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19 October 1998
Source: Marie-Jose Klaver, NRC
Handelsblad (WordPerfect format, 136K)
See also shorter European Parliment version: http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/166499/execsum.htm
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES
OF POLITICAL CONTROL
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An Omega Foundation Summary & Options
Report
For The European Parliament
SEPTEMBER 1998
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 Surveillance Systems
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
NOTES
ANNEX 1 - BIBLIOGRAPHY
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(1), 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 eavesdropping 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."(2)
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.
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 protesters.
Such marking appears to be kid-glove in its restraint but tags all protesters
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.
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.(3)
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. (4)
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's may 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:-
(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.
The Interim Report critically evaluated the so called safety of these
allegedly 'harmless crowd control weapons.(5)
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 (OC)
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.(6)
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 protesters heads, opened their
eyes and "swabbed" the burning liquid directly on to their eyeballs).(7)
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.(8)
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 Air Force, 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.(9)
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."(10)
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.(11)
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."(12) Informed
by principle 3 and 4 of the United Nations Basic Principles on The Use
of Force & Firearms (13), MEP's may
wish to consider the following 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 unforeseen 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.
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.(14)
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. (15)
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.(16)
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..(17)
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.(18)
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?"(19) 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:
(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.
The Interim Report on the variety of hardware, software and liveware
involved in human interrogation and torture.(20)
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)(21),
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.(22)
Members of the European Parliament may wish to consider the following
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.
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.(23)
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."(24)What the
East German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming a reality
in the free world."(25)
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 individuals, 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, e.g., by car number plate or by time. Given
that material from such systems can be seamlessly 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.(26)
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.
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.(27)
We are at the beginning of a revolution in "algorithmic surveillance"
- effectively data analysis via complex algorithms 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. (28)
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 unforeseen 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."(29) 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.
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.(30)
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.
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 million subscribers down to a few
hundred metres, and going back at least half a year. (31)
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 laundering 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 and 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 linking 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,(32) 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 to date 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.(33)
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 carrier (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 conversations 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 negotiations 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 McDonnell 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 effectively as possible by means of concerted and convergent
action." Yet under the terms of the Special relationship, Britain cannot
engage in open consultation with its other European partners.(34)
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 satellite. (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 advised to set up appropriate independent audit
and oversight procedures 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.(35)
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.(36)
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.(37)
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 exchange 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.(38) 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:
(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 constitutional 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 between 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).
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 .(39)
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.(40) Members of the European
Parliament may wish to consider the following 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.
(c) 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.
(d) 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.
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.
1. The Interim Report on "An
Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control" (PE 166.499), is available
free on request from the STOA secretariat in Luxembourg. Where appropriate,
readers of this summary report seeking further detail are referred to
the relevant pages of the interim study.
2. Ackroyd C, Margolis, K., Rosenhead, J., Shallice,
T., (1977) The Technology of Political Control, Penguin Books,
Middlesex, UK.
3. Statewatch, October, 1996, pp 6-7. A more recent
related example concerns the proposed WEU creation of an 800 strong armed
paramilitary police force drawn from existing specialist squads at the
national level, for intervention in Central and Eastern Europe, to deal
with public order, riot control and terrorism. (Statewatch, Vol 8, No.3-4,
August 1998)
4. The Interim Report discusses in further detail
specific innovations in area denial technology; surveillance technology
including biometric systems such as face recognition; data-veillance;
discrete order vehicles; less-lethal weapons; lethal weapons; and execution
technologies (Interim Report, Sections 3.1-3.6, pp 8-15).
5. Interim Report, pp 22-39
6. "Critics Question Use of Pepper Spray," Rutland
Herald and Barre Times-Argus, 22.2.98, Vermont, USA.
7. Amnesty International Press Release, AI: "USA:
Police use of pepper spray is tantamount to torture," 7 November 1997.
8. No one from the police or home office has subsequently
visited this inspector who remains partially sighted - See The Guardian,
29 January 1998.
9. Interim Report, p 39.
10. Pugwash Newsletter, November 1997, p.
276.
11. Bill Arkin writing in Journal of Medicine,
Conflict and Survival, quoted in The Guardian, 9 December 1997.
12. Pugwash, Ibid.
13. Principle 3 states that: "the development and
deployment of non-lethal incapacitating weapons should be carefully evaluated
in order to minimise the risk of endangering uninvolved persons, and the
use of such weapons should be carefully controlled"; principle 4 requires
governments to take steps to ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force
is not used by law enforcement officers, and that force is used "only
if other means remain ineffective".
14. Interim Report, pp. 40-43.
15. Jessica Mitford's, The American Prison Business,
Penguin 1977, provided a good discussion of early behaviour modification
techniques tested in US gaols.
16. For example in 1996, the UK treasury announced
enforced cutbacks of some 3,000 prison jobs. With the UK prison population
expected to grow by 20,000 over the next 10 years due to the sentencing
changes introduced by Home Secretary Michael Howard, staffing levels are
sliding back to those prevailing at the time of the prison riots in the
late 1980's. In these circumstances, the shortsighted prospect is one
of expensive wardens being replaced with cheaper and more malleable technology,
both passive and punitive.
17. Warren P, "Prisons go shopping in face of staff
cuts," Computing, 25 January 1996
18. Restricted Contract Procedure (CC3160) for Her
Majesty's Prison Service, Supply and Transport Services, Tenders Electronic
Daily, Luxembourg.
19. Quoted in Amnesty International, United States
of America - Use of electro-shock belts, June 1996.
20. Interim Report, pp 44-52; 54-57.
21. In its report Arming the Torturers (Amnesty
International, 1997) Amnesty named the fifty countries where electroshock
torture and ill treatment had been carried out in prisons, police stations
and detention centres. They are:
Afghanistan, Algeria,Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil,
Bulgaria, Chad, Chile, China, Cyprus, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Egypt,
El Salvador, Ethiopia, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia/East
Timor, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco/Western Sahara, Nepal, Netherlands
Antilles, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russian federation, Saudi
Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Togo, Turkey,
USA, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Yugoslavia - Kosovo province,
Zaire.
Amnesty recognises that the real figure is probably higher, "as the
use of these weapons in torture can be very difficult to detect."
22. Quoted in Sunday Business, 30.9.98, London.
23. Speech by Hansjourg Geiger, German Federal Commission
for the Stasi Files, April 14, 1993.
24. David Banisar, Covert Action Quarterly,
No.56, Spring 1996.
25. David Banisar, CAQ Quarterly, No.56,
Spring 1996.
26. The Interim Report (p 18) covers the minimal
elements of such a code.
27. Patrick Hook, "Putting a Face to a Face," The
Telegraph, 13.08.98.
28. "Your number may be up," Times, May
13, 1994.
29. Common Position EC No/95, Adopted by the Council
on 20 February 1995, Directive 95/EC of the European Parliament and the
Council, "On the Protection of Individuals, With Regard to the Processing
of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data."
30. Interim Report, p.18
31. Quoted from Reuters, 28 December 1997.
32. Commission Statement - Transatlantic relations/Echelon
System. Transatlantic relations following 18 May EU-US Summit and the
use of monitoring techniques in the field of communications. (It would
be somewhat unusual if Echelon was actually discussed at this meeting,
apart from a context to neutralise current disquiet).
33. Fletcher, M., "Cook Faces Quiz on Big Brother
Spy Net," Financial Mail on Sunday, 1 March 1998.
34. Privacy International, "Divided Loyalties: Revelations
About American Spying In Britain Are Causing A Storm in Europe," Briefing
Paper by Simon Davies, 4 September 1998.
35. Statewatch can be contacted via 00-0181-802-1882
or via their website http//www.poptel.org.uk/statewatch/
36. Statewatch Vol 6, No.1 Jan-Feb 1996.
37. Statewatch Vol 7, No. 1 January-February 1997.
38. Statewatch, Vol 7, No. 4 & 5, July to October
1997
39. Interim Report p.53-57
40. Doc EN\RE\264264474
AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL
CONTROL
AN OMEGA FOUNDATION SUMMARY & OPTIONS REPORT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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