EU: "Legally permitted surveillance"
01 March 1995
The Police Cooperation Working Group, which comes under the K4 Committee, has been presented with a plan for the next generation of satellite-based telecommunications systems - planned to come into operation in 1998. It would:
"'tag' each individual subscriber in view of a possibly necessary surveillance activity".
The report, drawn up for the Working Group by the UK delegation, says that the new mobile individual communications working through satellites are already underway and unlike the current earth-bound systems based on GSM-technology will "in many cases operate from outside the national territory".
This is the latest in a number of initiatives concerning policing, immigration and the law to emanate from the K4 Committee structure which will not be subject to democratic debate or decision-making by the European or national parliaments.
The rationale for the plan is that these new systems:
"will provide unique possibilities for organised crime and will lead to new threats to national security".
However, the report says all the new systems have to have the capability to place all individuals under surveillance. Moreover, the ability to "tag" individual phone lines could equally be used against political activists, "suspected" illegal migrants and others.
The fact that the new systems are being developed by large private international corporations, not as national state-run systems, creates "unusual problems for the legally permitted surveillance of telecommunications". The first problem to surface, according to the report, is that:
"initial contacts with various consortia... has met with the most diverse reactions, ranging from great willingness to cooperate on the one hand, to an almost total refusal even to discuss the question."
The report goes on to say:
"it is very urgent for governments and/or legislative institutions to make the new consortia aware of their duties. The government will also have to create new regulations for international cooperation so that the necessary surveillance will be able to operate."
Another "problem" for surveillance under the new systems is that satellites will communicate with earth-bound stations which will function as distribution points for a number of adjoining countries - there will not be a distribution point in every country. While the existing "methods of legally permitted surveillance of immobile and mobile telecommunications have hitherto depended on national infrastructures" (italics added) the:
"providers of these new systems do not come under the legal guidelines used hitherto for a legal surveillance of telecommunications."
The report says it would be difficult to monitor the "upward and downward connections to the distribution point" so the "tag" would start the surveillance at "the first earthbound distribution point".
Due to the number of different countries that might be involved in making a connection it has been agreed that the following "relevant data" should be provided: "the number of the subscriber calling, the number of the subscriber being called, the numbers of all subscribers called thereafter". The report uses the example of a subscriber who is a national of country A, with a telephone subscription in country B (supplying the relevant data for the "tag"), who occasionally uses the system in country C which uses the distribution point in country D (which conducts the surveillance) and who is in contact with a person in country E concerning a suspected serious crime in country F.
The report with a series of recommendations including amendments to national laws to "ensure that surveillance will be possible within the new systems" and that "all those who are involved in planning the new systems" should be made aware of "the demands of legally permitted surveillance".
"Legally permitted surveillance of telecommunications systems provided from a point outside the national territory", Report from the British Dele