Report of NSA Spying Prompts Call for Probe (by Arlen Specter)

WASHINGTON - A key Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice Friday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority."

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Other key bipartisan members of Congress also called on the administration to explain and said a congressional investigation may be necessary.

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., appeared annoyed that the first he had heard of such a program was through a New York Times story published Friday. He said the report was troubling.

Neither Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the story earlier Friday, would confirm or deny that the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002.

That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States, the Times reported.

Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

"We need to look into that," McCain told reporters at the White House after a meeting on Iraq with President Bush. "Theoretically, I obviously wouldn't like it. But I don't know the extent of it and I don't know enough about it to really make an informed comment. Ask me again in about a week."

McCain said it's not clear whether a congressional probe is warranted. He said the topic had not come up in the meeting with Bush.

"We should be informed as to exactly what is going on and then find out whether an investigation is called for," he said.

"Of course I was concerned about the story," said Lieberman, who also attended the White House Iraq meeting. "I'm going to go back to the office and see if I can find out more about it."

"This is Big Brother run amok," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass. "We cannot protect our borders if we cannot protect our ideals." Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., called it a "shocking revelation" that he said "ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American."

Administration officials reacted to the report by asserting that the president has respected the Constitution while striving to protect the American people.

Rice said Bush has "acted lawfully in every step that he has taken." And McClellan said Bush "is going to remain fully committed to upholding our Constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people. And he has done both."

The report surfaced in an untimely fashion as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism.

The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaida by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said.

Faris' lawyer, David B. Smith, said on Friday the news puzzled him because none of the evidence against Faris appeared to have come from surveillance, other than officials eavesdropping on his cell phone calls while he was in FBI custody.

Some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions.

Asked about this on NBC's "Today" show, Rice said, "I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters."

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group's initial reaction to the NSA disclosure was "shock that the administration has gone so far in violating American civil liberties to the extent where it seems to be a violation of federal law."

Asked about the administration's contention that the eavesdropping has disrupted terrorist attacks, Fredrickson said the ACLU couldn't comment until it sees some evidence. "They've veiled these powers in secrecy so there's no way for Congress or any independent organizations to exercise any oversight."

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was reviewing its use of a classified database of information about suspicious people and activity inside the United States after a report by NBC News said the database listed activities of anti-war groups that were not a security threat to Pentagon property or personnel.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that while it appears that some information may have been left in the database longer than it should have been, it was not clear yet whether mistakes were made. A written statement issued by the department implied — but did not explicitly acknowledge — that some information had been handled improperly.

The administration had briefed congressional leaders about the NSA program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that handles national security issues.

Aides to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to comment Thursday night.

The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.

San Diego Union-Tribune
October 17, 1999

Spy in the sky? That could be Echelon

Some fear snoops target e-mail, calls

By Kathryn Balint
STAFF WRITER

Is the government listening in on your phone calls? Reading your e-mail for words like "plutonium," "Clinton" or "terrorism"? Rep. Bob Barr, R.-Ga., a former CIA analyst, worries it might be. The European Parliament is concerned, too. So is a small group of computer users who call themselves "hacktivists." They're so convinced we're all being spied on that Thursday they're planning what may be the first mass protest using electronic mail as a weapon.

Their target? A top-secret global surveillance system that sounds more like something out of "The X-Files" than a real computer network operated by five countries. The system, known as Echelon, isn't officially acknowledged by the U.S. government. "We don't confirm or deny the existence of Echelon," said a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Agency. The agency is believed to play a major role in operating the system.

Still, there's growing evidence that Echelon exists. "There is this science-fiction quality to this that is hard for people to accept," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But it appears to be quite real. People are just beginning to get over the hump of disbelief."

In Europe, where the European Parliament began questioning Echelon's capabilities last year, the subject is serious news. In the United States, though, many Americans have never heard of Echelon. "It wasn't until this year that a member of Congress (Barr) had ever actually uttered the word 'Echelon' on the floor of the House," Steinhardt said.

No one really even knows what the code name Echelon means. The word itself is defined as "a steplike formation of ships or troops," or the "levels of responsibility or importance in an organization." From what has been uncovered so far, mostly by investigative journalists, Echelon is a worldwide network of satellites and computerized interception stations operated by the governments of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Some describe it as a "huge vacuum cleaner" sweeping up e-mails, faxes and telephone calls.

Each month, "we're talking tens of millions of volumes if it was printed out on pages," said Christopher Simpson, an American University professor who has written four books about national security technology. Simpson said Echelon scans e-mail for hot-button words like militia, Davidian, terrorism and AK-47. It can recognize individual voices in telephone calls and track who is calling whom.

The system, Simpson said, was created during the Cold War to detect matters of national security, such as terrorism. But in the past year, there have been growing concerns, from conservatives and liberals alike, of illegal eavesdropping by Echelon:

An official report to the European Parliament published last year concluded that Echelon has listening posts all over the world that can intercept any phone calls, e-mail or faxes transmitted by satellite. "Echelon is designed for primarily nonmilitary targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country," the report said. A follow-up report issued in May said there is evidence that the U.S. government has used Echelon to pick up the secrets of foreign corporations and pass them on to American companies.

The Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., last year produced a detailed report denouncing Echelon's "shameless and illegal targeting of political opponents, business competitors, dissidents and even Christian ministries." The foundation urged Congress to investigate.

Earlier this year, Barr called for congressional hearings on Echelon. "By all appearances, what we have is a massive government program that scoops up unbelievably huge numbers of private communications, indiscriminately, without any oversight or court involvement," Barr said in a telephone interview. "There's a very important, but fine, line between legitimate foreign intelligence gathering and unconstitutional eavesdropping on American citizens, and it appears that line has been crossed."

The ACLU wrote to congressional representatives in April about concerns that Echelon could illegally intercept Americans' private communications. "The troubling aspect is that Echelon is this huge system that operates without any oversight or scrutiny from anybody," said the ACLU's Steinhardt. Because Echelon is a top-secret project, its name doesn't appear in the National Security Agency's budget. Even most congressional representatives aren't privy to what it does or how much it costs.

But a key question is, does Echelon snoop on ordinary, law-abiding people? "You bet," said Simpson, the American University professor, who has studied Echelon. "Certainly every time an international telephone call is made. There's good reason to believe domestic telephone calls are intercepted as well. "As we move into this interconnected electronic world, you've got Big Brothers, and you've got Little Brothers," Simpson said. "Little Brothers are companies like supermarkets and Internet companies that keep an eye on you. And you've got Big Brother that keeps an eye on you. The Biggest Brother of all is the Echelon system."

How can Echelon snoop without getting judges' orders for wiretaps or searches? "Because they're doing it in outer space," Simpson said. The information is being plucked from satellites orbiting thousands of miles away, where, he said, U.S. laws don't apply.

Some computer users are so upset about the suspected spying that they've begun playing games with Echelon. For years, they've inserted threatening words in their e-mail, hoping to create more work for the spy system. They call themselves "hacktivists" -- part hacker, part activist -- and they're taking the issue out of their e-mail message group and want to go global. They've declared Oct. 21 "Jam Echelon Day." They want people to use a flood of militia-like words in e-mails with the goal of crashing the spy system.

"Just be sure to sound as subversive as possible," their Internet postings say. Robert Kemp, a hacktivist from Michigan, said the message has been translated into French, German and Russian, and that the event has attracted supporters from all over the world. "All we're talking about is speaking freely in your e-mail, and that in itself could create havoc," he said. But it's highly doubtful any real harm will be done. Lisa Dean of the Free Congress Foundation thinks Echelon is far too powerful to be affected by a mass e-mail protest. "If you want to participate, fine," she said. "But if you're hoping it will have an effect, I think you're going to be disappointed."

The impact of Jam Echelon Day probably will never be made public. But the event highlights growing concerns about the U.S. government's computer monitoring activities. Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, said the idea that Echelon is looking into our e-mail "may all be a hallucination." Still, he said, Americans have reason for concern. "The intelligence agencies have been given extraordinary powers to conduct surveillance, and we need to make sure that those powers are being exercised responsibly and in conformity with the law," said Aftergood, who directs the nonprofit federation's project on government secrecy.

The U.S. government recently pushed for an expansion of its high-tech surveillance powers. In July, the National Security Council proposed monitoring computer networks used in banking, telecommunications, transportation and nonmilitary government operations. The goal would be to protect the nation's crucial data networks. In August, the U.S. Justice Department proposed legislation to give law enforcement officials authority to secretly plant code-breaking devices or software in home and office computers during criminal investigations. And just last week, the FBI came out in support of a proposal for Internet standards that will enable law enforcers to conduct court-authorized wiretaps on personal computers.

Sara Baase, a San Diego State University professor who has written a textbook about ethical issues in computing, said the government's monitoring of computers is weakening the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from illegal search and seizure. "There are very serious civil liberty and privacy concerns," she said.

Lance Cottrell, president of Anonymizer.com, a La Mesa company that allows people to surf the Web and send e-mail anonymously, said it's easy to snoop on Internet users. And if Echelon -- or anyone else, for that matter -- is getting an eyeful of your e-mail, you probably wouldn't know it.

Unlike a wiretapped phone, he said, "there are no mysterious clicks or buzzes on the wire."

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