ECHELON : Flaw In Human Rights Uncovered

by Duncan Campbell

April 8, 2000

Proposals for a new definition of human rights now before
the European Parliament would ban ECHELON and update data
protection rules to latest developments in
telecommunications technology.

International spying on communications should be identified
as a breach of fundamental human rights, according to
proposals now before the European Parliament. The new
proposals suggest that treaties and rules on human rights
drawn up 50 years ago or more failed to anticipate how, in
the Internet age, threats to personal privacy can easily
cross international boundaries.

According to the five page proposal, all future
interceptions must "have a legal basis, be in the public
interest and be strictly limited to the achievement of the
intended objective".

"Any form of systematic interception cannot be regarded as
consistent with that principle, even if the intended aim is
to fight against international crime".

"Any Member State operating such a system should cease to
use it".

If implemented internationally, the new extension of human
rights would outlaw the practice of signals intelligence
(sigint), except when used to fight crime or terrorism.
Sigint systems are now used by many large countries to spy
on the diplomatic, commercial and personal communications of
allies as well as enemies. The proposals are likely to be
particularly bitterly fought by the British government,
whose sigint agency GCHQ co-operates with the US National
Security Agency to run the world's largest communications
intelligence system, including ECHELON.

MEPs will be asked to endorse proposals intended to
eliminate cross-border spying between European nations as
well as by nations outside the Union. The plans follow two
recent parliamentary discussions about international
communications surveillance, and in particular the US-run
Echelon network, which collects phone call, fax and data
communications from satellite communications links.

According to proposals prepared by Graham Watson, chairman
of the EP Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights,
Justice and Home Affairs, the existing framework of human
rights is defective. They "fall short of what the citizens
of Europe are entitled to expect, since they do not protect
them from interceptions carried out by a Member State of
which they are not nationals".

"European citizens, irrespective of their nationality, are
guaranteed fundamental rights at the highest possible
level", Watson asserts.

If the resolution is passed by the full Parliament at a
meeting in Strasbourg later this month, the EU's president
will be told that there is an "urgent need" for the Council
"to take ... necessary diplomatic steps to prevent third
countries from carrying out any form of interception on the
territory of the Union outside the framework of the joint
fight against organised crime". The President will be asked
to commence diplomatic negotiations with the United States
and other countries "to put an end to all forms of
systematic and general espionage by third countries
vis-a-the activities of the Member States of the Union,
its institutions and its citizens".

It adds "even in the case of the fight against cross-border
crime, adequate safeguards governing interceptions should be
drawn up" and that "any form of interception by a Member
State should be notified to the Member States on whose
territory the persons whose communications are being
intercepted are present".

The resolution also expresses irritation with "the current
piecemeal nature of the relevant laws and operational and
organisational arrangements" affecting interception in
Europe. The "piecemeal arrangements" include Schengen,
Europol, and the Customs Convention. According to Watson,
these entail "different standards of protection" and are
"free of any real democratic and judicial scrutiny". Six of
15 EU states had also failed to comply with the EC
directives on data protection and on the privacy of
telecommunications data.

The Committee also complains that the problems have been
raised in the "numerous written and oral questions tabled on
this subject over the last two years".

The proposals follow a two day hearing on data protection
and surveillance, held in Brussels in February, and
Êstatements made to the Parliament by the EC and Council of
Ministers at the end of March.

The Citizens Rights' Committee president is also presenting
the lack of formal international communications and data
privacy as a global problem. "On a world-wide scale, the
rise of the information society has not been accompanied by
a corresponding revision of provisions on data protection by
the Council of Europe, the OECD and the WTO", he says. The
proposals call for UN guidelines on personal data and OECD
guidelines on privacy to be "given the status of binding
texts - at the very least between the States of the Union
and their allies".

The new proposals do not include the appointment of a
special ÊCommittee of Enquiry by the European Parliament, a
proposal put forward last month by the Green Parties and
their allies. Such a committee might have been limited to
looking at breaches of existing European community law.
Instead, Watson has asked that his and two other committees
be asked to prepare, by the end of the year a new and
detailed report on the problem of data protection and
interceptions.