U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy Network
Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2001
Spies Tap Police and Government Phones
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has stumbled on
the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside the United States.
The U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly 100 Israeli citizens
with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence
services.
The spy ring reportedly includes employees of two Israeli-owned
companies that currently perform almost all the official wiretaps for
U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement.
The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), appear to have been
breached by organized crime units working inside Israel and the
Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
Both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller
were warned on Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from local, state
and federal law enforcement officials. The warning stated, "Law
enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less
effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."
The spy ring enabled criminals to use reverse wiretaps against U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement operations. The illegal monitoring
may have resulted in the deaths of several informants and reportedly
spoiled planned anti-drug raids on crime syndicates.
Global Spy and Crime Network
The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant spy hunt
across the globe by American intelligence agencies. U.S. intelligence
officials now suspect the spy ring shared and sold information to
other nations.
"Why do you think Putin so nonchalantly and with such great fanfare
announced the shutdown of the Lourdes listening post in Cuba?" noted
Douglas Brown, president of Multilingual Data Solutions Inc. and
program director at the Nathan Hale Institute.
"Besides the PR benefit right before his visit here, the Russians
don't need it anymore. They've scraped together a cheaper, more
effective monitoring system. Is the Israeli company an element of that
system? I don't know," stated Brown.
"With all the whining and crying about Echelon and Carnivore, critics,
domestic and foreign, of U.S. electronic eavesdropping vastly
overestimate our abilities to process and disseminate the stuff,"
noted Brown.
"The critics also underestimated the incompetence and total ineptness
of the people running our intelligence and law enforcement services
during the Clinton-Gore years. One guy uses his home computer for
storing top secret documents; another high-tech guru guy can't figure
out how to save and retrieve his e-mail, and the guy in charge of
everything is having phone sex over an open line with one of his
employees," said Brown.
"On the other hand, the Europeans, including the Russians, have been
much more focused on the nuts and bolts of practical systems to
process the information they scoop up. The stories linking German
intelligence and the L&H scandal got very little play here but were
widely noted in the European software community," said Brown.
"Except for a few Germans and an occasional Pole, nobody can match the
Russians in designing and developing algorithms. We may have some of
the world's greatest programmers, but the Russians and Europeans do a
better job of matching up linguists and area experts with their
programmers," noted Brown.
The discovery of a major spy ring inside the United States is
straining the already tense relations with Israel. Although, Israel
denied any involvement with the penetration of the U.S. wiretap
system, the CIA and FBI are investigating the direct government ties
to the former Israeli military and intelligence officials now being
held by the Justice Department.
Israeli Company Provides U.S. Wiretaps
One company reported to be under investigation is Comverse Infosys, a
subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm. Comverse
provides almost all the wiretapping equipment and software for U.S.
law enforcement.
Custom computers and software made by Comverse are tied into the U.S.
phone network in order to intercept, record and store wiretapped
calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.
The penetration of Comverse reportedly allowed criminals to wiretap
law enforcement communications in reverse and foil authorized wiretaps
with advance warning. One major drug bust operation planned by the Los
Angeles police was foiled by what now appear to be reverse wiretaps
placed on law enforcement phones by the criminal spy ring.
Flawed laws Led to Compromise
Several U.S. privacy and security advocates contend the fault actually
lies in the CALEA legislation passed by Congress that allowed the spy
ring to operate so effectively. Lisa Dean, vice president for
technology policy at Free Congress Foundation, delivered a scathing
critique of the breach of the U.S. law enforcement wiretap system.
"We are exercising our 'I told you so' rights on this," said Dean.
"From the beginning, both the political right and left warned Congress
and the FBI that they were making a huge mistake by implementing
CALEA. That it would jeopardize the security of private
communications, whether it's between a mother and her son or between
government officials. The statement just issued by law enforcement
agencies has confirmed our worst fears," concluded Dean.
"How many more 9/11s do we have to suffer?" asked Brad Jansen, deputy
director for technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation.
"The CALEA form of massive surveillance is a poor substitute for real
law enforcement and intelligence work. It is an after-the-fact method
of crime fighting. It is not designed to prevent crime. Massive
wiretapping does not equal security. Instead, we have elected to
jeopardize our national security in exchange for poor law
enforcement," said Jansen.
"For example, FINCEN monitoring of all money transactions did not
detect al-Qaeda, nor did it find Mohamed Atta before he boarded his
last flight. It was an ATM receipt left in his rental car that led the
FBI to the bin Laden bank accounts," noted Jansen.
U.S. National Security Compromised
"The CALEA approach is the same approach law enforcement has been
pushing for a number of years. It's the same approach that was used to
push Carnivore, Magic Lantern, FINCEN and even the failed Clipper
project. This approach leads to a compromise in national security and
in personal security for the American public," said Jansen.
"In addition, there is always government abuse of these kinds of
systems," stated Jansen. "Law enforcement on all levels does a very
poor job in policing itself. We need to hold our police and government
officials to the highest standards."
"This also hurts the U.S. economy when the whole world knows that our
communication systems are not secure. We cannot compete with inferior
products when other countries are exporting secure software and
hardware. New Zealand, India and Chile already offer security products
that actually provide real security," stated Jansen.
"The current mentality of law enforcement is what failed to protect us
from 9/11. CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from terror attacks in
the future. The system does not provide better intelligence
information. It actually leads to less security and more crime. We get
the worst of both worlds," concluded Jansen.
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
