_____  

From: 
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 4:06 PM
To: Bruce Tefft
Subject: RE: Somebody's listening 


Campbell's persistant exposure of the U.S.  collection work and specifically
our site in the UK resulted in  Al Jazeera showing up at the site and taping
a documentary on the collection being done on Arabs (prior to 911).  This
exposure helped to push the position that we were recording all phone call
transmissions in the Middle East and specifically Arab states and tracking
every move. It was put out on Al Jazeera as a one hour special and
surveillance by ME types against the site went through the ceiling after
that.  Campbell is a communist and typical irresponsible leftist who
unfortunately was never prosecuted. 
 
JS

  _____  

From: Bruce Tefft [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 10:11 AM
To: Bruce Tefft
Subject: Somebody's listening 



 

Somebody’s listening 


NEW STATESMAN 


12 August 1988 

Cover, pages 10-12


. . . and they don't give a damn about personal privacy or commercial
confidence. Project 415 is a top-secret new global surveillance system. It
can tap into a billion calls a year in the UK alone. Inside Duncan Campbell
on how spying entered the 21st century . . . 


They've got it taped 


In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they
wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds
worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United
States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system
for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time 



American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a
massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance
system. According to information given recently in secret to the US
Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies to monitor and
analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for the
moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security
Agency (NSA). But the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be
closely involved with the new network, including those from Britain,
Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of
China. 

New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built around the
world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and its British
counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at
Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning international
telecommunications traffic. 

The largest overseas station in the Project P415 network is the US satellite
and communications base at Menwith Hill. near Harrogate in Yorkshire. It is
run undercover by the NSA and taps into all Britain's main national and
international communications networks (New Statesman, 7 August 1980).
Although high technology stations such as Menwith Hill are primarily
intended to monitor international communications, according to US experts
their capability can be, and has been, turned inwards on domestic traffic.
Menwith Hill, in particular, has been accused by a former employee of gross
corruption and the monitoring of domestic calls. 

The vast international global eavesdropping network has existed since
shortly after the second world war, when the US, Britain, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand signed a secret agreement on signals intelligence, or
"sigint". It was anticipated, correctly, that electronic monitoring of
communications signals would continue to be the largest and most important
form of post-war secret intelligence, as it had been through the war. 

Although it is impossible for analysts to listen to all but a small fraction
of the billions of telephone calls, and other signals which might contain
"significant" information, a network of monitoring stations in Britain and
elsewhere is able to tap all international and some domestic communications
circuits, and sift out messages which sound interesting. Computers
automatically analyse every telex message or data signal, and can also
identify calls to, say, a target telephone number in London, no matter from
which country they originate. 

A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA (UK-USA), assigns parts of the
globe to each participating agency. GCHQ at Cheltenham is the co-ordinating
centre for Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union (west of the Ural Mountains).


The NSA covers the rest of the Soviet Union and most of the Americas.
Australia--where another station in the NSA listening network is located in
the outback--co-ordinates the electronic monitoring of the South Pacific,
and South East Asia. 

With 15,000 staff and a budget of over £500 million a year (even without the
planned new Zircon spy satellite), GCHQ is by far the largest part of
British intelligence. Successive UK governments have placed high value on
its eavesdropping capabilities, whether against Russian military signals or
the easier commercial and private civilian targets. 

Both the new and existing surveillance systems are highly computerised. They
rely on near total interception of international commercial and satellite
communications in order to locate the telephone or other messages of target
individuals. Last month, a US newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
revealed that the system had been used to target the telephone calls of a US
Senator, Strom Thurmond. The fact that Thurmond, a southern Republican and
usually a staunch supporter of the Reagan administration, is said to have
been a target has raised fears that the NSA has restored domestic,
electronic, surveillance programmes. These were originally exposed and
criticised during the Watergate investigations, and their closure ordered by
President Carter. 

After talking to the NSA, Thurmond later told the Plain Dealer that he did
not believe the allegation. But Thurmond, a right-wing Republican, may have
been unwilling to rock the boat. Staff members of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence said that staff were "digging into it" despite the
"stratospheric security classification" of all the systems involved. 

The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond interception by
a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation, Margaret
Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale, California. Newsham had originally
given separate testimony and filed a lawsuit concerning corruption and
mis-spending on other US government "black" projects. She has worked in the
US and Britain for two corporations which manufacture signal intelligence
computers, satellites and interception equipment for NSA, Ford Aerospace and
Lockheed. Citing a special Executive Order signed by President Reagan. she
told me last month that she could not and would not discuss classified
information with journalists. But according to Washington sources (and the
report in the Plain Dealer, she informed a US Congressman that the Thurmond
interception took place at Menwith Hill, and that she personally heard the
call and was able to pass on details. 

Since then, investigators have subpoenaed other witnesses and asked them to
provide the complete plans and manuals of the ECHELON system and related
projects. The plans and blueprints are said to show that targeting of US
political figures would not occur by accident. but was designed into the
system from the start. 

While working at Menwith Hill, Newsham is reported to have said that she was
able to listen through earphones to telephone calls being monitored at the
base. Other conversations that she heard were in Russian. After leaving
Menwith Hill, she continued to have access to full details of Menwith Hill
operations from a position as software manager for more than a dozen VAX
computers at Menwith which operate the ECHELON system. 

Newsham refused last month to discuss classified details of her career,
except with cleared Congressional officials. But it has been publicly
acknowledged that she worked on a large range of so-called "black" US
intelligence programmes, whose funds are concealed inside the costs of other
defence projects. She was fired from Lockheed four years ago after
complaining about the corruption, and sexual harassment. 

Lockheed claimed she had been a pook [as written] timekeeper, and has denied
her charges of corruption on "black" projects. But the many charges she is
reported to have made--such as the use of top secret computers for football
pools, or to sell a wide range of merchandise from their offices, and
deliberate and massive overcharging and waste by the company--are but small
beer in a continuing and wider scandal about defence procurement. Newsham's
testimony about overcharging by contractors is now the subject of a major
congressional inquiry. 

>From US sources not connected with Margaret Newsham, we have obtained for
the first time a list of the major classified projects in operation at
Menwith Hill. The base currently has over 1,200 staff, more than two thirds
of them Americans. Other than the ECHELON computer network, the main
projects at Menwith Hill are code-named SILKWORTH, MOONPENNY, SIRE, RUNWAY
and STEEPLEBUSH. The station also receives information from a satellite
called BIG BIRD. 

Project SILKWORTH is, according to signals intelligence specialists, the
code-name for long-range radio monitoring from Menwith Hill. MOONPENNY is a
system for monitoring satellite communications; RUNWAY is thought to be the
control network for an eavesdropping satellite called VORTEX, now in orbit
over the Soviet Union The base earlier controlled a similar series of
satellites called CHALET. The new STEEPLEBUSH control centre appears
connected with the latest and biggest of the overhead listening satellites.
These are code-named MAGNUM, according to US intelligence sources. 

BIG BIRD, which is not usually connected with Menwith Hill, is a
low-orbiting photographic reconnaissance satellite. But investigators have
worked out, from details of the clearances necessary to know about BIG BIRD,
that this satellite--and indeed, many other satellites, variously disguised
as "weather satellites"--also carry listening equipment. One such sigint
package is said to have been aboard the doomed space shuttle Challenger,
despite its ostensibly civilian purpose. 

Recently published US Department of Defense 1989 budget information has
confirmed that the Menwith Hill spy base will be the subject of a major $26
million expansion programme. Information given to Congress in February
listed details of plans for a four-year expansion of the main operation
building and other facilities at Menwith Hill. Although the testimony
referred only to a "classified location", the base can be identified because
of references to STEEPLEBUSH. According to this testimony, the new
STEEPLEBUSH II project will cost $15 million between now and 1993. The
expansion is required to avoid overcrowding and "to support expanding
classified missions". 

During the Watergate affair. it was revealed that NSA, in collaboration with
GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international communications of
prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr Benjamin Spock.
Another target was former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Then in the
late 1970s, it was revealed that President Carter had ordered NSA to stop
obtaining "back door" intelligence about US political figures through
swapping intelligence data with GCHQ Cheltenham. 

Among important stations being developed in the new P415 network, sources
indicated, are Bude in Cornwall, mainly run by GCHQ, Bad Aibling in Germany,
and two sites in the People's Republic of China (which are used only for
monitoring the USSR). The western intelligence agencies have not yet
resolved the question of how to replace the recently upgraded British
intelligence listening station at Chung Hom Kok in Hong Kong (which at the
moment listens to China itself) when the colony is handed back to China next
decade. 

In Australia three months ago, New Zealand Defence Minister Bob Tizard
revealed that two Australasian interception stations planned for the early
1990s will be targeted on new communications satellites launched by third
world countries such as India and Indonesia. The new satellite spy bases are
at Geraldton in northern Australia and Blenheim, New Zealand. The similar
British spy base at Morwenstow, near Bude, Cornwall, has been continuously
expanded throughout the 1980s, including the provision of massive US
analysis computers. 

If Margaret Newsham's testimony is confirmed by the ongoing Congressional
investigation, then the NSA has been behaving illegally under US law--unless
it can prove either that Thurmond's call was intercepted completely
accidentally, or that the highly patriotic Senator is actually a foreign spy
or terrorist. Moreover NSA's international phone tapping operations from
Menwith Hill and at Morwenstow, Cornwall, can only be legal in Britain if
special warrants have been issued by the Secretary of State to specify that
American intelligence agents are persons to whom information from intercepts
must or should be given. This can not be established, since the government
has always refused to publish any details of the targets or recipients of
specific interception warrants. 

When the Menwith Hill base was first set up there was no British law
controlling phone tapping, or making unauthorised interception (such as by
foreign intelligence agencies) illegal. Now there is, and telecommunications
interception by the Americans from British territory would clearly be
illegal without the appropriate warrant. 

When the new Interception of Communications Act was passed in 1985, however,
it was obviously designed to make special provision for operations like
ECHELON or Project P415 to trawl all international communications to and
from Britain. A special section of the Act, Section 3(2), allows warrants to
be issued to intercept any general type of international messages to or from
Britain if this is "in the interests of national security" or "for the
purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom". Such
warrants also allow GCHQ to tap any or all other communications on the same
cables or satellites that may have to be picked up in order to select out
the messages they want. So whether or not a British government warrant can
legally allow American agents to intercept private British communications,
there is no doubt that British law as well as British bases have been
designed to encourage rather than inhibit the booming industry in
international telecommunications surveillance. 

Both British and American domestic communications are also being targeted
and intercepted by the ECHELON network, the US investigators have been told.
The agencies are alleged to have collaborated not only on targeting and
interception, but also on the monitoring of domestic UK communications. 

Special teams from GCHQ Cheltenham have been flown in secretly in the last
few years to a computer centre in Silicon Valley near San Francisco for
training on the special computer systems that carry out both domestic and
international interception. 

The centre near San Francisco has also been used to train staff from the
"Technical Department" of the People's Liberation Army General Staff, which
is the Chinese version of GCHQ. The Department operates two ultra-secret
joint US-Chinese listening stations in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region, close to the Soviet Siberian border. Allegedly, such surveillance
systems are only used to target Soviet or Warsaw Pact communications
signals, and those suspected of involvement in espionage and terrorism. But
those involved in ECHELON have stressed to Congress that there are no formal
controls over who may be targeted. And I have been told that junior
intelligence staff can feed target names into the system at all levels,
without any check on their authority to do so. Witnesses giving evidence to
the Congressional inquiry have discussed whether the Democratic presidential
contender Jesse Jackson was targeted; one source implied that he had been.
Even test engineers from manufacturing companies are able to listen in on
private citizens' communications, the inquiry was told. 

But because of the special Executive Order signed by President Reagan, US
intelligence operatives who know about such politically sensitive operations
face jail sentences if they speak out--despite the constitutional American
protection of freedom of speech and of the press. And in Britain, as we
know, the government is in the process of tightening the Official Secrets
Act to make the publication of any information from intelligence officials
automatically a crime, even if the information had already been published,
or had appeared overseas first. 

Copyright © New Statesman 

  _____  

[End] 

HTML by JYA/Urban Deadline <http://jya.com/index.htm>  

  _____  

Note: Duncan Campbell has generously provided additional US sources of
information on electronic inteception which shall be offered on this site
when available. 

Selected references: 

1972 Winslow Peck, former NSA analyst, Ramparts interview on NSA electronic
interception: http://jya.com/nsa-elint.htm  (89K) 

1973 Anonymous, "Uncle Sam and His 40,000 Snoopers," Nation Review (AU):
http://jya.com/nsa-40k.htm 

1975 US Senate (Church Report), "The National Security Agency and 4th
Amendment Rights," Part 1: http://jya.com/nsa-4th.htm 

1975 US Senate (Church Report), "The National Security Agency and 4th
Amendment Rights," Part 2: http://jya.com/nsa-4th-p2.htm 

1976 Duncan Campbell, "British MP Accuses U.S. of Electronic spying," New
Scientist, August 5, 1976, p. 268. 

1979 Duncan Campbell, "The Threat of the Electronic Spies," New Statesman,
February 2, 1979, pp. 140-44. 

1980 Duncan Campbell, "Society Under Surveillance," Policing The Police,
Vol. 2. (Ed: Ha.) John Calder, London. 

1980 Duncan Campbell and Clive Thomas, "BBC's Trade Secrets," New Statesman,
July 4, 1980, pp. 13-14. 

1980 Duncan Campbell and Linda Melvern, "America's Big Ear on Europe," New
Statesman, July 18, 1980, pp. 10-14. 

1981 Duncan Campbell, (Ed.) "Big Brother Is Listening - Phone tappers and
the security state", 1st ed. Vol. 2. New Statesman, London. 

1983 Duncan Campbell, "Spy in the Sky," New Statesman, September 9, 1983,
pp. 8-9. 

1983  James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret
Agency, London, Penguin. Excerpts: 

Chapter 8 - Partners <http://jya.com/pp08.htm>   (76K)
Chapter 9 - Competition <http://jya.com/pp09.htm>   (69K)
Chapter 10 - Abyss <http://jya.com/pp10.htm>   (43K) 

1984 Duncan Campbell, The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American Military
Power in Britain, London, Michael Joseph. 

1985 Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties That Bind: Intelligence
Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries, London, Allen & Unwin. 

1986 Duncan Campbell and Patrick Forbes, "UK's Listening Link to Apartheid,"
New Statesman, August 1, 1986, pp. 101-11. 

1986 Duncan Campbell and S. Connor, On The Record, Michael Joseph, London. 

1987 William Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security, New
York, Random House. Excerpt: 

Chapter 8 - Foreign Bases: A Net Spread Wide <http://jya.com/db08.htm>
(71K) 

1989 Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, New York,
Ballinger. Excerpts: 

Chapter 8 - Signals Intelligence <http://jya.com/usic08.htm>   (97K)
Chaper 12 - Exchange and  <http://jya.com/usic12.htm> Liaison Arrangements
(72K) 

1994, Spyworld, co-author Mike Frost, formerly agent with Canada's
Communication Security Establisment (CSE), Doublday. See following item for
more on Frost's espionage revelations. 

1996 Nicky Hager, Secret Power: New Zealand's Role In the International Spy
Network, Craig Potton, Nelson, New Zealand. 

Chapter 2, Hooked up to the spy network:
<http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_c2.htm> The UKUSA system 

1996 Intelligence Online report on UKUSA cooperation:
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/brits-usa.int45 

1997 Daily Telegraph report "Spies Like US" on Mentwith Hill (with aerial
photo) and other commentary:
http://www.accessone.com/%7Erivero/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelon.html
<http://www.accessone.com/~rivero/POLITICS/ECHELON/echelon.html>  

1998 Nicky Hager, Covert Action Quarterly article on ECHELON:
http://jya.com/echelon.htm  (30K) 

1998 European Parliament, STOA report, Assessment of the Technologies of
Political Control: http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm  (295K) 

1999 http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/news/1999/may99.htm 

Development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic
information (Appraisal of technologies of political control) 

(1) The perception of economic risks arising from the potential
vulnerability of electronic commercial media to interception; Survey of
opinions of experts, by Nikos BOGONIKOLOS, Zeus E.E.I.G, Patras, Greece
Interim Study, Working document for the STOA Panel, Workplan 1998 -
98/14/01, EN, May 1999, PE 168.184/Int.St./Part 1/4 

http://cryptome.org/dst-1.htm 

(2) The legality of the interception of electronic communications: A concise
survey of the principal legal issues and instruments under international,
European and national law, by Chris ELLIOTT, Surrey, UK Final Study, Working
document for the STOA Panel, Workplan 1998 - 8/14/01, EN, April 1999, PE
168.184/part 2/4 

http://cryptome.org/dst-2.htm 

(3) Encryption and cryptosystems in electronic surveillance: A survey of the
technology assessment issues, by Franck LEPRÉVOST, Technische Universität
Berlin, Germany Final Study, Working document for the STOA Panel, Workplan
1998 - 98/14/01, EN, April 1999, PE 168.184/part 3/4 

http://cryptome.org/dst-3.htm 

(4) The state of the art in Communications Intelligence (COMINT) of
automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband
multi-language leased or common carrier systems, and its applicability to
COMINT targeting and selection, including speech recognition, by Duncan
CAMPBELL, IPTV Ltd., Edinburgh, UK Final Study, Working document for the
STOA Panel, Workplan 1998 - 98/14/01, EN, April 1999, PE 168.184/part 4/4: 

http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm 

Or a mirror at JYA, Zipped by Duncan Campbell for your convenience: 

http://jya.com/ic2000.zip  (961K) 

The National Security Agency Web site: http://www.nsa.gov:8080 

Related US Office of Technology Assessment reports on electronic
surveillance, 1972-1996: http://jya.com/esnoop.htm 

 



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