Hemmeligholdelse eller
demokrati? Danmark i Echelon?
Indhold:
9.
marts 2004 Mail til udenrigsminister Per Stig Møller
5.
april …oversendt til justitsministeriet
4. maj svar fra Justitsministeriet:
”. Justitsministeriet kan i
den anledning oplyse, at Justitsministeriet i forbindelse med besvarelsen af
spørgsmål fra Folketinget har tilkendegivet, at Justitsministeriet ikke er bekendt med oplysninger,
der hverken kan be- eller afkræfte eksistensen af et globalt aflytningssystem
med tilnavnet ”Echelon”.
Justitsministeriet foretager ikke yderligere i anledning af Deres henvendelse…” jf http://www.arnehansen.net/040504Echelon-sv.f.Justitsmin.RBL20962.doc
Frederikshavn d. 9.03.04
Til udenrigsminister Per Stig Møller
Kan De bekræfte eller afkræfte Holger Terps nedenstående påstande som følge af Danmarks deltagelse i Echelon-samarbejdet ?
(Altså på baggrund af oplysningerne i nederststående mail:"On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 09:27:40 -0500, "Global Network" <globalnet@mindspring.com> wrote: Mar. 7, 2004.
Canada listens to world as partner
in spy system,
LYNDA HURST,
Toronto Star (Canada)"" )
?
Med venlig hilsen fra en bekymret borger og medlem af Aldrig mere Krig
(med kopi til Udenrigspolitisk Nævns medlemmer)
Arne Hansen, Sønderjyllands Alle 35, 9900 Frederikshavn
(videresendt, mail om ikke ønskes. ah)
On Tue, 9
Mar 2004 07:11:18 +0100, "Holger Terp" holgerterp@pc.dk > wrote:
Hemmeligholdelse eller demokrati? Danmark i Echelon?
Af Holger Terp
Det danske Fredsaademi
Kan oplysningerne i artiklen bekræftes, så er det for første gang 'bevist', at danske efterretningstjenester deltager i Echelon-samarbejdet.
Det burde få politikere og journalister op ad stolene.
Hvem besluttede, hvornår Danmark skulle deltage i Echelon-samarbejdet
`Hvilke overtrædelser af posthemmeligheden sker der som en følge af Echelons virke?
Hvilken parlamentarisk kontrol er der med Echelon?
Hvordan drages de ansvarlige politikere til ansvar for den danske deltagelse i Echelon?
Der er brug for en dansk eller en international Echelon-kommission til undersøgelse af Echelons virksomhed.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Arne Hansen" <post@arnehansen.net>
To:
<post@arnehansen.net>
Sent:
Sunday, March 07, 2004 10:59 PM
Subject:
(fwd) EVERYBODY SPIES EXCEPT THE "POOR ONES"
(videresendt, mail tilbage hvis uønsket, ah)
On Sun, 7
Mar 2004 09:27:40 -0500, "Global Network"
< globalnet@mindspring.com > wrote:
Mar. 7,
2004.
Canada listens
to world as partner in spy system
LYNDA HURST
Toronto Star
(Canada)
When a former
cabinet minister recently charged that British
spies had
listened in on U.N. chief Kofi Annan in the countdown to the
Iraq War, Prime
Minister Tony Blair stonewalled.
Clare Short
said she'd seen transcripts of Annan's
conversations.
A furious Blair refused to confirm or deny the
accusation,
but blasted Short for going public.
The allegation
came as no surprise to anyone at the United
Nations.
It's a given that the New York headquarters are bugged and
always have
been, by friend and foe alike. It's technically illegal
and
officials don't like it. But there is nothing they can do but
register a
complaint and enjoy the squirming when a country gets
caught
red-handed.
The public may
not be so blasé about the fact that "good"
countries,
not just "bad," practice espionage - routine,
all-pervasive,
electronic espionage. But it's naive to think
otherwise.
All nations spy on friends as well as enemies.
Not that anyone
broke into Annan's office and planted a
Watergate-style
bugging device.
What Short
likely saw were intercepts from a little-known
surveillance
system called Echelon, which automatically monitors
virtually
all of the world's communications.
Every day,
billions of telephone calls, e-mails, faxes, radio
transmissions,
even Internet downloads are captured by orbiting
satellites
monitoring signals on Earth, then processed by high-powered
computers.
A minute percentage of the traffic is "tagged" for
transcription,
translation if necessary, and analysis.
The ordinary
messages of ordinary people get caught up in the
sweep, but
aren't generally tagged. The likes of a U.N.
secretary-general
are.
"Echelon
is an electronic vacuum cleaner, but it is finely
tuned,"
says Canadian intelligence specialist Wesley Wark. "They have
to be
precise to get what they want."
But who is
"they?"
The high-tech
Echelon system is operated by five nations known
as the
UKUSA alliance: the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia
and New
Zealand.
Referred to in
some circles as the "Anglo-Saxon Mafia," the
U.S.-led
network has existed for 58 years, emerging out of the Allies'
successful
signals-intelligence, or "sigint," operations during World
War II.
Its original
primary job was to spy on the Soviet Union and win
the Cold
War. Today, it is counterterrorism.
In a series of
still-classified bilateral agreements - each
country has
a deal with the U.S. - UKUSA members pledged to jointly
acquire and
share all signals and communications intelligence. Common
procedures,
targets, equipment and methods were spelled out, along
with a commitment
to secrecy about the alliance's operations.
The world was
split into regions: Britain got Africa and Europe
east to the
Urals; Australia and New Zealand got Oceania; and the U.S.
got the
Soviet Union and wherever else it wanted.
As of 1946,
Canada, through the newly created Communications
Security
Establishment (CSE), would home in on the northern latitudes
and polar
regions. It had shown its expertise there during the war.
"In the
war, Canada had the best antennas for listening to the
Soviet
Union," says John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie
Institute,
an anti-global violence think tank in Toronto. "And we had
prime
listening posts, such as Alert."
Canadian Forces
Station Alert, on Ellesmere Island in
present-day
Nunavut, is still an important ground station in the
Canada's
network of "sigint" posts. It mainly intercepts satellite
military
communications.
The other three
are CFS Leitrim, south of Ottawa, which
intercepts
diplomatic traffic in and out of Canada; CFS Masset off the
coast of
B.C., and Canadian Forces Base Gander, Nfld., both of which
primarily
tap into maritime transmissions.
The high-tech
Echelon listening system was devised in 1971 by
the
American National Security Agency (NSA), which was, and remains,
the
dominant UKUSA member and contributor of technology.
Today, it is
believed to operate 120 intercept stations in up to
a dozen
countries; their giant antennas all point at the
communications
satellites continuously circling the planet.
With the end of
the Cold War, Echelon's priorities moved to
monitoring
rogue states and international organized crime. Since the
9/11
attacks, however, its emphasis is on fighting terrorism, and all
that comes
under that rubric - attitudes inside the U.N. Security
Council
toward the Iraq War, for example.
The
intelligence gleaned is shared among the five alliance
partners
and often with other participants: Germany, Norway, Denmark,
and Turkey
have all signed secret "third-party" UKUSA agreements.
Though Echelon
is by far the biggest monitoring network in the
world,
other nations have their own satellite-based listening systems.
Russia,
China, France, Israel, India and Pakistan all use "sigint" as
a major
source of intelligence.
"Everybody
listens to everybody else non-stop," says John
Thompson.
"The public does not realize it, but Canada has been doing
it for
decades. It's an important part of our defence." The only
countries
that don't monitor global communications, he says, are "the
poor ones
who can't afford the technology."
Canada's
low-profile CSE collects foreign intelligence in the
name of
national security, but also attempts to block electronic
interception
by other states.
After the
Anti-terrorist Act was passed in 2001, the agency's
budget was
boosted to about $300 million. Its staff - known as
"291ers"
after their military occupation code - was increased to
1,300, making
it the country's second biggest spy force, after the
Canadian
Security Intelligence Service.
More computer
power was added to headquarters and its other
properties
in Ottawa, and extra antennas were installed at some of the
listening
stations. Leitrim now has six.
Global
Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick,
ME 04011
(207)
729-0517
(207)
319-2017 (Cell phone)
To:
<post@arnehansen.net>
Subject: E-post af 9.marts 2004 til Uderigsministeren vedr. "Echelon"
From: "Ivertsen, Peter" <PETIVE@um.dk>
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 16:02:56 +0200
Udenrigsministeriet, den 5.april 2004.
Hr. Arne Hansen
Sønderjyllands Alle 35
9990 Frederikshavn
Udenrigsministeriet har oversendt Deres e-post af 9. marts 2004 til udenrigsministeren til Justitsministeriet, hvorunder spørgsmål om"Echelon" henhører, med anmodning til Justitsministeriet om at besvare Deres henvendelse.
Venlig hilsen
Peter Ivertsen
Udenrigsministeriet .
Svar af 4.05.05 fra justitsministeriet: