Internet
Duncan Campbell
European Commission documents obtained this week reveal plans to require manufacturers and operators to build “interception interfaces” into the Internet and digital communications systems.
The plans, drafted by a United States-led international security organisation, will be proposed to European Union justice and home affairs ministers at the end of May. They appear in Enfopol 19, a restricted document leaked to the Foundation for Information Policy Research in London.
The plans require the installation of a network of tapping centres throughout Europe, providing access to every kind of communications, including the Net and satellites. A German tapping centre could intercept Internet messages in the United Kingdom, or a UK detective could listen to Dutch phone calls.
Enfopol 19 was agreed on by an EU police working party a month ago. It was condemned by the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament. But the European Parliament will shortly dissolve for elections in June. Meanwhile, ministers are preparing to adopt a convention on mutual legal assistance, including international interception arrangements.
If Enfopol 19 is enacted, Internet service providers and telecommunications network operators face having to install monitoring equipment or software on their premises.
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.
Ilets was founded by the FBI in 1993 after repeatedly failing to persuade the US Congress to pass a law requiring a national tapping network. Since then, Ilets has succeeded in having its plans adopted as EU policy and enacted into national legislation in a number of countries.
Ilets first met at the FBI research and training centre in Quantico, Virginia, in 1993. The next year they met in Bonn and agreed on a document called the International Requirements for Interception, or IUR 1.0. Within two years, the IUR “requirements” had become the secret policy of the EU. They became law in the US. In June 1997, the Australian government succeeded in getting the International Telecommunications Union to adopt the IUR requirements as a “priority”.
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.
According to Keith Mitchell, chair of the London Internet Exchange: “Anything along the lines of the Enfopol scheme would probably have astronomical cost implications. If such a scheme was ever implementable, the costs should be met by the enforcement authorities. The industry cannot afford it, and I doubt the public sector could. This kind of monitoring approach is based on a world view of telecoms operators which is technically and economically outdated.”