TAGGED!

James Matthew B. MiraflorNovember 25, 2008

The State, Technology, and Intelligence Gathering: A Survey

Assessing Technological Intelligence (TECHINT) Initiatives

Technological Status What is possible?

Legal/Institutional Environment What is lawful?

Political-Economic Motivations For what purpose?

Survey of Existing TECHINT Initiatives Global

Carnivore (Federal Bureau of Investigation - US)

Echelon (National Security Agency – primarily US, but also UK, Australia, Canada, new Zealand)

Onyx (Swiss Army) Golden Shield Project (Ministry of Public

Security - China) Local (Philippines)

MARS program (National Security Council)

Project Carnivore

a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with a customizable packet-sniffing software that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic

implemented by the FBI during the Clinton administration with the approval of Attorney General Janet Reno

abandoned in 2003 in favor of commercially available tools, when third-party surveillance tools progressed in filtering abilities

How does Carnivore work? Carnivore, a PC equipped with a network card, must

be physically connected to the network in order to monitor it

once installed, carnivore uses a packet sniffer to collect all data that passes through the network – that includes all emails sent/received, contents of all websites visited, all messages sent through instant messaging applications, and other network activities

the aggregated data is sent through an aggressive filter that discards all information that is beyond the court order e.g. if it wants to monitor emails alone, it can only tap at the

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) all data collected are retrieved by an FBI special

agent

Project ECHELON a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis

network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK-USA Security Agreement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as AUSCANZUKUS)

can intercept communications depends on the medium used, be it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fiber-optic.

created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early sixties

today, also used for counter-terrorist and anti-organized crime initiatives, and political and diplomatic intelligence

How does ECHELON work? One approach is to place intercept equipment at

locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at a relatively small number of sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site, Room

641A, in the United States. British journalist Duncan Campbell and New Zealand

journalist Nicky Hager reported in the 1990s that the United States was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes. e.g. the gear-less wind turbine technology designed by the

German firm Enercon and the speech technology developed by the Belgian firm Lernout & Hauspie

in 1995, French aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the NSA reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials

Project Onyx launched in 2000, originally under the name

SATOS-3 (the SATOS 1 and 2 systems were started in 1992, in particular to intercept faxes), and was completed in late 2005

the goal of the system is to monitor both civil and military communications, such as telephone, fax or Internet traffic, carried by satellite

not supposed to monitor internal communications, but the monitoring of a communication between a person in Switzerland and someone in another country is allowed

How does Onyx work? uses lists of keywords to filter the intercepted content

for information of interest, and the choice of keywords by the intelligence community must be approved by an independent commission

on 8 January 2006, the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick published a secret report produced by the government using data intercepted by Onyx. the report described a fax sent by the Egyptian department

of Foreign Affairs to the Egyptian Embassy in London, and described the existence of secret detention facilities ("black sites") run by the CIA in Eastern Europe.

when the government started a military judiciary procedure against the newspaper for leakage of secret documents, the authenticity of the fax was confirmed during the trial

The Golden Shield Project

started in 1998 and began operations in November of 2003, the project aims to “integrate a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing surveillance network – incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records, and Internet surveillance technologies” (Walton, 2001)

but the system was more known for content filtering, thus the name the Great Firefall of China

The Philippine Case

MARS, NMARSC, NTC Takeover, and IALAG

MARS Program in order to monitor “destabilizers”,

Malacañang issued Executive Order (EO) 492 gave power to the National Security Adviser to

supervise the creation of a surveillance program for the government and purchasing of the technology and equipments to implement this program.

the Maritime Aerial Reconnaissance and Surveillance (MARS) surveillance program is intended to enhance to coordination of military and civilian government units in various operations

a total of P5 million had been allocated for the MARS program

Looking from Above EO 492, issued on February 1, 2006, orders

the NICA to activate the National Maritime Aerial Reconnaissance and Surveillance Center or NMARSC.

The NMARSC shall serve as the primary IMINT (Imagery Intelligence) provider for the Philippine intelligence community.

Under the supervision and oversight of the National Security Adviser, the NICA-directed NMARSC will operate unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to cater to the imagery intelligence demands of various government agencies.

EO 454: NTC Takeover After being attacked by a tirade of media-

sensationalized issues, the Arroyo administration issued EO 454 transferring the independent National Telecommunications Sector (NTC) back to the Department of Transportation of Communication (DOTC).

Since NTC have quasi-judicial and regulatory powers to cancel licenses and shutdown media corporations, it was feared that putting NTC under the direct control of the president might increase the president’s clout over the media.

HB 4942: A Warning of Things to Come

If this is not enough yet, there had been proposals in the Lower House to reorganize NTC into a new super-body, the National Information and Communications Commission (NICC).

NICC, first proposed through House Bill 4942 (13th Congress), is supposed to have broader regulatory powers over information, communication, broadcast, cable TV, and other multimedia infrastructures, thus expanding the administration’s political control over all channels of discourse.

Use of Intelligence Gathered In most countries, the primary purpose

of domestic intelligence gathering is profiling - synthesizing data gathered into complete informational portraits of individuals e.g. Pentagon’s Total Information

Awareness (TIA) Profiling has its use, to prepare

plausible circumstantial evidence in the event of a legal offensive.

IALAG: Legal and Intelligence Super-agency On January 17, 2006, Arroyo issued Executive Order

493 directing the creation of the Inter-Agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), a super-body under the National Intelligence Board (NIB) that is tasked to investigate, prosecute, monitor, and handle litigation processes of cases involving national security.

Headed by the National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, the new super-agency will be coordinating the functions of the DOJ, DND, DILG, DFA, and other agencies like the NBI (under DOJ), National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), National Security Council (NSC), the AFP and the PNP

Similar to the Joint Legal Action Group (JOLAG) established during Martial Law meant to chase enemies of the Marcos regime, particularly members of the CPP-NPA-NDF during the 70’s

IALAG: Legal Offensive during State of Emergency

Under these offices, the super-agency would be coordinating closely with the Intelligence Service of the AFP (ISAFP) and the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG).

Issued more than a month before Proclamation 1017, militant groups speculated that IALAG is meant to facilitate and aid arrests and legal offensives during and after the declaration of the State of Emergency.

Gonzales, in his speech before AFP 4th Infantry Division in Cagayan de Oro City, boasted that the rebellion charges filed against the Batasan 5 (five militant party-list representatives) was the first major achievement of IALAG.

Thank you.