Pat Cain <patrick@sideways.gen.nz> (06/27/91)
While in the local library recently, I noticed this article in {The
Guardian Weekly} newspaper of 23 June, 1991 about phone tapping in the
UK and France by authorities. I'm not sure if the ethics of telephone
tapping are appropriate for comp.dcom.telecom, but this is an
interesting article nevertheless.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but computers make tapping and tracing phone
calls a somewhat easier. I think more controls are needed to ensure
that tappings are being done for the right reasons. (In New Zealand
only two warrants were issued to the Security Intelligence Service for
tapping lines last year).
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PHONE TAPPING HITS RECORD 35,000 A YEAR
TELEPHONE tapping in Britain has reached record levels with an
estimated 35,000 lines being tapped in a year and increasing numbers
of engineers engaged in tapping.
The revelations have led to calls for a select committee on
telephone surveillance and for the security services to be made
accountable.
Ten years ago the 464 warrants authorised by the Home Secretary, the
Foreign Secretary, and the Northern Ireland and Scottish Secretaries
were serviced by 40 engineers.
Last year 539 tapping warrants were executed for the Home Secretary
and the Scottish Secretary by 70 engineers.
However, the number of warrants bears no direct relation to the
number of taps, because many lines can be tapped to target one person.
The Government gives no figures for Northern Ireland and has stopped
disclosing taps authorised by the Foreign Secretary.
A new high-security installation at Oswestry, Shropshire, which will
be operational by the mid-1990s, will make tapping by computer much
easier.
At present, BT tappers, known internally as "secret squirrels", make
connections at telephone exchanges late at night. It is believed that
three out of four taps are security related.
Calls on target lines are relayed to a secure reception centre at
BT's Gresham Street headquarters, London, which can handle thousands
of calls.
John McWilliam, MP for Blaydon, and a former telephone planning
engineer, said last week that a House of Commons select committee
should be set up with people who understnd the system to monitor the
growth of tapping.
"In a democracy, people are entitled to privacy as long as they are
not threatening that democracy," he said.
"There's too much complacency about the granting of warrants."
Andrew Puddephatt, general secretary of Liberty (formerly the
National Council for Civil Liberties), deplored the increase in
surveillance, saying the system was "wide open to abuse".
"We have long been concerned with the escalating surveillance of
members of the British public engaging in perfectly lawful
activities," he said. "We are also concerned that there is no
effective accountability."
The French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, last week proposed a legal
code to regulate state telephone tapping, saying the practice was
wreathed in mystery. Police unions estimate between 10,000 and 50,000
"administrative" and "wild", or unofficial, taps are carried out each
year.
Television cameras and members of parliament were given rare access
this week to the state's listening centre, a bunker under a Paris
boulevard.
"Judicial" phone taps ordered by French courts under an established
procedure are not at issue. But civil rights organisations and the
European Court of Human Rights have condemned "administrative" taps
ordered by the primeminister and kept secret.
------------------
{Guardian Weekly} is a weekly compilation of articles from {The
Guardian}, {The Washington Post} and {Le Monde}. [Any typos are mine.]
Pat Cain <patrick@sideways.welly.gen.nz>
PO Box 2060, Wellington, NZ.