How Britain and the US keep watch on the world
By Phillip Knightley
27 February 2004
From the National Security Agency's imposing headquarters at Fort
Meade, Maryland, ringed by a double-chain fence topped by barbed wire
with strands of electrified wire between them, America "bugs" the
world.
Nothing politically or militarily significant, whether mentioned in a
telephone call, in a conversation in the office of the secretary
general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, or in a company fax or
e-mail, escapes its attention.
Its computers - measured in acres occupied by them rather than simple
figures - "vacuum the entire electromagnetic spectrum", homing in on
"key words" which may suggest something of interest to NSA customers
is being conveyed.
The NSA costs at least $3.5bn (£1.9bn) a year to run. It employs at
least 20,000 officers (not counting the 100,000 servicemen and
civilians around the world over whom it has control). Its shredders
process 40 tons of paper a day.
Its junior partner is Britain's Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the eavesdropping organisation
for which Katharine Gun worked. Like NSA, GCHQ is a highly secret
operation. Until 1983, when one of its officers, Geoffrey Prime, was
charged with spying for the Russians, the Government had refused to
reveal what GCHQ's real role was, no doubt because its operations in
peacetime were without a legal basis. Its security is maintained by
massive and deliberately intimidating security.
Newspapers have been discouraged from mentioning it; a book by a
former GCHQ officer, Jock Kane, was seized by Special Branch police
officers and a still photograph of its headquarters was banned by the
Independent Broadcasting Authority, leaving a blank screen during a
World in Action programme. As with NSA, the size of GCHQ's staff at
Cheltenham, about 6,500, gives no real indication of its strength. It
has monitoring stations in Cyprus, West Germany, and Australia and
smaller ones elsewhere. Much of its overseas work is done by service
personnel.
Its budget is thought to be more than £300m a year. A large part of
this is funded by the United States in return for the right to run NSA
listening stations in Britain - Chicksands, Bedfordshire; Edzell,
Scotland; Mentworth Hill, Harrogate; Brawdy, Wales - and on British
territory around the world.
The collaboration between the two agencies offers many advantages to
both. Not only does it make monitoring the globe easier, it solves
tricky legal problems and is the basis of the Prime Minister's
statement yesterday that all Britain's bugging is lawful. The two
agencies simply swap each other's dirty work.
GCHQ eavesdrops on calls made by American citizens and the NSA
monitors calls made by British citizens, thus allowing each government
plausibly to deny it has tapped its own citizens' calls, as they do.
The NSA station at Menwith Hill intercepts all international telephone
calls made from Britain and GCHQ has a list of American citizens whose
phone conversations interest the NSA.
The NSA request to GCHQ for help in bugging the diplomats from those
nations who were holding out for a second Security Council resolution
to authorise an attack on Iraq is unsurprising. Nor is it surprising
that both organisations wanted to provide their political masters with
recordings of private conversations of high-ranking international
diplomats.
It is not difficult. Listening "bugs" can be planted in phones,
electrical plugs, desk lamps and book spines. Given a clear line of
sight, one device enables someone to detect and and interpret sound
waves vibrating against the glass window panes of an office.
Bugging the world is not the problem. The problem is avoiding drowning
in a sea of information. We should not be surprised that GCHQ and NSA
eavesdrop on us. We pay them to do it. We should be asking: "Do they
earn their keep?" And, unless we get a few more whistle-blowers like
Ms Gun, we will not know, because both agencies surround themselves
with a wall of secrecy.
WHO DO WE BUG?
Although under domestic law GCHQ needs a warrant from the Home
Secretary to tap telephones in Britain, it can do so abroad without
such authorisation.
But the United Nations headquarters in New York is considered
sovereign territory, and placing a bug there would be illegal under
international law.
Intelligence services spy on hostile and friendly countries, the
latter mainly for commercial reasons, but also to gain an edge in
diplomatic negotiations. Nato allies are not always immune from
intelligence operations by Britain.
Staff working for the UN inspection teams in Iraq were convinced they
were under surveillance.
France, Germany and Russia complained of a rise in espionage against
them. There was intense activity directed at Jordan and Syria, as well
as Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt.
Officials say the only shock about Katharine Gun's discovery of an
e-mail from the National Security Agency is that she was surprised by
it.
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