Britain and US intelligence 'stealing commercial secrets'

THE shadowy US National Security Association (NSA) is forcingsoftware companies to weaken the encoding system on products sold inEurope to facilitate its global spying activities, it was claimedyesterday.

The allegations are made in a report commissioned by the EuropeanParliament and drawn up by an independent British espionage expert,according to Le Parisien.

The newspaper, which said it has obtained an advance copy of thereport, said that Britain was co-operating with the US spy networkto rob its European neighbours of commercial and trade secrets.

According to the report, which was composed by Duncan Campbelland will be examined by the European Parliament's Civil LibertiesCommission later this month, the NSA, the world's biggest and mostpowerful signals intelligence organisation, allegedly forcedsoftware giants Microsoft, Lotus and Netscape to reduce theirsecurity encoding system on European products.

The aim was to increase its monitoring capability to eavesdrop onan unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications.

The software companies were forced to comply with NSA, which wasacting in order to facilitate the work of a global electronic spynetwork developed by the US, it said.

According to the report, the spy network uses help from Britainto enable it to eavesdrop on every telephone, e-mail and telexcommunication around the world.

Codenamed Echelon, the extensive British-American espionagenetwork is able to spy not only on all diplomatic and commercialcommunications between Western European countries, but also toeavesdrop on everyday phone calls, faxes and e-mails betweenordinary citizens.

According to Le Parisien, the British-American espionageoperation was originally launched in 1947 to gather information onEastern bloc countries.

However, after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, bringing withit the end of the Cold War, Echelon's resources were secretlyredirected to spy on Britain's Western European neighbours.

However, unlike many of the electronic spy systems developedduring the Cold War, Echelon is designed primarily for non-militarytargets: governments, organisations and businesses in virtuallyevery country.

Over the years, the British -US alliance has reorientated 40 ofthe 120 systems it used to spy on telecommunications satellitesbelonging to Communist states towards satellites belonging toWestern European countries, Le Parisien reported.

French diplomats (codenamed FRD) and Italian diplomats (codenamedITD) were particularly targeted by Echelon, the report claims.

All undersea telecommunications lines linking Europe with Africaare bugged, according to the report, while Echelon also uses theexpertise of US telecommunications companies to intercept allcommunications between Europe and the United States, the newspaperLe Parisien said.

In 1993, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA and theDepartment of Commerce created the Office of Executive Support, asecret organisation which transmits confidential commercialinformation stolen via surveillance equipment from Europeancompanies to their British and US rivals.

In his report, Le Parisien said Mr Campbell cites severalexamples of industrial espionage and establishes how the Frenchelectronics giant, Thomson CSF lost a seven billion franc contractfor the surveillance of the Amazon forest in 1994.

The document also shows how stolen information obtained byEchelon enabled the United States to torpedo a contract worth 34billion francs under which France would have supplied Airbuses toSaudi Arabia.

Since 1995, the NSA also established a surveillance system forthe internet which allows it to monitor all exchanges of informationover the web, including e-mails sent by individuals, the reportsaid.

According to Mr Campbell, the Swiss firm, Crypto AG, whichprovides sophisticated encoded software to the armed forces andembassies of several dozen Western European countries, built asecond code into their products at Echelon's request, allowing USintelligence services to read encoded messages which military andpolitical leaders believed they were sending in secrecy.

The NSA is one of the most secret of US intelligence agencies.Until a few years ago, it existence was a secret and its charter andany mention of its duties are still classified.

Echelon's existence was confirmed in 1997 by a previous report tothe European Parliament which made clear Britain's role in relayinginformation to the United States.

The report stated: "Within Europe, all e-mail telephone and faxcommunications are routinely intercepted by the United StatesNational Security Agency transferring all target information fromthe European mainland via the strategic hub of London, then bysatellite to Fort Meade, in Maryland, via the crucial hub at MenwithHill, in the North Yorkshire moors, in the UK."