IP: "Intercepting the Internet"

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: "Caspar Bowden" <cb () fipr org>
> To: "Dave Farber (E-mail)" <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
>
> http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/The_Paper/Weekly/Story/0,3605,45981,00.html
> Intercepting the Internet
>
> A secret international organisation is pushing through law to bring in
> eavesdropping points for websites and other forms of digital communication.
> Duncan Campbell reports
>
> Thursday April 29, 1999
>
> European commission documents obtained this week reveal plans to require
> manufacturers and operators to build in "interception interfaces" to the
> Internet and all future digital communications systems. The plans, drafted
> by a US-led international organisation of police and security agencies, will
> be proposed to EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the end of May. They
> appear in Enfopol 19, a restricted document leaked to the London-based
> Foundation for Information Policy Research
> (http://www.fipr.org/polarch/index.html)
>
> . The plans require the installation of a network of tapping centres
> throughout Europe, operating almost instantly across all national
> boundaries, providing access to every kind of communications including the
> net and satellites. A German tapping centre could intercept Internet
> messages in Britain, or a British detective could listen to Dutch phone
> calls. There could even be several tapping centres listening in at once.
>
> Enfopol 19 was agreed by an EU police working party a month ago. It was
> condemned last week by the civil liberties committee of the European
> Parliament. But the European Parliament will shortly dissolve to face
> elections in June. Meanwhile, EU ministers are preparing to adopt a
> convention on Mutual Legal Assistance, including international interception
> arrangements.
>
> If the Enfopol 19 proposals are enacted, internet service providers (ISPs)
> as well as telecommunications network operators face having to install
> monitoring equipment or software in their premises in a high security zone.
>
> Ministers were told two months ago that an international committee of
> experts regarded new European policy on tapping the internet "as an urgent
> necessity". But they will not be told that the policy has been formulated at
> hitherto secret meetings of an organisation founded by the FBI. Known as the
> International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (Ilets), police and
> security agents from up to 20 countries including Hong Kong, Canada,
> Australia and New Zealand have been meeting regularly for seven years.
>
> The Ilets group was founded by the FBI in 1993 after repeatedly failing to
> persuade the US Congress to pass a new law requiring manufacturers and
> operators to build in a national tapping network, free of charge. Since
> then, Ilets has succeeded in having its plans adopted as EU policy and
> enacted into national legislation in a growing number of countries.
>
> The group first met at the FBI research and training centre in Quantico,
> Virginia, in 1993. The next year, they met in Bonn and agreed a document
> called the International Requirements For Interception, or IUR 1.0. Within
> two years, the IUR "requirements" had, unacknowledged and word for word,
> become the secret official policy of the EU. They became law in the United
> States.
>
> In June 1997, the Australian government succeeded in getting the
> International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to adopt the IUR requirements
> as a "priority". It told the ITU that "some countries are in urgent need of
> results in this area". Ilets and its experts met again in Dublin, Rome,
> Vienna and Madrid in 1997 and 1998, and drew up new "requirements" to
> intercept the Internet. Enfopol 19 is the result.
>
> Linx, the London Internet Exchange, is the hub of British Internet
> ommunications. According to Keith Mitchell, chairman of Linx: "Anything
> along the lines of the Enfopol scheme would probably have astronomical cost
> implications. In the event such a scheme was ever implementable, the costs
> should be met by the enforcement authorities. Since the industry cannot
> afford it, I doubt the public sector could "This kind of monitoring approach
> is based on a world view of telecomms operators which is both technically
> and economically outdated."