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The making of the European Surveillance Union, 1993-2001
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A collection of news articles, doquments, links and comments reflecting the construction of the European Surveillance Union. Formerly known as the "EU-FBI surveillance system" or "ENFOPOL" this meta-network of control connects special police units to the datacenters of telecoms and internet providers. Main ingredients are the topics: ENFOPOL, ETSI, CybercRime, monitoring centers, CALEA and - ECHELON. Military surveillance of telco and IT-networks by secret services is being performed at the same new interfaces that had been designed for law enforcement.
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foreword
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It is not only police being connected but "law enforcement and state security agencies" as some key doquments prove. The design of the interception interfaces and the standardization of the protocols enable those with access to obtain unlimited amounts of data related to our communications.
Central element of the European Surveillance Union is the national storage and international exchange of so called "traffic data": Who called whom when from where, geographic data concerning the movements of mobile fones, www logfiles, e-mail contaqts.
The breakdown shows some main components the construction process of this network. The existing titles are either derived from internal doqument acronyms [ENFOPOL], lawgiving efforts [CALEA] , doqument title [Cybercrime], or institution [ETSI].
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ENFOPOL
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Doqument acronym of the EU-Council Police Cooperation Working Party. During the past decade this group was the main instrument of enforcing the new surveillance order upon Europe. Law enforcement is pursuing interests identical to those of "state security agencies." Both want standardized direct line access to the data centers of all digital networks, but only police can demand this.
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ETSI
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In the "lawful interception" working groups at the otherwise honourable European Telecom Standards Institute the "lawful interception requirements" of police and spooks become technical standards. The surveillance contaqt points are designed as multi user interfaces, each of them "transparent" [invisible] to the others. Expect to meet intersting experts of bureaucrats, police, data miners, telecom incumbents, contractors to "state security agencies" and spooks.
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CYBERCRIME
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Inspired by the G/7 governements the Council of Europe [COE] started a major effort to boost the surveillance plans in 1997. The so called convention on cybercrime was agreed upon behind closed doors by another mixed "expert group", dominated by justice and home affairs bureaucrats.
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CALEA
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The "Communications Law Enforcement is the US counterpart to ENFOPOL, the FBI system being much more advanced in practice. Since the ende FBI special agents take part in all meetings of the ETSI third generation networks surveillance experts groups.
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ECHELON
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This ancient US-led military spy network was much overestimated during the period when the new meta-network of surveillance came into function. From the beginnings in the late 40ies the ECHELON system was mainly designed to intercept analogue wireless communications. This concept never worked for the interception of digital mobile fone networks, as well as the internet. The CALEA/ENFOPOL approach of intercept interfaces in telco data centers and at internet providers is the answer.
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