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| Author | Topic: Population Control |
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The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (Moderator) |
posted 3/5/06 11:10 AM
The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy Here's the second installment of the article about TETRA from the West Highland Free Press Newspaper. It's taken ages to scan in, please don't waste it. Read it, and pass it on. Regards, Chris Behind-the-scenes battle for control of the airwaves West Highland Free Press 3rd March 2006. Last week, MICHAEL RUSSELL looked at the health concerns surrounding TETRA - the UK's new police microwave communications system, which was due to be switched on in the Highlands and Islands last month. This week he concludes his two-part investigation with a look at the corporate and political manoeuvrings behind the technology. In her book "The Silent Takeover - Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" Cambridge University's Dr Noreena Hertz details trie workings and history of a global surveillance network known as ECHELON. Set up after World War Two, ECHELON was and still is an intelligence-gathering partnership involving the five English-speaking countries. Originally, the system was designed to defend the West against the spread of communism. One of ECHELON'S biggest operations centres is the Menwith Hill listening post in north Yorkshire, which is run by the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham and the US National Security Agency. Menwith Hill, along with GCHQ itself, has the ability to intercept and monitor much of Europe's email and phone traffic. Dr Hertz - now likened to a British Naomi Klein, but formerly an economic adviser to the Russian Government of Boris Yeltsin - goes on to describe how ECHELON, once used to monitor communications within the Soviet Union, has been misused since the early 1990s as a tool of industrial espionage. Its main beneficiaries have been American multinationals. "Within days [of the February 2000 revelations] the European Parliament released a report containing serious allegations," Dr Hertz wrote. "American corporations had, it was said, 'stolen' contracts heading for European and Asian firms after the NSA intercepted conversations and data and then passed them on to the US Commerce Department for use by American firms. "The Europeans were stunned to discover that Big Brother was no longer communist Russia or Red China, but its supposed ally and partner, America, spying on European consumers and business for its own commercial gain." The Parliament's five-part report was released in February 2000. Part Two - Interception Capabilities 2000 - was authored by Scottish investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, whose expose of the Zircon spy satellite was pulled by the BBC in January 1987 after pressure from the Thatcher Government. A Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System was then set up by the Parliament, delivering its one and only report in September 2001. Following the European Parliament's reports, the NSA admitted the existence of ECHELON, though they denied that it had been used for industrial espionage. But the concerns persisted. Then, in April 2003 - just a month after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq - the European Parliament turned its focus on fresh allegations of American spying. This time the concern centred on the the UK's new data-access and communications system for the police, TETRA, which was switched on in the Northern Constabulary area last month. According to the Parliament's new report "Motorola played a crucial role in defining the Tetra European standard, with the collaboration from the National Security Agency, in order to guarantee for the US government the possibility that TETRA networks could be eavesdropped". Lastly, the document pointed to Poland, which proposed a Motorola network for its police force in the wake of the fighter contract awarded to US defence giant Lockheed Martin. "It is urgent that the future members of the Union carefully evaluate the risks of too large a reliance on a technology for which they have no guarantee," the report concluded. Poland was one of the 10 accession states to join the European Union in May 2004. These concerns were rearticulat-ed last week, when I spoke to Dr Franz Niederer, President of the TETRAPOL Users' Club. TETRAPOL is a rival system to TETRA and is used by Governments and emergency services across Europe. Until he assumed his current position, Dr Niederer was head of defence communications for the Swiss government. So concerned was he by US snooping, that Dr Niederer organised a special conference entitled "TETRAPOL as a tool for the European Security Architecture", sponsored by Franco-German arms giant EADS, in Brussels in October 2004. Much of it was devoted to ECHELON and the consquences for closer European integration of the so-called special relationship between the UK and US. more.... -------- Surveillance Society http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/index.html Informant: Kev Hall http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1648721/ |
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