
(a) The extent to which such technology produced by European companies
is being transferred to human rights violators and the role played
by international military, police and security fairs organised
both inside and outside European Borders;
(b)The possible measures that could be set in place to monitor and
track any technology transfer within this category and any
potential role in this endeavour that might be played by
recognised Non-Governmental Organisations.
7. DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY
Surveillance technology can be defined as devices or systems which can
monitor, track and assess the movements of individuals, their property
and other assets. Much of this technology is used to track the
activities of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, student
leaders, minorities, trade union leaders and political opponents. A
huge range of surveillance technologies has evolved, including the
night vision goggles; parabolic microphones to detect conversations
over a kilometre away; laser versions, can pick up any conversation
from a closed window in line of sight; the Danish Jai stroboscopic
camera can take hundreds of pictures in a matter of seconds and
individually photograph all the participants in a demonstration or
March; and the automatic vehicle recognition systems can tracks cars
around a city via a Geographic Information System of maps.
New technologies which were originally conceived for the Defence and
Intelligence sectors, have after the cold war, rapidly spread into the
law enforcement and private sectors. It is one of the areas of
technological advance, where outdated regulations have not kept pace
with an accelerating pattern of abuses. Up until the 1960's, most
surveillance was low-tech and expensive since it involved following
suspects around from place to place, using up to 6 people in teams of
two working 3 eight hour shifts. All of the material and contacts
gleaned had to be typed up and filed away with little prospect of
rapidly cross checking. Even electronic surveillance was highly labour
intensive. The East German police for example employed 500,000 secret
informers, 10,000 of which were needed just to listen and transcribe
citizen's phone calls.
By the 1980's, new forms of electronic surveillance were emerging and
many of these were directed towards automation of communications
interception. This trend was fuelled in the U.S. in the 1990's by
accelerated government funding at the end of the cold war, with
defence and intelligence agencies being refocussed with new missions
to justify their budgets, transferring their technologies to certain
law enforcement applications such as anti-drug and anti-terror
operations. In 1993, the US department of defence and the Justice
department signed memoranda of understanding for "Operations Other
Than War and Law Enforcement" to facilitate joint development and
sharing of technology. According to David Banisar of Privacy
International, "To counteract reductions in military contracts which
began in the 1980's, computer and electronics companies are expanding
into new markets - at home and abroad - with equipment originally
developed for the military. Companies such as E Systems, Electronic
Data Systems and Texas Instruments are selling advanced computer
systems and surveillance equipment to state and local governments that
use them for law enforcement, border control and Welfare
administration."What the East German secret police could only dream of
is rapidly becoming a reality in the free world."
7.1 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance Networks
In fact the art of visual surveillance has dramatically changed over
recent years. Of course police and intelligence officers still
photograph demonstrations and individuals of interest but increasingly
such images can be stored and searched. Ongoing processes of
ultra-miniaturisation mean that such devices can be made to be
virtually undetectable and are open to abuse by both indivduals,
companies and official agencies.
The attitude to CCTV camera networks varies greatly in the European
Union, from the position in Denmark where such cameras are banned by
law to the position in the UK, where many hundreds of CCTV networks
exist. Nevertheless, a common position on the status of such systems
where they exist in relation to data protection principles should
apply in general. A specific consideration is the legal status of
admissibility as evidence, of digital material such as those taken by
the more advanced CCTV systems. Much of this will fall within data
protection legislation if the material gathered can be searched eg by
car number plate or by time. Given that material from such systems can
be seemlessly edited, the European Data Protection Directive
legislation needs to be implemented through primary legislation which
clarifies the law as it applies to CCTV, to avoid confusion amongst
both CCTV data controllers as well as citizens as data subjects.
Primary legislation will make it possible to extend the impact of the
Directive to areas of activity that do not fall within community law.
Articles 3 and 13 of the Directive should not create a blanket
covering the use of CCTV in every circumstance in a domestic context.
A proper code of practice such as that promoted by the UK based Local
Government Information Unit (LGIU, 1996) should be extended to absorb
best practice from all EU Member States to cover the use of all CCTV
surveillance schemes operating in public spaces and especially in
residential areas.
As a first step it is suggested that the Civil Liberties Committee
formally consider examining the practice and control of CCTV
throughout the member States with a view to establishing what elements
of the various codes of practice could be adopted for a unified code
and an enforceable legal framework covering enforcement and civil
liberties protection and redress.
7.2 Algorithmic Surveilance Sysytems
The revolution in urban surveillance will reach the next generation of
control once reliable face recognition comes in. It will initially be
introduced at stationary locations, like turnstiles, customs points,
security gateways etc. to enable a standard full face recognition to
take place. The Interim Report predicted that in the early part of the
21st. century, facial recognition on CCTV will be a reality and those
countries with CCTV infrastructures will view such technology as a
natural add-on. In fact, an American company Software and Systems has
trialed a system in London which can scan crowds and match faces
against a database of images held in a remote computer.
We are at the beginning of a revolution in 'algorithmic surveillance'
- effectively data analysis via complex algoritms which enable
automatic recognition and tracking. Such automation not only widens
the surveillance net, it narrows the mesh.(See Norris, C., et. al,
1998)
Similarly Vehicle Recognition Systems have been developed which can
identify a car number plate then track the car around a city using a
computerised geographic information system. Such systems are now
commercially available, for example, the Talon system introduced in
1994 by UK company Racal at a price of £2000 per unit. The system is
trained to recognise number plates based on neural network technology
developed by Cambridge Neurodynamics, and can see both night and day.
Initially it has been used for traffic monitoring but its function has
been adapted in recent years to cover security surveillance and has
been incorporated in the "ring of steel" around London. The system can
then record all the vehicles that entered or left the cordon on a
particular day.
It is important to set clear guidelines and codes of practice for such
technological innovations, well in advance of the digital revolution
making new and unforseen opportunities to collate, analyze, recognise
and store such visual images. Already multifunctional traffic
management systems such as 'Traffic Master' , (which uses vehicle
recognition systems to map and quantify congestion), are facilitating
a national surveillance architecture. Such regulation will need to be
founded on sound data protection principles and take cognizance of
article 15 of the 1995 European Directive on the protection of
Individuals and Processing of Personal Data. Essentially this says
that : "Member States shall grant the right of every person not to be
subject to a decision which produces legal effects concerning him or
significantly affects him and which is based solely on the automatic
processing of data." There is much to recommend the European
Parliament following the advice of a recent UK House of Lords Report
(Select Committee Report on Digital Images as Evidence, 1998). Namely:
(i)that the European Parliament ...."produces guidance for both the
public and private sectors on the use of data matching, and in
particular the linking of surveillance systems with other databases;
and (ii) That the Data Protection Registrar be given powers to audit
the operation of data matching systems"
Such surveillance systems raise significant issues of accountability,
particularly when transferred to authoritarian regimes. The cameras
used in Tiananmen Square were sold as advanced traffic control systems
by Siemens Plessey. Yet after the 1989 massacre of students, there
followed a witch hunt when the authorities tortured and interrogated
thousands in an effort to ferret out the subversives. The Scoot
surveillance system with USA made Pelco cameras were used to
faithfully record the protests. The images were repeatedly broadcast
over Chinese television offering a reward for information, with the
result that nearly all the transgressors were identified. Again
democratic accountability is only the criterion which distinguishes a
modern traffic control system from an advanced dissident capture
technology. Foreign companies are exporting traffic control systems to
Lhasa in Tibet, yet Lhasa does not as yet have any traffic control
problems. The problem here may be a culpable lack of imagination.
7.3 Bugging & Tapping Devices
A wide range of bugging and tapping devices have been evolved to
record conversations and to intercept telecommunications traffic. In
recent years the widespread practice of illegal and legal interception
of communications and the planting of 'bugs' has been an issue in many
European States.
However, planting illegal bugs is yesterday's technology. Modern
snoopers can buy specially adapted lap top computers, and simply tune
in to all the mobile phones active in the area by cursoring down to
their number. The machine will even search for numbers 'of interest'
to see if they are active. However, these bugs and taps pale into
insignificance next to the national and international state run
interceptions networks.
7.4 National & International Communications Interceptions Networks
The Interim Report set out in detail, the global surveillance systems
which facilitate the mass supervision of all telecommunications
including telephone, email and fax transmissions of private citizens,
politicians, trade unionists and companies alike. There has been a
political shift in targeting in recent years. Instead of investigating
crime (which is reactive) law enforcement agencies are increasingly
tracking certain social classes and races of people living in
red-lined areas before crime is committed - a form of pre-emptive
policing deemed data-veillance which is based on military models of
gathering huge quantities of low grade intelligence.
Without encryption, modern communications systems are virtually
transparent to the advanced interceptions equipment which can be used
to listen in. The Interim Report also explained how mobile phones have
inbuilt monitoring and tagging dimensions which can be accessed by
police and intelligence agencies. For example the digital technology
required to pinpoint mobile phone users for incoming calls, means that
all mobile phone users in a country when activated, are mini-tracking
devices, giving their owners whereabouts at any time and stored in the
company's computer . For example Swiss Police have secretly tracked
the whereabouts of mobile phone users from the computer of the service
provider Swisscom, which according SonntagsZeitung had stored
movements of more than a milion subscribers down to a few hundred
metres, and going back at least half a year.
However, of all the developments covered in the Interim Report, the
section covering some of the constitutional and legal issues raised by
the USA's National Security Agency's access and facility to intercept
all European telecommunications caused the most concern. Whilst no-one
denied the role of such networks in anti terrorist operations and
countering illegal drug, money laudering and illicit arms deals, alarm
was expressed about the scale of the foreign interceptions network
identified in the report and whether existing legislation, data
protection and privacy safeguards in the Member States were sufficient
to protect the confidentiality between EU citizens, corporations and
those with third countries.
Since there has been a certain degree of confusion in subsequent press
reports, it is worth clarifying some of the issues surrounding
transatlantic electronic surveillance and providing a short history &
update on developments since the Interim Report was published in
January 1998. There are essentially two separate system, namely:
(i) The UK/USA system comprising the activities of military
intelligence agencies such as NSA-CIA in the USA subsuming GCHQ &
MI6 in the UK operating a system known as ECHELON;
(ii) The EU-FBI system which is linkeding up various law
enforcement agencies such as the FBI, police, customs, immigration
and internal security;
Although the confusion has been further compounded by the title of
item 44 on the agenda for the Plenary session of the European
Parliament on September 16, 1998, in intelligence terms, these are two
distinct "communities" It is worth looking briefly at the activities
of both systems in turn, encompassing, Echelon, encryption; EU-FBI
surveillance and new interfaces with for example to access to internet
providers and to databanks of other agencies.
7.4.1 NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Interim report said that 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 in the
North York Moors of the UK.
The system was first uncovered in the 1970's by a group of researchers
in the UK (Campbell, 1981). A recent work by Nicky Hager, Secret
Power, (Hager,1996) provides the most comprehensive details todate of
a project known as ECHELON. Hager interviewed more than 50 people
concerned with intelligence to document a global surveillance system
that stretches around the world to form a targeting system on all of
the key Intelsat satellites used to convey most of the world's
satellite phone calls, internet, email, faxes and telexes. These sites
are based at Sugar Grove and Yakima, in the USA, at Waihopai in New
Zealand, at Geraldton in Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the
UK.
The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system but unlike many of
the electronic spy systems developed during the cold war, ECHELON is
designed for primarily non-military targets: governments,
organisations and businesses in virtually every country. The ECHELON
system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of
communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using
artificial intelligence aids like Memex. to find key words. Five
nations share the results with the US as the senior partner under the
UKUSA agreement of 1948, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia
are very much acting as subordinate information servicers.
Each of the five centres supply "dictionaries" to the other four of
keywords, Phrases, people and places to "tag" and the tagged intercept
is forwarded straight to the requesting country. Whilst there is much
information gathered about potential terrorists, there is a lot of
economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the
countries participating in the GATT negotiations. But Hager found that
by far the main priorities of this system continued to be military and
political intelligence applicable to their wider interests.
Hager quotes from a"highly placed intelligence operatives" who spoke
to the Observer in London. "We feel we can no longer remain silent
regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence
within the establishment in which we operate." They gave as examples.
GCHQ interception of three charities, including Amnesty International
and Christian Aid. "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their
communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In
the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes
its called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to third world aid,
the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three
organisations. With no system of accountability, it is difficult to
discover what criteria determine who is not a target.
Indeed since the Interim Report was published, journalists have
alleged that ECHELON has benefited US companies involved in arms
deals, strengthened Washington's position in crucial World Trade
organisation talks with Europe during a 1995 dispute with Japan over
car part exports. According to the Financial Mail On Sunday, "key
words identified by US experts include the names of inter-governmental
trade organisations and business consortia bidding against US
companies. The word 'block' is on the list to identify communications
about offshore oil in area where the seabed has yet to be divided up
into exploration blocks"..."It has also been suggested that in 1990
the US broke into secret negotiations and persuaded Indonesia that US
giant AT & T be included in a multi-billion dollar telecoms deal that
at one point was going entirely to Japan's NEC.
The Sunday Times (11 May, 1998) reported that early on the radomes at
Menwith Hill (NSA station F83) In North Yorkshire UK, were given the
task of intercepting international leased carrrier (ILC) traffic -
essentially, ordinary commercial communications. Its staff have grown
from 400 in the 1980's to more than 1400 now with a further 370 staff
from the MoD. The Sunday Times also reported allegations that
converstaions between the German company Volkswagen and General Motors
were intercepted and the French have complained that Thompson-CSF, the
French electronics company, lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil
with a radar system because the Americans intercepted details of the
negotions and passed them on to US company Raytheon, which
subsequently won the contract. Another claim is that Airbus Industrie
lost a contract worth $1 billion to Boeing and McDonnel Douglas
because information was intercepted by American spying. Other
newspapers such as Liberation 21 April 1998) and Il Mondo (20 March
1998, identify the network as an Anglo-Saxon Spy network because of
the UK-USA axis. Privacy International goes further. "Whilst
recognising that 'strictly speaking, neither the Commission nor the
European Parliament have a mandate to regulate or intervene in
security matters...they do have a responsibility to ensure that
security is harmonised throughout the Union."
According to Privacy International, the UK is likely to find its
'Special relationship' ties fall foul of its Maastricht obligations
since Title V of Maastricht requires that "Member States shall inform
and consult one another within the Council on any matter of foreign
and security policy of general interest in order to ensure that their
combined influence is exerted as effectivelly as possible by means of
concerted and convergent action." Yet under the terms of the Special
relationship, Britain cannot engage in open consultatuion with its
other European partners. The situation is further complicated by
counter allegations in the French magazine Le Point, that the French
are systematically spying on American and other allied countries
telephone and cable traffic via the Helios 1A Spy sattelite. (Times,
June 17 1998)
If even half of these allegations are true then the European
Parliament must act to ensure that such powerful surveillance systems
operate to a more democratic consensus now that the Cold War has
ended. Clearly, the Overseas policies of European Union Member States
are not always congruent with those of the USA and in commercial
terms, espionage is espionage. No proper Authority in the USA would
allow a similar EU spy network to operate from American soil without
strict limitations, if at all. Following full discussion on the
implications of the operations of these networks, the European
Parliament is asvised to set up appropriate independent audit and
oversight porocedures and that any effort to outlaw encryption by EU
citizens should be denied until and unless such democratic and
accountable systems are in place, if at all.
7.4.2 EU-FBI GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Much of the documentation and research necessary to put into the
public domain, the history, structure, role and function of the EU-FBI
convention to legitimise global electronic surveillance, has been
secured by Statewatch, the widely respected UK based civil liberties
monitoring and research organisation.
Statewatch have described at length the signing of the Transatlantic
Agenda in Madrid at the EU-US summit of 3 December 1995 - Part of
which was the "Joint EU-US Action Plan" and has subsequently analysed
these efforts as an ongoing attempt to redefine the Atlantic Alliance
in the post-Cold War era, a stance increasingly used to justify the
efforts of internal security agencies taking on enhanced policing
roles in Europe. Statewatch notes that the first Joint Action 'out of
the area" surveillance plan was not discussed at the Justice and Home
Affairs meeting but adopted on the nod, as an A point (without debate)
by of all places, the Fisheries Council on 20 December 1996.
In February 1997, Statewatch reported that the EU had secretly agreed
to set up an international telephone tapping network via a secret
network of committees established under the "third pillar" of the
Mastricht Treaty covering co-operation on law and order. Key points of
the plan are outlined in a memorandum of understanding, signed by EU
states in 1995.(ENFOPOL 112 10037/95 25.10.95) which remains
classified. According to a Guardian report (25.2.97) it reflects
concern among European Intelligence agencies that modern technology
will prevent them from tapping private communications. "EU countries
it says, should agree on "international interception standards set at
a level that would ensure encoding or scrambled words can be broken
down by government agencies." Official reports say that the EU
governments agreed to co-operate closely with the FBI in Washington.
Yet earlier minutes of these meetings suggest that the original
initiative came from Washington. According to Statewatch, network and
service providers in the EU will be obliged to install "tappable"
systems and to place under surveillance any person or group when
served with an interception order.
These plans have never been referred to any European government for
scrutiny, nor to the Civil Liberties Committee of the European
Parliament, despite the clear civil liberties issues raised by such an
unaccountable system. The decision to go ahead was simply agreed in
secret by "written procedure" through an exchane of telexes between
the 15 EU governments. We are told by Statewatch the EU-FBI Global
surveillance plan was now being developed "outside the third pillar."
In practical terms this means that the plan is being developed by a
group of twenty countries - the then 15 EU member countries plus the
USA, Australia, Canada, Norway and New Zealand. This group of 20 is
not accountable through the Council of Justice and Home Affairs
Ministers or to the European Parliament or national parliaments.
Nothing is said about finance of this system but a report produced by
the German government estimates that the mobile phone part of the
package alone will cost 4 billion D-marks.
Statewatch concludes that "It is the interface of the ECHELON system
and its potential development on phone calls combined with the
standardisation of "tappable communications centres and equipment
being sponsored by the EU and the USA which presents a truly global
threat over which there are no legal or democratic controls."(Press
release 25.2.97) In many respects what we are witnessing here are
meetings of operatives of a new global military-intelligence state. It
is very difficult for anyone to get a full picture of what is being
decided at the executive meetings setting this 'Transatlantic agenda.
Whilst Statewatch won a ruling from the Ombudsman for access on the
grounds that the Council of Ministers 'misapplied the code of access,
for the time being such access to the agendas have been denied.
Without such access, we are left with 'black box decision making'. The
eloquence of the unprecedented Commission statement on Echelon and
Transatlantic relations scheduled for the 16th. of September, is
likely to be as much about what is left out as it is about what is
said for public consumption. Members of the European Parliament may
wish to consider the following policy options:-
7.5 POLICY OPTIONS
(i) That a more detailed series of studies should be commissioned on
the social, political commercial and constitutional implications of
the global electronic surveillance networks outlined in this report,
with a view to holding a series of expert hearings to inform future EU
civil liberties policy. These studies might cover:-
(a) The consitutional issues raised by the facility of the US National
Security Agency (NSA) to intercept all European telecommunications,
particularly those legal commitments made by member States in regard
to the Maastricht Treaty and the whole question of the use of this
network for automated political and commercial espionage.
(b) The social and political implications of the FBI-EU global
surveillance system, its growing access to new telecommunications
mediums including e-mail and its ongoing expansion into new countries
together with any related financial and constitutional issues;
(c) The structure, role and remit of an EU wide oversight body,
independent from the European Parliament, which might be set up to
oversee and audit the activities of all bodies engaged in intercepting
telecommunications made within Europe;
(ii) The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United
States for making private messages via the global communications
network (Internet) accessible to US Intelligence Agencies. Nor should
the Parliament agree to new expensive encryption controls without a
wide ranging debate within the EU on the implications of such
measures. These encompass the civil and human rights of European
citizens and the commercial rights of companies to operate within the
law, without unwarranted surveillance by intelligence agencies
operating in conjunction with multinational competitors.
(ii) That the European Parliament convene a series of expert hearings
covering all the technical, political and commercial activities of
bodies engaged in electronic surveillance and to further elaborate
possible options to bring such activities back within the realm of
democratic accountability and transparency. These proposed hearings
might also examine the issue of proper codes of practice to ensure
redress if malpractice or abuse takes place. Explicit criteria should
be agreed for deciding who should be targeted for surveillance and who
should not, how such data is stored, processed and shared and whether
such criteria and associated codes of practice could be made publicly
available.
(iii) To amend the terms of reference of the Civil Liberties and
Internal Affairs Committee to include powers and responsibilities for
all matters relating to the civil liberties issues raised by
electronic surveillance devices and networks and to call for a series
of reports during its next work programme, including:-
(a) How legally binding codes of practice could ensure that new
surveillance technologies are brought within the appropriate data
protection legislation?;
(b) The production of guidance for both the public and private sectors
on the use of data matching, and in particular the linking of
surveillance systems with other databases; and addressing the issue of
giving Member State Data Protection Registrars appropriate powers to
audit the operation of data matching systems"
(c) How the provision of electronic bugging and tapping devices to
private citizens and companies, might be further regulated, so that
their sale is governed by legal permission rather than self
regulation?
(d) How the use of telephone interception by Member states could be
subject to procedures of public accountability referred to in (a)
above? (E.g. before any telephone interception takes place a warrant
should be obtained in a manner prescribed by the relevant parliament.
In most cases, law enforcement agencies will not be permitted to
self-authorise interception except in the most unusual of
circumstances which should be reported back to the authorising
authority at the earliest opportunity.
(e) How technologies facilitating the automatic profiling and pattern
analysis of telephone calls to establish friendship and contact
networks might be subject to the same legal requirements as those for
telephone interception and reported to the relevant Member State
parliament?;.
(f) The commission of a study examining what constitutes best practice
and control of CCTV throughout the member States with a view to
establishing what elements of the various codes of practice could be
adopted for a unified code and a legal framework covering enforcement
and civil liberties protection and redress.
(iv) Setting up procedural mechanisms whereby relevant committees of
the European Parliament considering proposals for technologies which
have civil liberties implications (e.g. the Telecommunications
Committee) in regard to surveillance, should be required to forward
all relevant policy proposals and reports to the Civil Liberties
Committee for their observations in advance of any political or
financial decisions on deployment being taken.
(v) Setting up Agreements betwen Member States Agreement whereby
annual statistics on interception should be reported to each member
states' parliament in a standard and consistent format. These
statistics should provide comprehensive details of the actual number
of communication devices intercepted and data should be not be
aggregated. (To avoid the statistics only identifying the number of
warrants, issued whereas organisations under surveillance may have
hundreds of members, all of whose phones may be intercepted).
8. REGULATION OF HORIZONTAL PROLIFERATION
The Interim Report warned of the potential of some of these weapons,
technologies and systems to undermine international human rights
legislation - a consideration particularly poignant in this the 50th.
anniversary year of the signing of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.
Many of the major arms companies have a paramilitary/internal security
operation and diversification into manufacturing or marketing this
technology, is increasingly taking place.
NGO's like Amnesty International, have begun to catalogue the trade in
specialised military, security and police technologies, to measure its
impact on industrialising repression, globalising conflict,
undermining democracy and strengthening the security forces of
torturing states to create a new generation of political prisoners,
extra-judicial killings and 'disappearances'. (Amnesty International,
1996). The key issue for Members of the European Parliament is how
they will deal with the human and political fall out of what is a
systemic process of exporting repression: either importing a tidal
wave of dispossessed refugees, or keeping them in desperation at the
borders of Europe. There is an urgent need for greater transparency
and democratic control of such exports and a clearer recognition of
their frequent linkage with gross human rights violations in their
recipient states.
The Interim Report catalogued in some detail , examples of how this
technology, including electroshock systems, was being supplied by
European countries to assist in acts of human rights violation
abroad,despite the fact that a substantial body of international human
rights obligations should theoretically prevent such transfers .
The European Parliament made a resolution on the 19 January 1995,
which called on the Commission to bring forward proposals to
incorporate these technologies within the scope of the arms export
controls and ensure greater transparency in the export of all
military, security and police technologies to prevent the hypocrisy of
governments who themselves breach their own export bans. Members of
the European Parliament may wish to consider the following policy
options:-
8.1 POLICY OPTIONS
(i) That new research should be commissioned by the European
Parliament to explore the extent to which European companies are
complicity supplying repressive technologies used to commit human
rights violations and the prospects of instituting independent
measures of monitoring the level and extent of such sales whilst
tracking their subsequent human rights impacts and consequences;
(ii) Consider if there is a need to amend the terms of reference of
the Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security to include powers and
responsibilities for liaising with Member States to:-
(a) Enable the European Parliament to explore the possibilities of
using the Joint Action procedures used to establish the EU regulations
on the export of Dual Use equipment to draw up common lists of
proscribed military, security, police (MSP)technology and training,
the sole or primary use of which is to contribute to human rights
violations; sensitive MSP technologies which have been shown in the
past to be used to commit human rights violations; and military,
security and police units and forces which have been sufficiently
responsible for human rights violations and to whom sensitive goods
and services should not be supplied;
(b) Enable Member States to monitor and regulate all exhibitions
promoting the sale of security equipment and technology to ensure that
any proposed transfers such as electroshock weapons, will not
contribute to unlawful killings, or to torture or cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment;
(b) Explore mechanisms to ensure that all military, police and
security exhibitions are required to publish guest lists, names of
exhibitors, products and services on display and no visas or
invitations should be issued to governments or representatives of
security forces, known to carry out human rights violations.
(c) Find more effective means for ensuring that the sender should take
legal responsibility for the stated use of military, security and
police transfers in practice, for example making future contracts
dependent on adherence to human rights criteria and that such criteria
are central to the regulatory process.
(iii) That the Commission should be requested to achieve agreement
between Member States to undertake changes to their respective
strategic export controls so that:-
(a) All proposed transfers of security or police equipment are
publicly disclosed in advance, especially electroshock weapons,
(including those arranged on European territory where the equipment
concerned remains outside Member States' borders) so that the human
rights situation in the intended receiving country can be taken into
consideration before any such transfers are allowed. and that reports
are issued on the human rights situation in the receiving countries;
(b) Member States Parliaments are notified of all information
necessary to enable them to exercise proper control over the
implementation of their legal obligations and commitments to
international human rights agreements, including receiving information
on human rights violations from non-governmental organisations;
9. CONCLUSIONS
With proper accountability and regulation, some of the technologies
discussed above do have a legitimate law enforcement function; without
such democratic control, they can provide powerful tools of
oppression.The real threat to civil liberties and human rights in the
future, is more likely to arise from an incremental erosion of civil
liberties, than it is from some conscious plan. As the globalisation
of political control technologies increases, Members of the European
Parliament have a right and a responsibility to challenge the costs,
as well as the alleged benefits of many so-called advances in law
enforcement. This report has sought to highlight some of the areas
which are leading to the most undesirable social and political
consequences.
Members of the Parliament are requested to consider the policy options
provided in the report as just a first step to help bring the
technology of political control, back within systems of democratic
accountability.
ANNEX 1
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL
AN OMEGA FOUNDATION SUMMARY & OPTIONS REPORT
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