AN
APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL
CONTROL
An
Omega Foundation Summary & Options Report
For The European Parliament
SEPTEMBER 1998
1. INTRODUCTION
This report represents a summarised version of an interim
study, "An Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control"
(PE 166.499), (referred to throughout this document as the
Interim Report), prepared by the Omega Foundation in
Manchester and presented to the STOA Panel at its meeting of
18 December 1997 and to the Committee on Civil Liberties and
Internal Affairs on 27 January 1998.
The Interim Report aroused great interest and the resultant
high-profile press comment throughout the European Union and
beyond, indicates the level of public concern about many of
the innovations detailed by the study. This current report is
framed by the same key objectives as the Interim Report(1),
namely:
(i) To provide Members of the European Parliament with a
succinct reference guide to recent advances in the technology
of political control;
(ii) To identify and describe the current state of the art of
the most salient developments, further clarifying and
updating the areas of the interim report which have aroused
the greatest public concern and comment;
(iii) To present MEP's with an account of current trends both
within Europe and Worldwide;
(iv) To suggest policy options covering regulatory strategies
for the future democratic control and management of this
technology;
(v) To provide some further succinct background material to
inform the Parliament's response to the proposed declaration
by the Commission on electronic eavesdropping which has been
put on the agenda for the plenary session of the European
Parliament, on Wednesday 16 September 1998.
This report also has seven substantive sections covering (a)
the role and function of the technologies of political
control; (b) recent trends and innovations; (c) crowd control
weapons; (d) new prisoner control technology; (e) new
interrogation and torture technologies; (f) developments in
surveillance technology (including the creation of human
recognition and tracking devices and the evolution of new
global police and military telecommunications interceptions
networks; (g) the implications of vertical and horizontal
proliferation of this technology and the need for an adequate
EU response, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties
in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants.
Thus, the purpose of this report is to explore the most
recent developments in the technology of political control
and the major consequences associated with their integration
into processes and strategies of policing and internal
control. The report ends each section with a series of policy
options which might facilitate more democratic, open and
efficient regulatory control, including specific areas where
further research is needed to make such regulatory controls
effective.
A brief look at the historical development of this concept is
instructive. Twenty years ago, the British Society for Social
Responsibility of Scientists (BSSRS) warned about the dangers
of a new technology of political control. BSSRS defined this
technology as "a new type of weaponry"..."It is the product
of the application of science and technology to the problem
of neutralising the state's internal enemies. It is mainly
directed at civilian populations, and is not intended to kill
(and only rarely does). It is aimed as much at hearts and
minds as at bodies." For these scientists, "This new weaponry
ranges from means of monitoring internal dissent to devices
for controlling demonstrations; from new techniques of
interrogation to methods of prisoner control. The intended
and actual effects of these new technological aids are both
broader and more complex than the more lethal weaponry they
complement."(2)
BSSRS recognised that the weapons and systems developed and
tested by the USA in Vietnam, and by the UK in its former
colonies, were about to be used on the home front and that
the military industrial complex would in the future, rapidly
modify its military systems for police and internal security
use. In other words, a new technology of repression was being
spawned which would find a political niche in Western Liberal
democracies. The role of this technology was to provide a
technical fix which might effectively crush dissent whilst
being designed to mask the level of coercion being deployed.
With the advent of the Northern Irish conflict, the genie was
out of the bottle and a new laboratory for field testing
these technologies had emerged.
There have been quite awesome changes in the technologies
available to states for internal control since the first
BSSRS publication. Some of these technologies are highly
sensitive politically and without proper regulation can
threaten or undermine many of the human rights enshrined in
international law, such as the rights of assembly, privacy,
due process, freedom of political and cultural expression and
protection from torture, arbitrary arrest, cruel and inhumane
punishments and extra-judicial execution.
Proper oversight of developments in political control
technologies is further complicated by the phenomena of
'bureaucratic capture' where senior officials control their
ministers rather than the other way round. Politicians both
at European and sovereign state level, whom citizens of the
community have presumed will be monitoring any excesses or
abuse of this technology on their behalf, are sometimes
systematically denied the information they require to do that
job.
2.
THE ROLE & FUNCTION OF POLITICAL CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES
Throughout the Nineties, many governments have spent huge
sums on the research, development, procurement and deployment
of new technology for their police, para-military and
internal security forces. The objective of this development
work has been to increase and enhance each agency's policing
capacities. A dominant assumption behind this
technocratisation of the policing process, is the belief that
it has created both a faster policing response time and a
greater cost-effectiveness. The main aim of all this effort
has been to save policing resources by either automating
certain forms of control, amplifying the rate of particular
activities, or decreasing the number of officers required to
perform them.
The resultant innovations in the technology of political
control have been functionally designed to yield an extension
of the scope, efficiency and growth of policing power. The
extent to which this process can be judged to be a legitimate
one depends both on one's point of view and the level of
secrecy and accountability built into the overall procurement
and deployment procedures. The full implications of such
developments may take time to assess. It is argued that one
impact of this process is the militarisation of the police
and the para-militarisation of the army as their roles,
equipment and procedures begin to overlap. This phenomena is
seen as having far reaching consequences on the way that
future episodes of sub-state violence is handled, and
influencing whether those involved are reconciled, managed,
repressed, 'lost' or efficiently destroyed.
What is emerging in certain quarters is a chilling picture of
ongoing innovation in the science and technology of social
and political control, including: semi-intelligent
zone-denial systems using neural networks which can identify
and potentially punish unsanctioned behaviour; the advent of
global telecommunications surveillance systems using voice
recognition and other biometric techniques to facilitate
human tracking; data-veillance systems which can match
computer held data to visual recognition systems or identify
friendship maps simply by analysing the telephone and email
links between who calls whom; new sub-lethal incapacitating
weapons used both for prison and riot control as well as in
sub-state conflict operations other than war; new target
acquisition aids, lethal weapons and expanding dum-dum like
ammunition which although banned by the Geneva conventions
for use against other state's soldiers, is finding increasing
popularity amongst SWAT and special forces teams; discreet
order vehicles designed to look like ambulances on prime time
television but which can deploy a formidable array of
weaponry to provide a show of force in countries like
Indonesia or Turkey, or spray harassing chemicals or dye onto
protesters. Such marking appears to be kid-glove in its
restraint but tags all protesters so that the snatch squads
can arrest them later, out of the prying lenses of CNN.
Whilst there are many opposing schools of thought on why
these changes are happening now, few doubt that there are
fundamental changes taking place in the types of tactics,
techniques and technologies available to internal security
agencies for policing purposes. Yet many questions remain
unanswered, unconsidered or under-researched. Why for
example, did such a transformation in the technology used for
political control dramatically change over the last twenty
five years? Is there any significance in the fact that former
communist regimes in the Warsaw Treaty Organisation and
continuing centralised economic systems such as China, are
beginning to adopt such technologies? What are the reasons
behind a global convergence of the technology of political
control deployed in the North and South, the East and West
What are the factors responsible for generating the adoption
of such new policing technology - was it technology push or
demand pull? What new tools for policing lie on the horizon
and what are the dynamics behind the process of innovation
and the need for a vast arsenal of different kinds of
technology rather than just a few? Are the many ways this
technology affects the policing process fully understood? Who
controls the patterns of police technology procurement and
what are the corporate influences?
The technology of political control produces a continuum of
flexible options which stretch from modern law enforcement to
advanced state suppression. It is multi-functional and has
led to a rapid extension of the scope, efficiency and growth
of policing power, creating policing revolutions both with
Europe, the US and the rest of the world. The key difference
being the level of democratic accountability in the manner in
which the technology is applied. Yet because of a process of
technological and decision drift these instruments of
control, once deployed quickly become "normalised." Their
secondary and unanticipated effects often lead to a
paramilitarisation of the security forces and a
militarisation of the police - often because the companies
which produce them service both markets.
3.
RECENT TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
Since the "Technology of Political Control" was first written
(Ackroyd et al.,1977) there has been a profusion of
technological innovations for police, paramilitary,
intelligence and internal security forces. Many of these are
simple advances on the technologies available in the 1970's.
Others such as automatic telephone tapping, voice recognition
and electronic tagging were not envisaged by the original
BSSRS authors since they did not think that the computing
power needed for a national monitoring system was feasible.
The overall drift of this technology is to increase the power
and reliability of the policing process, either enhancing the
individual power of police operatives, replacing personnel
with less expensive machines to monitor activity or to
automate certain police monitoring, detection and
communication facilities completely. A massive Police
Industrial Complex has been spawned to service the needs of
police, paramilitary and security forces, evidenced by the
number of companies now active in the market.. An overall
trend is towards globalisation of these technologies and a
drift towards increasing proliferation.
One core trend has been towards a militarisation of the
police and a paramilitarisation of military forces in Europe.
In some European countries, that trend is reversed, e.g. in
1996, the Swiss government (Federal Council and the Military
Department) made plans to re-equip the Swiss Army
Ordungsdienst with 118 million Swiss Francs of less-lethal
weapons for action within the country in times of crisis.
(These include 12 tanks, armoured vehicles, teargas, rubber
shot and handcuffs). The decision was made by decree
preventing any discussion or intervention. Their role will be
to help police large scale demonstrations or riots and to
police frontiers to 'prevent streams of refugees coming into
Switzerland.(3)
There has also been an increasing trend towards convergence -
the process whereby the technology used by police and the
military for internal security operations, converges towards
being more or less indistinguishable. The term also describes
the trend towards a universal adoption of similar types of
technologies by most states for internal security and
policing. Security companies now produce weapons and
communications systems for both military and the police. Such
systems increasingly represent the muscle and the nervous
system of public order squads. (4) Given the potential civil
liberties and human rights implications associated with
certain technologies of political control, there is a
pressing need to avoid the risks of such technologies
developing faster than any regulating legislation. MEP's may
wish to consider how best it should develop appropriate
structures of accountability to prevent undesirable
innovations emerging via processes of technological creep or
decision drift. Towards that end, members of the European
Parliament may wish to consider the following policy
options:-
3.1
POLICY OPTIONS
(i) Accepting the principle that the process of innovation of
new systems for use in internal social and political control
should be transparent, (i.e. open to appropriate public and
parliamentary scrutiny and be subject to change should
unwanted and unanticipated consequences emerge;
(ii) Give consideration to what committee and procedural
changes might be needed to ensure that Members of the
European Parliament are adequately informed on issues
relating to technologies of political control and can
effectively act should the need arise;
(iii) Consider if there is a need to amend the terms of
reference of the Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs
Committee to include powers and responsibilities for matters
relating to for example, the civil liberties and human rights
implications of developments in political control
technologies such as:
(a) new crowd and prison control weapons and technologies,
lethal and less lethal weapons and ammunition;
(b)developments in surveillance technologies such as
data-veillance, electronic eavesdropping, CCTV, human
recognition and tracking systems;
(c) private prisons and related equipment and training;
(d) torture and interrogation of detainees;
(e) any class of technology which has been shown in the past
to be excessively injurious, cruel, inhumane or
indiscriminate in its effects.
4. INNOVATIONS IN CROWD CONTROL WEAPONS
The Interim Report critically evaluated the so called safety
of these allegedly 'harmless crowd control weapons.(5) Using
earlier US military data and empirical data on the kinetic
energy of all the commonly available kinetic weapons such as
plastic bullets, it found that much of the biomedical
research legitimating the introduction of current crowd
control weapons is badly flawed. All the commonly available
plastic bullet ammunition used in Europe breaches the severe
damage zone of kinetic energy used to assess such weapons by
the US military scientists. (Over 100,000 plastic bullets
were withdrawn in the UK in 1996 for possessing excessive
kinetic energy but according to this report their
replacements are still excessively injurious). The price of
protest should not be death, yet given that these weapons are
frequently used against bystanders in zone clearance
operations, this aspect is particularly important.
Likewise there is a need to consider halting the use of
peppergas (OC) in Europe until independent evaluation of its
biomedical effects is undertaken. Special Agent Ward, the FBI
officer who cleared OC in the USA, was found to have taken a
$57,000 kickback to give it the OK. Other US military
scientists warned of dangerous side effects including
neurotoxicity and a recent estimate by the International
Association of Chief Police Officers suggested at least 113
peppergas linked fatalities in the US - predominantly from
positional asphyxia.(6)
Amnesty International has said that the use of pepper spray
by Californian police against peaceful environmental
activists, is 'cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of such
deliberateness and severity that it is tantamount to
torture." (Police deputies pulled back protesters heads,
opened their eyes and "swabbed" the burning liquid directly
on to their eyeballs).(7)
Sometimes when technologies are transferred, their
characteristics also change. For example CS Sprays authorised
for use by the police in the UK from 1996 were five times the
concentration of similar MACE products in the US and have
dispersion rates which are five times faster. This means that
they dump twenty five times as much irritant on a targets
face as do US products yet were justified as being the same.
In practice this meant that one former Metropolitan police
instructor Peter Hodgkinson lost between 40-50% of his
corneas after he volunteered to be sprayed at the beginning
of trails. Most police forces in the UK have now adopted the
spray which was authorised before findings on its alleged
safety were published.(8)
In the early Nineties, much to the disbelief of serious
researchers, a new doctrine emerged in the US - non-lethal
warfare. Its advocates were predominantly science fiction
writers such as (Toffler A., & Toffler,H., 1994) and
(Morris, J., & Morris, C., 1990, 1994), who found a
willing ear in the nuclear weapons laboratories of Los
Alamos, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore. The cynics were
quick to point out that non-lethal warfare was a
contradiction in terms and that this was really a
"rice-bowls" initiative, dreamt up to protect jobs in
beleaguered weapons laboratories facing the challenge of life
without the cold war.
This naive doctrine found a champion in Col. John Alexander
(who made his name in the rather more lethal Phoenix
assassination programmes of the Vietnam War) and subsequently
picked up by the US Defence and Justice Departments. After
the controversial and overly public beating of Rodney King
(who was subdued by an electro-shock "taser" before being
attacked); the excessive firepower deployed by all sides in
the Waco debacle (where the police used chemical agents which
failed to end the siege); and the humiliations of the US
military missions in Somalia - America was in search of a
magic bullet which would somehow allow the powers of good to
prevail without anyone being hurt. Yet US doctrine in
practice was not that simple, it was not to replace lethal
weapons with "non-lethal" alternatives but to augment the use
of deadly force, in both war and 'operations other than war',
where the main targets include civilians. A dubious pandora's
box of new weapons has emerged, designed to appear rather
than be safe. Because of the "CNN factor" they need to be
media friendly, more a case of invisible weapons than war
without blood. America now has an integrated product team
consisting of the US Marines, US Air Force, US Special
Operations Command, US Army, US Navy, DOT, DOJ, DOE, Joint
Staff, and CINCs Office of SecDef. Bridgeheads for this
technology are already emerging since one of the roles of
this team is to liaise with friendly foreign governments.
Last year, the interim report advised that the Commission
should be requested to report on the existence of formal
liaison arrangements with the US, for introducing advanced
non-lethal weapons into the EU.(9) The urgency of this advice
was highlighted in November 1997 for example, when a special
conference on the "Future of Non-Lethal Weapons", was held in
London. A flavour of what was on offer was provided by Ms
Hildi Libby, systems manager of the US Army's Non-lethal
Material Programme.
Ms Libby described the M203 Anti-personnel blunt trauma crowd
dispersal grenade, which hurtles a large number of small
"stinging" rubber balls at rioters. The US team also promoted
acoustic wave weapons that used "mechanical pressure wave
generation" to "provide the war fighter with a weapon capable
of delivering incapacitating effects, from lethal to
non-lethal"; the non-lethal Claymore mine - a crowd control
version of the more lethal M18A1; ground vehicle stoppers;
the M139 Volcano mine which projects a net (that can cover a
football sized field) laced with either razor blades or other
"immobilisation enhancers" - adhesive or sting; canister
launched area denial systems; sticky foam; vortex ring guns -
to apply vortex ring gas impulses with flash, concussion and
the option of quickly changing between lethal and non-lethal
operations; and the underbarrel tactical payload delivery
system - essentially an M16 which shoots either bullets,
disabling chemicals, kinetic munitions or marker dye.
One of the unanticipated consequences of these weapons is
that they offer a flexible response which can potentially
undermine non-violent direct action. Used to inflict instant
gratuitous punishment, their flexibility means that if
official violence does tempt demonstrators to fight back, the
weapons are often just a switch away from street level
executions.
At their last conference in Lillehammer, the Nobel Peace
Prize winning organisation Pugwash came to the conclusion
that the term 'non-lethal should be abandoned, not only
because it covers a variety of very different weapons but
also because it can be dangerously misleading. "In combat
situations, 'sub-lethal' weapons are likely to be used in
co-ordination with other weapons and could increase overall
lethality. Weapons purportedly developed for conventional
military or peacekeeping use are also likely to be used in
civil wars or for oppression by brutal governments."
Weapons developed for police use may encourage the
militarisation of police forces or be used for torture. If a
generic term is needed "less-lethal or pre-lethal weapons
might be preferable."(10) Such misgivings are certainly borne
out by recent developments. US expert Bill Arkin has warned
that the new generation of acoustic weapons can rupture
organs, create cavities in human tissue and produce
shockwaves of 170 decibels and potentially lethal blastwave
trauma.(11) Pugwash considered that "each of the emerging
less-lethal weapons technologies required urgent examination
and that their development or adoption should be subject to
public review."(12) Informed by principle 3 and 4 of the
United Nations Basic Principles on The Use of Force &
Firearms (13), MEP's may wish to consider the following
options:-
4.1
POLICY OPTIONS
(i) Reaffirm the European Parliamentary demand of May 1982,
for a ban on the use of plastic bullets;
(ii) Establish objective criteria for assessing the
biomedical effects of so called non-lethal weapons that are
independent from commercial or governmental research;
(iii) Seek confirmation from the Commission that: Member
States are fully aware of their responsibilities under
Principles 3 and 4 of the United Nations Basic Principles on
the Use of Force & Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials
and to ask for clarification of exactly what steps individual
Member States are taking to ensure that these are fully met,
given the power of "less-lethal weapons" changes and whether
consistent standards apply;
(iv) Request the Commission to report on the existing liaison
arrangements for the second generation of non-lethal weapons
to enter European Union from the USA and call for an
independent report on their alleged safety as well as their
intended and unforeseen social and political effects.
(v) During the interim period, consider restricting the
deployment by the police, the military or paramilitary
special forces, of US made or licensed 2nd. generation
chemical irritant, kinetic, acoustic, laser, electromagnetic
frequency, capture, entanglement, injector or electrical
disabling and paralysing weapons, within Europe.
(vi). Establish the following principles across all EU Member
States:
(a) Research on chemical irritants should be published in
open scientific journals before authorization for any usage
is permitted and that the safety criteria for such chemicals
should be treated as if they were drugs rather than riot
control agents.
(b) Research on the alleged safety of existing crowd control
weapons and of all future innovations in crowd control
weapons should be placed in the public domain prior to any
decision towards deployment.
(c) that deployment of OC (peppergas) should be halted across
the EU until independent non-FBI funded research has
evaluated any risks it poses to health.
5. NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS
Some of the equipment described above, such as the
surveillance, area denial and crowd control technologies,
also finds ready use inside permanent prisons and houses of
correction. Other devices such as the area denial, perimeter
fencing systems, portable coils of razor wire, prison
transport vehicles with mini cage cells, to create temporary
holding centres. Permanent prisons are however, literally
custom built control environments, where every act and thing,
including the architecture, the behaviour of the prison
officers and daily routines, are functionally organised with
that purpose in mind. Therefore many of the technologies
discussed above are built in to the prison structure and
integral to policing systems used to contain their inmates.
For example, area denial technology, intruder detection
equipment and surveillance devices are instrumental in
hermetically sealing high security prisons. If disturbances
develop within a prison, the riot technologies and tactics
outlined above, are also available for use by prison
officers. The trend has been to train specialized MUFTI
(Minimum Force Tactical Intervention) squads for this
purpose. Outside Europe, irritant gas has been used not only
to crush revolt but also to punish political detainees or to
eject reticent prisoners from their cells before execution.
The Interim Report describes prison restraint techniques
using straitjackets, body belts, leg shackles, padded cells
and isolation units, some of which infringe the European
Convention against Torture.(14)
Apart from mechanical restraint, prison authorities have
access to pharmacological approaches for immobilising
inmates, colloquially known as "the liquid cosh." These vary
from psychotropic drugs such as anti-depressants, sedatives
and powerful hypnotics. Drugs like largactil or Seranace
offer a chemical strait-jacket and their usage is becoming
increasingly controversial as prison populations rise and
larger numbers of inmates are "treated". In the USA, the
trend is for punishment to become therapy: "behaviour
modification" - Pavlovian reward and punishment routines
using drugs like anectine, producing fear or pain, to
recondition behaviour. The possibilities of testing new
social control drugs are extensive, whilst controls are few.
Prisons form the new laboratories developing the next
generation of drugs for social reprogramming, whilst military
and university laboratories provide scores of new
psychoactive drugs each year. (15)
Critics such as Lilly & Knepper (1992, 186-7) argue that
in examining the international aspects of crime control as
industry, more attention is needed to the changing activities
of the companies which used to provide supplies to the
military. At the end of the cold war, "with defence
contractors reporting declines in sales, the search for new
markets is pushing corporate decision making, it should be no
surprise to see increased corporate activity in criminal
justice." Where such companies previously profited from wars
with foreign enemies, they are increasingly turning to the
new opportunities afforded by crime control as
industry.(Christie, 1994).
Several European countries are now experiencing a rapid
process of privatisation of prisons by corporate
conglomerations, predominantly from the USA. Some of the
prisons run by these organisations in the US have cultures
and control techniques which are alien to European
traditions. Such a process of privatisation can lead to a
bridgehead for importing U.S. corrections mentality, methods
and technologies into Europe and there is a pressing need to
ensure a consensus on what constitutes acceptable practice.
There is a further danger that such privatisation will lead
to cost cutting practices of human warehousing, rather than
the more long term beneficial practice of prisoner
rehabilitation.
In some European countries, particularly Britain, where
changes in penal policy are leading to a rapid rise in prison
population without additional resources being applied to the
sector, the imperative is to cut costs either through using
technology or by privatising prisons.(16)
Already, the UK Prison Service has compiled a shopping list
of computer based options with existing CCTV surveillance
systems being complemented by geophones, identity recognition
technology and forward looking infra-red systems which can
spot weapons and drugs..(17) Alongside such proactive
technologies, UK prisons will face increasing pressure to
tool up for trouble. Much this weaponry including the
contract for between 950,000 and 2,500,000 of side handled
batons, kubotans, riot shields etc. made by the Prison
Service in March 1995, are likely to be originally
manufactured in the United States.(18)
The U.S.A. adopts a far more militarised prison regime than
anywhere in Europe outside of Northern Ireland. A massive
prison industrial complex has mushroomed to maintain the
strict control regimes that typify American Houses of
Correction. The future prospect is of that alien technology
coming here, with very little in the way of public or
parliamentary debate. A few examples of US prison
technologies and proliferation illustrate the dangers.
Many prisons in the U.S, use Nova electronic 50,000 volt
extraction shields, electronic stun prods and most recently
the REACT remote controlled stun belts. In 1994, the US
Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to use remote-controlled
stun belts on prisoners considered dangerous to prevent them
from escaping during transportation and court appearances. By
May 1996, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections said that
no longer will inmates be chained together "but will be
restrained by the use of stun belts and individual
restraints."
Promotional literature from US company Stun Tech of
Cleveland, Ohio, claims that its high pulse stun belt can be
activated from 300 feet. After a warning noise, the Remote
Electronically Activated Control Technology (REACT) belt
inflicts a 50,000 volt shock for 8 seconds. This high pulsed
current enters the prisoners left kidney region then enters
the body of the victim along blood channels and nerve
pathways. Each pulse results in a rapid body shock extending
to the whole of the brain and central nervous system. The
makers promote the belt "for total psychological supremacy
... of potentially troublesome prisoners." Stunned prisoners
lose control of the bladders and bowels. "After all, if you
were wearing the contraption around your waist that by the
mere push of a button in someone's hand, could make you
defecate or urinate yourself, what would you do from the
psychological standpoint?"(19) Amnesty International wants
Washington to ban the belts because they can be used to
torture, and calls them, "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Some
officials say the belts can save money because fewer guards
would be needed. But human rights activists and some jailers
oppose them as the "most degrading new measure in an
increasingly barbaric field." (Kilborn,1997) Already, some
European countries are in the process of evaluating stunbelt
systems for use here. (Marks, 1996)
Without proper licensing and a clear consensus on what is
expected from private prisons in Europe, multinational
private prison conglomerations could act as a bridgehead for
similar sorts of technology to further enter the European
crime control industry. Proper limits need to be set when a
licence is granted with a comprehensive account taken of that
company's past track record in terms of civil liberties,
rehabilitation and crisis management rather than just cost
per prisoner held. Amnesty International in the USA is
currently asking the large multi-national prison corporations
to sign up to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights
and a similar approach with associated contractual
obligations, might prove to be a useful way forward here in
Europe. Members of the European Parliament may wish to
consider the following options:
5.1
POLICY OPTIONS
(i) To let commercial requirements to make profits from
prisoners become the primary criterion in running Europe's
private jails;
(ii). Further examine the use of kill fencing and lethal area
denial systems in all prisons within the European Union,
whether private or public, with a view to their prohibition;
(iii) That the European Parliament establish a rigorous
independent and impartial inquiry into the use of stun belts,
stunguns and shields , and all other types and variants of
electro-shock weapons in Member States, to assess their
medical and other effects in terms of international human
rights standards regulating the treatment of prisoners and
the use of force; the inquiry should examine all known cases
of deaths or injury resulting from the use of these
instruments, and the results of the inquiry should be
published without delay;
(iv) That the European Commission be asked to:
(a). Ensure that the UN Minimum treatment of prisoners rules
banning the use of leg irons on prisoners are implemented in
all EU correctional facilities.
(b). Implement a ban on the introduction of in-built gassing
systems inside European gaols on the basis of the
manufacturers warnings of the dangers of using chemical riot
control agents in enclosed spaces. Restrictions should also
be made on the use of chemical irritants from whatever source
in correctional facilities wherever research has shown that a
concentration of that irritant could either kill or be
associated with permanent damage to health.
(c). Explore legal mechanisms to ensure that all private
prison operations within the European Union should be subject
to a common and consistent licensing regime by the host
member. If adopted, no licence should be granted where proven
human rights violations by that contractor have been made
elsewhere. Consideration might be given to providing a
contract mechanism whereby any failure to secure a licence in
one European state should debar that private prison
contractor from bidding for other European contracts (pending
evidence of adequate human rights training and appropriate
improvements in standard operating procedures and controls by
that corporation or company).
(v). Seek agreement between all Member States to ensure that:
(a) All riot control, prisoner transport and extraction
technology which is in use or proposed for use in all
prisons, (whether state or privately run), should be subject
to prior approval by the competent member authorities on the
basis of independent research.
(b) Automated systems of indiscriminate punishment such as
built in baton round firing mechanisms, should be prohibited.
(c). The use of electro-shock restraining devices or other
remote control punishment devices including shock- shields
should be immediately suspended in any private or public
prison in the European Union, until and unless independent
medical evidence can clearly demonstrate that their use will
not contribute to deaths in custody, torture or other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
6. INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES & TECHNOLOGIES
The Interim Report on the variety of hardware, software and
liveware involved in human interrogation and torture.(20)
Millennia of research and development have been expended in
devising ever more cruel and inhumane means of extracting
obedience and information from reluctant victims or achieving
excruciatingly painful and long-drawn-out deaths for those
who would question or challenge the prevalent status quo.
What has changed in more recent times is (i) the increasing
requirement for speed in breaking down prisoners' resistance;
(ii) the adoption of sophisticated methods based on a
scientific approach and (iii) a need for invisible torture
which leaves no or few marks which might be used by
organisations like Amnesty International to label a
particular government, a torturing state. Today, the
phenomena of torture has grown to a worldwide epidemic. A
report by the Redress Trust, 1996, found that 151 countries
were involved in torture, inhuman or degrading treatment,
despite the fact that 106 states have ratified, acceded to or
signed the Convention Against Torture.
Helen Bamber, Director of the British Medical Foundation for
the Treatment of the Victims of Torture, has described
electroshock batons at "the most universal modern tool of the
torturers" (Gregory,1995) Recent surveys of torture victims
have confirmed that after systematic beating, electroshock is
one of the most common factors (London, 1993); Rasmussen,
1990). If one looks at the country reports of Amnesty
International, (which recently published a survey of fifty
countries where electric shock torture and ill treatment has
been recorded since 1990)(21), confirm that electroshock
torture is the Esperanto of the most repressive states. Since
publication of the Interim Report, one news story has
uncovered evidence suggesting that Taiwan made electroshock
weapons are being sold with the EC "mark of quality", despite
the resolution passed by the European Parliament seeking a
ban on such devices. There is an urgent need to establish
whether this is a bogus claim or whether there really are
people in the Commission building whose job is to make sure
the electro-shock weapons produced by foreign manufacturers
can produce the requisite level of paralysis &
helplessness beloved of torturers every where.(22) Members of
the European Parliament may wish to consider the following
policy options:
6.1
POLICY OPTIONS
(i). That the Civil Liberties Committee should receive expert
evidence to determine whether:
(a) New regulations on the nature of in-depth interrogation
training should be agreed which prohibit export of such
techniques to forces overseas known to be involved in gross
human rights violation.
(b) All training of foreign military, police, security and
intelligence forces in interrogation techniques, can be
subject to licence, even if it is provided outside European
territory.
(c) Restrictions on visits to European MSP related events by
representatives of known torturing states can be effectively
implemented.
(ii) The Commission should be requested to achieve agreement
between member States to:
(a) Carry out an investigation of claims that the EC "mark of
quality" is being used to endorse electroshock devices and
Immediately prohibit the transfer of all electroshock stun
weapons to any country where such weapons are likely to
contribute to unlawful killings, or to torture or cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment, for example by refusing any
export licence where it is proposed that electroshock weapons
will be transferred to a country where persistent torture or
instances of instances of electric shock torture and ill
treatment have been reported.
(b) Introduce and implement new regulations on the
manufacture, sale and transfer of all electroshock weapons
from and into Europe, with a full report to the European
Parliament's Civil Liberties committee made each year.
[Special consideration should be given to controlling the
whole procurement process, covering even the making of
contracts of sale, (to prevent a purchase deal made in a
European country being met by a supplier or subsidiary
outside of the EU, in an effort to obviate extant controls)].
(c). Ensure that the proposed regulations should cover
patents and prohibit the patenting of any device whose sole
use would be the violation of human rights, via torture or
the creation of unnecessary suffering. The onus should be on
the patent seeker to show that his patent would not lead to
such outcomes.
(v) The European Parliament should look at commissioning new
work to investigate how existing legislation within member
states of the EU, can be brought to bear to prosecute
companies who have been complicit in the supply of equipment
used for torture as defined by the UN convention of torture.
This new work should examine, in conjunction with the
Directorate of Human Rights:
(a) The extent to which such technology produced by European
companies is being transferred to human rights violators and
the role played by international military, police and
security fairs organised both inside and outside European
Borders;
(b)The possible measures that could be set in place to
monitor and track any technology transfer within this
category and any potential role in this endeavour that might
be played by recognised Non-Governmental Organisations.
7. DEVELOPMENTS IN SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY
Surveillance technology can be defined as devices or systems
which can monitor, track and assess the movements of
individuals, their property and other assets. Much of this
technology is used to track the activities of dissidents,
human rights activists, journalists, student leaders,
minorities, trade union leaders and political opponents. A
huge range of surveillance technologies has evolved,
including the night vision goggles; parabolic microphones to
detect conversations over a kilometre away; laser versions,
can pick up any conversation from a closed window in line of
sight; the Danish Jai stroboscopic camera can take hundreds
of pictures in a matter of seconds and individually
photograph all the participants in a demonstration or March;
and the automatic vehicle recognition systems can tracks cars
around a city via a Geographic Information System of maps.
New technologies which were originally conceived for the
Defence and Intelligence sectors, have after the cold war,
rapidly spread into the law enforcement and private sectors.
It is one of the areas of technological advance, where
outdated regulations have not kept pace with an accelerating
pattern of abuses. Up until the 1960's, most surveillance was
low-tech and expensive since it involved following suspects
around from place to place, using up to 6 people in teams of
two working 3 eight hour shifts. All of the material and
contacts gleaned had to be typed up and filed away with
little prospect of rapidly cross checking. Even electronic
surveillance was highly labour intensive. The East German
police for example employed 500,000 secret informers, 10,000
of which were needed just to listen and transcribe citizen's
phone calls.(23)
By the 1980's, new forms of electronic surveillance were
emerging and many of these were directed towards automation
of communications interception. This trend was fuelled in the
U.S. in the 1990's by accelerated government funding at the
end of the cold war, with defence and intelligence agencies
being refocussed with new missions to justify their budgets,
transferring their technologies to certain law enforcement
applications such as anti-drug and anti-terror operations. In
1993, the US department of defence and the Justice department
signed memoranda of understanding for "Operations Other Than
War and Law Enforcement" to facilitate joint development and
sharing of technology. According to David Banisar of Privacy
International, "To counteract reductions in military
contracts which began in the 1980's, computer and electronics
companies are expanding into new markets - at home and abroad
- with equipment originally developed for the military.
Companies such as E Systems, Electronic Data Systems and
Texas Instruments are selling advanced computer systems and
surveillance equipment to state and local governments that
use them for law enforcement, border control and Welfare
administration."(24)What the East German secret police could
only dream of is rapidly becoming a reality in the free
world."(25)
7.1
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance Networks
In fact the art of visual surveillance has dramatically
changed over recent years. Of course police and intelligence
officers still photograph demonstrations and individuals of
interest but increasingly such images can be stored and
searched. Ongoing processes of ultra-miniaturisation mean
that such devices can be made to be virtually undetectable
and are open to abuse by both individuals, companies and
official agencies.
The attitude to CCTV camera networks varies greatly in the
European Union, from the position in Denmark where such
cameras are banned by law to the position in the UK, where
many hundreds of CCTV networks exist. Nevertheless, a common
position on the status of such systems where they exist in
relation to data protection principles should apply in
general. A specific consideration is the legal status of
admissibility as evidence, of digital material such as those
taken by the more advanced CCTV systems. Much of this will
fall within data protection legislation if the material
gathered can be searched, e.g., by car number plate or by
time. Given that material from such systems can be seamlessly
edited, the European Data Protection Directive legislation
needs to be implemented through primary legislation which
clarifies the law as it applies to CCTV, to avoid confusion
amongst both CCTV data controllers as well as citizens as
data subjects. Primary legislation will make it possible to
extend the impact of the Directive to areas of activity that
do not fall within community law. Articles 3 and 13 of the
Directive should not create a blanket covering the use of
CCTV in every circumstance in a domestic context.
A proper code of practice such as that promoted by the UK
based Local Government Information Unit (LGIU, 1996) should
be extended to absorb best practice from all EU Member States
to cover the use of all CCTV surveillance schemes operating
in public spaces and especially in residential areas.(26) As
a first step it is suggested that the Civil Liberties
Committee formally consider examining the practice and
control of CCTV throughout the member States with a view to
establishing what elements of the various codes of practice
could be adopted for a unified code and an enforceable legal
framework covering enforcement and civil liberties protection
and redress.
7.2
Algorithmic Surveillance Systems
The revolution in urban surveillance will reach the next
generation of control once reliable face recognition comes
in. It will initially be introduced at stationary locations,
like turnstiles, customs points, security gateways etc. to
enable a standard full face recognition to take place. The
Interim Report predicted that in the early part of the 21st.
century, facial recognition on CCTV will be a reality and
those countries with CCTV infrastructures will view such
technology as a natural add-on. In fact, an American company
Software and Systems has trialed a system in London which can
scan crowds and match faces against a database of images held
in a remote computer.(27) We are at the beginning of a
revolution in "algorithmic surveillance" - effectively data
analysis via complex algorithms which enable automatic
recognition and tracking. Such automation not only widens the
surveillance net, it narrows the mesh. (See Norris, C., et.
al, 1998)
Similarly Vehicle Recognition Systems have been developed
which can identify a car number plate then track the car
around a city using a computerised geographic information
system. Such systems are now commercially available, for
example, the Talon system introduced in 1994 by UK company
Racal at a price of 2000 per unit. The system is trained to
recognise number plates based on neural network technology
developed by Cambridge Neurodynamics, and can see both night
and day. Initially it has been used for traffic monitoring
but its function has been adapted in recent years to cover
security surveillance and has been incorporated in the "ring
of steel" around London. The system can then record all the
vehicles that entered or left the cordon on a particular day.
(28)
It is important to set clear guidelines and codes of practice
for such technological innovations, well in advance of the
digital revolution making new and unforeseen opportunities to
collate, analyze, recognise and store such visual images.
Already multifunctional traffic management systems such as
"Traffic Master", (which uses vehicle recognition systems to
map and quantify congestion), are facilitating a national
surveillance architecture. Such regulation will need to be
founded on sound data protection principles and take
cognizance of article 15 of the 1995 European Directive on
the protection of Individuals and Processing of Personal
Data. Essentially this says that : "Member States shall grant
the right of every person not to be subject to a decision
which produces legal effects concerning him or significantly
affects him and which is based solely on the automatic
processing of data."(29) There is much to recommend the
European Parliament following the advice of a recent UK House
of Lords Report (Select Committee Report on Digital Images as
Evidence, 1998). Namely: (i)that the European Parliament
...."produces guidance for both the public and private
sectors on the use of data matching, and in particular the
linking of surveillance systems with other databases; and
(ii) That the Data Protection Registrar be given powers to
audit the operation of data matching systems".
Such surveillance systems raise significant issues of
accountability, particularly when transferred to
authoritarian regimes. The cameras used in Tiananmen Square
were sold as advanced traffic control systems by Siemens
Plessey. Yet after the 1989 massacre of students, there
followed a witch hunt when the authorities tortured and
interrogated thousands in an effort to ferret out the
subversives. The Scoot surveillance system with USA made
Pelco cameras were used to faithfully record the protests.
The images were repeatedly broadcast over Chinese television
offering a reward for information, with the result that
nearly all the transgressors were identified. Again
democratic accountability is only the criterion which
distinguishes a modern traffic control system from an
advanced dissident capture technology. Foreign companies are
exporting traffic control systems to Lhasa in Tibet, yet
Lhasa does not as yet have any traffic control problems. The
problem here may be a culpable lack of imagination.
7.3
Bugging & Tapping Devices
A wide range of bugging and tapping devices have been evolved
to record conversations and to intercept telecommunications
traffic. In recent years the widespread practice of illegal
and legal interception of communications and the planting of
'bugs' has been an issue in many European States.(30)
However, planting illegal bugs is yesterday's technology.
Modern snoopers can buy specially adapted lap top computers,
and simply tune in to all the mobile phones active in the
area by cursoring down to their number. The machine will even
search for numbers "of interest" to see if they are active.
However, these bugs and taps pale into insignificance next to
the national and international state run interceptions
networks.
7.4 National & International Communications Interceptions
Networks
The Interim Report set out in detail, the global surveillance
systems which facilitate the mass supervision of all
telecommunications including telephone, email and fax
transmissions of private citizens, politicians, trade
unionists and companies alike. There has been a political
shift in targeting in recent years. Instead of investigating
crime (which is reactive) law enforcement agencies are
increasingly tracking certain social classes and races of
people living in red-lined areas before crime is committed -
a form of pre-emptive policing deemed data-veillance which is
based on military models of gathering huge quantities of low
grade intelligence.
Without encryption, modern communications systems are
virtually transparent to the advanced interceptions equipment
which can be used to listen in. The Interim Report also
explained how mobile phones have inbuilt monitoring and
tagging dimensions which can be accessed by police and
intelligence agencies. For example the digital technology
required to pinpoint mobile phone users for incoming calls,
means that all mobile phone users in a country when
activated, are mini-tracking devices, giving their owners
whereabouts at any time and stored in the company's computer.
For example Swiss Police have secretly tracked the
whereabouts of mobile phone users from the computer of the
service provider Swisscom, which according SonntagsZeitung
had stored movements of more than a million subscribers down
to a few hundred metres, and going back at least half a year.
(31)
However, of all the developments covered in the Interim
Report, the section covering some of the constitutional and
legal issues raised by the USA's National Security Agency's
access and facility to intercept all European
telecommunications caused the most concern. Whilst no-one
denied the role of such networks in anti terrorist operations
and countering illegal drug, money laundering and illicit
arms deals, alarm was expressed about the scale of the
foreign interceptions network identified in the report and
whether existing legislation, data protection and privacy
safeguards in the Member States were sufficient to protect
the confidentiality between EU citizens, corporations and
those with third countries.
Since there has been a certain degree of confusion in
subsequent press reports, it is worth clarifying some of the
issues surrounding transatlantic electronic surveillance and
providing a short history and update on developments since
the Interim Report was published in January 1998. There are
essentially two separate system, namely:
(i)
The UK/USA system comprising the activities of military
intelligence agencies such as NSA-CIA in the USA subsuming
GCHQ & MI6 in the UK operating a system known as ECHELON.
(ii) The EU-FBI system which is linking up various law
enforcement agencies such as the FBI, police, customs,
immigration and internal security.
Although the confusion has been further compounded by the
title of item 44 on the agenda for the Plenary session of the
European Parliament on September 16, 1998,(32) in
intelligence terms, these are two distinct "communities." It
is worth looking briefly at the activities of both systems in
turn, encompassing, Echelon, encryption; EU-FBI surveillance
and new interfaces with for example to access to internet
providers and to databanks of other agencies.
7.4.1
NSA INTERCEPTION OF ALL EU TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The Interim report said that within Europe, all email,
telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by
the United States National Security Agency, transferring all
target information from the European mainland via the
strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in
Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North
York Moors of the UK.
The system was first uncovered in the 1970's by a group of
researchers in the UK (Campbell, 1981). A recent work by
Nicky Hager, Secret Power, (Hager, 1996) provides the most
comprehensive details to date of a project known as ECHELON.
Hager interviewed more than 50 people concerned with
intelligence to document a global surveillance system that
stretches around the world to form a targeting system on all
of the key Intelsat satellites used to convey most of the
world's satellite phone calls, internet, email, faxes and
telexes. These sites are based at Sugar Grove and Yakima, in
the USA, at Waihopai in New Zealand, at Geraldton in
Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the UK.
The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system but unlike
many of the electronic spy systems developed during the cold
war, ECHELON is designed for primarily non-military targets:
governments, organisations and businesses in virtually every
country. The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately
intercepting very large quantities of communications and then
siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence
aids like Memex to find key words. Five nations share the
results with the US as the senior partner under the UKUSA
agreement of 1948, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia
are very much acting as subordinate information servicers.
Each of the five centres supply "dictionaries" to the other
four of keywords, Phrases, people and places to "tag" and the
tagged intercept is forwarded straight to the requesting
country. Whilst there is much information gathered about
potential terrorists, there is a lot of economic
intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the
countries participating in the GATT negotiations. But Hager
found that by far the main priorities of this system
continued to be military and political intelligence
applicable to their wider interests.
Hager quotes from a"highly placed intelligence operatives"
who spoke to the Observer in London. "We feel we can no
longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be
gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in
which we operate." They gave as examples. GCHQ interception
of three charities, including Amnesty International and
Christian Aid. "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their
communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source
said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as
Mantis. With telexes its called Mayfly. By keying in a code
relating to third world aid, the source was able to
demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organisations. With no
system of accountability, it is difficult to discover what
criteria determine who is not a target.
Indeed since the Interim Report was published, journalists
have alleged that ECHELON has benefited US companies involved
in arms deals, strengthened Washington's position in crucial
World Trade organisation talks with Europe during a 1995
dispute with Japan over car part exports. According to the
Financial Mail On Sunday, "key words identified by US experts
include the names of inter-governmental trade organisations
and business consortia bidding against US companies. The word
'block' is on the list to identify communications about
offshore oil in area where the seabed has yet to be divided
up into exploration blocks ..." It has also been suggested
that in 1990 the US broke into secret negotiations and
persuaded Indonesia that US giant AT & T be included in a
multi-billion dollar telecoms deal that at one point was
going entirely to Japan's NEC.(33)
The Sunday Times (11 May, 1998) reported that early on the
radomes at Menwith Hill (NSA station F83) in North Yorkshire
UK, were given the task of intercepting international leased
carrier (ILC) traffic - essentially, ordinary commercial
communications. Its staff have grown from 400 in the 1980's
to more than 1400 now with a further 370 staff from the MoD.
The Sunday Times also reported allegations that conversations
between the German company Volkswagen and General Motors were
intercepted and the French have complained that Thompson-CSF,
the French electronics company, lost a $1.4 billion deal to
supply Brazil with a radar system because the Americans
intercepted details of the negotiations and passed them on to
US company Raytheon, which subsequently won the contract.
Another claim is that Airbus Industrie lost a contract worth
$1 billion to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas because
information was intercepted by American spying. Other
newspapers such as Liberation (21 April 1998) and Il Mondo
(20 March 1998), identify the network as an Anglo-Saxon Spy
network because of the UK-USA axis. Privacy International
goes further. "Whilst recognising that "strictly speaking,
neither the Commission nor the European Parliament have a
mandate to regulate or intervene in security matters ... they
do have a responsibility to ensure that security is
harmonised throughout the Union."
According to Privacy International, the UK is likely to find
its "Special relationship" ties fall foul of its Maastricht
obligations since Title V of Maastricht requires that "Member
States shall inform and consult one another within the
Council on any matter of foreign and security policy of
general interest in order to ensure that their combined
influence is exerted as effectively as possible by means of
concerted and convergent action." Yet under the terms of the
Special relationship, Britain cannot engage in open
consultation with its other European partners.(34) The
situation is further complicated by counter allegations in
the French magazine Le Point, that the French are
systematically spying on American and other allied countries
telephone and cable traffic via the Helios 1A Spy satellite.
(Times, June 17 1998)
If even half of these allegations are true then the European
Parliament must act to ensure that such powerful surveillance
systems operate to a more democratic consensus now that the
Cold War has ended. Clearly, the Overseas policies of
European Union Member States are not always congruent with
those of the USA and in commercial terms, espionage is
espionage. No proper Authority in the USA would allow a
similar EU spy network to operate from American soil without
strict limitations, if at all. Following full discussion on
the implications of the operations of these networks, the
European Parliament is advised to set up appropriate
independent audit and oversight procedures and that any
effort to outlaw encryption by EU citizens should be denied
until and unless such democratic and accountable systems are
in place, if at all.
7.4.2
EU-FBI GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Much of the documentation and research necessary to put into
the public domain, the history, structure, role and function
of the EU-FBI convention to legitimise global electronic
surveillance, has been secured by Statewatch, the widely
respected UK based civil liberties monitoring and research
organisation.(35)
Statewatch have described at length the signing of the
Transatlantic Agenda in Madrid at the EU-US summit of 3
December 1995 - part of which was the "Joint EU-US Action
Plan" and has subsequently analysed these efforts as an
ongoing attempt to redefine the Atlantic Alliance in the
post-Cold War era, a stance increasingly used to justify the
efforts of internal security agencies taking on enhanced
policing roles in Europe.(36) Statewatch notes that the first
Joint Action 'out of the area" surveillance plan was not
discussed at the Justice and Home Affairs meeting but adopted
on the nod, as an A point (without debate) by of all places,
the Fisheries Council on 20 December 1996.(37)
In February 1997, Statewatch reported that the EU had
secretly agreed to set up an international telephone tapping
network via a secret network of committees established under
the "third pillar" of the Mastricht Treaty covering
co-operation on law and order. Key points of the plan are
outlined in a memorandum of understanding, signed by EU
states in 1995. (ENFOPOL 112 10037/95 25.10.95) which remains
classified. According to a Guardian report (25.2.97) it
reflects concern among European Intelligence agencies that
modern technology will prevent them from tapping private
communications. "EU countries it says, should agree on
"international interception standards set at a level that
would ensure encoding or scrambled words can be broken down
by government agencies." Official reports say that the EU
governments agreed to co-operate closely with the FBI in
Washington. Yet earlier minutes of these meetings suggest
that the original initiative came from Washington. According
to Statewatch, network and service providers in the EU will
be obliged to install "tappable" systems and to place under
surveillance any person or group when served with an
interception order.
These plans have never been referred to any European
government for scrutiny, nor to the Civil Liberties Committee
of the European Parliament, despite the clear civil liberties
issues raised by such an unaccountable system. The decision
to go ahead was simply agreed in secret by "written
procedure" through an exchange of telexes between the 15 EU
governments. We are told by Statewatch the EU-FBI Global
surveillance plan was now being developed "outside the third
pillar." In practical terms this means that the plan is being
developed by a group of twenty countries - the then 15 EU
member countries plus the USA, Australia, Canada, Norway and
New Zealand. This group of 20 is not accountable through the
Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers or to the
European Parliament or national parliaments.(38) Nothing is
said about finance of this system but a report produced by
the German government estimates that the mobile phone part of
the package alone will cost 4 billion D-marks.
Statewatch concludes that "It is the interface of the ECHELON
system and its potential development on phone calls combined
with the standardisation of "tappable communications centres
and equipment being sponsored by the EU and the USA which
presents a truly global threat over which there are no legal
or democratic controls." (Press release 25.2.97) In many
respects what we are witnessing here are meetings of
operatives of a new global military-intelligence state. It is
very difficult for anyone to get a full picture of what is
being decided at the executive meetings setting this
Transatlantic agenda. Whilst Statewatch won a ruling from the
Ombudsman for access on the grounds that the Council of
Ministers misapplied the code of access, for the time being
such access to the agendas have been denied. Without such
access, we are left with "black box decision making". The
eloquence of the unprecedented Commission statement on
Echelon and Transatlantic relations scheduled for the 16th.
of September, is likely to be as much about what is left out
as it is about what is said for public consumption. Members
of the European Parliament may wish to consider the following
policy options:
7.5
POLICY OPTIONS
(i) That a more detailed series of studies should be
commissioned on the social, political commercial and
constitutional implications of the global electronic
surveillance networks outlined in this report, with a view to
holding a series of expert hearings to inform future EU civil
liberties policy. These studies might cover:
(a) The constitutional issues raised by the facility of the
US National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept all European
telecommunications, particularly those legal commitments made
by member States in regard to the Maastricht Treaty and the
whole question of the use of this network for automated
political and commercial espionage.
(b) The social and political implications of the FBI-EU
global surveillance system, its growing access to new
telecommunications mediums including e-mail and its ongoing
expansion into new countries together with any related
financial and constitutional issues.
(c) The structure, role and remit of an EU wide oversight
body, independent from the European Parliament, which might
be set up to oversee and audit the activities of all bodies
engaged in intercepting telecommunications made within
Europe.
(ii) The European Parliament should reject proposals from the
United States for making private messages via the global
communications network (Internet) accessible to US
Intelligence Agencies. Nor should the Parliament agree to new
expensive encryption controls without a wide ranging debate
within the EU on the implications of such measures. These
encompass the civil and human rights of European citizens and
the commercial rights of companies to operate within the law,
without unwarranted surveillance by intelligence agencies
operating in conjunction with multinational competitors.
(ii) That the European Parliament convene a series of expert
hearings covering all the technical, political and commercial
activities of bodies engaged in electronic surveillance and
to further elaborate possible options to bring such
activities back within the realm of democratic accountability
and transparency. These proposed hearings might also examine
the issue of proper codes of practice to ensure redress if
malpractice or abuse takes place. Explicit criteria should be
agreed for deciding who should be targeted for surveillance
and who should not, how such data is stored, processed and
shared and whether such criteria and associated codes of
practice could be made publicly available.
(iii) To amend the terms of reference of the Civil Liberties
and Internal Affairs Committee to include powers and
responsibilities for all matters relating to the civil
liberties issues raised by electronic surveillance devices
and networks and to call for a series of reports during its
next work programme, including:
(a) How legally binding codes of practice could ensure that
new surveillance technologies are brought within the
appropriate data protection legislation.
(b) The production of guidance for both the public and
private sectors on the use of data matching, and in
particular the linking of surveillance systems with other
databases; and addressing the issue of giving Member State
Data Protection Registrars appropriate powers to audit the
operation of data matching systems.
(c) How the provision of electronic bugging and tapping
devices to private citizens and companies, might be further
regulated, so that their sale is governed by legal permission
rather than self regulation.
(d) How the use of telephone interception by Member states
could be subject to procedures of public accountability
referred to in (a) above? (E.g. before any telephone
interception takes place a warrant should be obtained in a
manner prescribed by the relevant parliament. In most cases,
law enforcement agencies will not be permitted to
self-authorise interception except in the most unusual of
circumstances which should be reported back to the
authorising authority at the earliest opportunity.
(e) How technologies facilitating the automatic profiling and
pattern analysis of telephone calls to establish friendship
and contact networks might be subject to the same legal
requirements as those for telephone interception and reported
to the relevant Member State parliament.
(f) The commission of a study examining what constitutes best
practice and control of CCTV throughout the member States
with a view to establishing what elements of the various
codes of practice could be adopted for a unified code and a
legal framework covering enforcement and civil liberties
protection and redress.
(iv) Setting up procedural mechanisms whereby relevant
committees of the European Parliament considering proposals
for technologies which have civil liberties implications
(e.g. the Telecommunications Committee) in regard to
surveillance, should be required to forward all relevant
policy proposals and reports to the Civil Liberties Committee
for their observations in advance of any political or
financial decisions on deployment being taken.
(v) Setting up Agreements between Member States Agreement
whereby annual statistics on interception should be reported
to each member states' parliament in a standard and
consistent format. These statistics should provide
comprehensive details of the actual number of communication
devices intercepted and data should be not be aggregated. (To
avoid the statistics only identifying the number of warrants,
issued whereas organisations under surveillance may have
hundreds of members, all of whose phones may be intercepted).
8. REGULATION OF HORIZONTAL PROLIFERATION
The Interim Report warned of the potential of some of these
weapons, technologies and systems to undermine international
human rights legislation - a consideration particularly
poignant in this the 50th. anniversary year of the signing of
the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Many of the major arms
companies have a paramilitary/internal security operation and
diversification into manufacturing or marketing this
technology, is increasingly taking place.
NGO's like Amnesty International, have begun to catalogue the
trade in specialised military, security and police
technologies, to measure its impact on industrialising
repression, globalising conflict, undermining democracy and
strengthening the security forces of torturing states to
create a new generation of political prisoners,
extra-judicial killings and "disappearances". (Amnesty
International, 1996). The key issue for Members of the
European Parliament is how they will deal with the human and
political fall out of what is a systemic process of exporting
repression: either importing a tidal wave of dispossessed
refugees, or keeping them in desperation at the borders of
Europe. There is an urgent need for greater transparency and
democratic control of such exports and a clearer recognition
of their frequent linkage with gross human rights violations
in their recipient states.
The Interim Report catalogued in some detail , examples of
how this technology, including electroshock systems, was
being supplied by European countries to assist in acts of
human rights violation abroad,despite the fact that a
substantial body of international human rights obligations
should theoretically prevent such transfers .(39) The
European Parliament made a resolution on the 19 January 1995,
which called on the Commission to bring forward proposals to
incorporate these technologies within the scope of the arms
export controls and ensure greater transparency in the export
of all military, security and police technologies to prevent
the hypocrisy of governments who themselves breach their own
export bans.(40) Members of the European Parliament may wish
to consider the following policy options:
8.1
POLICY OPTIONS
(i) That new research should be commissioned by the European
Parliament to explore the extent to which European companies
are complicity supplying repressive technologies used to
commit human rights violations and the prospects of
instituting independent measures of monitoring the level and
extent of such sales whilst tracking their subsequent human
rights impacts and consequences;
(ii) Consider if there is a need to amend the terms of
reference of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and Security
to include powers and responsibilities for liaising with
Member States to:
(a) Enable the European Parliament to explore the
possibilities of using the Joint Action procedures used to
establish the EU regulations on the export of Dual Use
equipment to draw up common lists of proscribed military,
security, police (MSP)technology and training, the sole or
primary use of which is to contribute to human rights
violations; sensitive MSP technologies which have been shown
in the past to be used to commit human rights violations; and
military, security and police units and forces which have
been sufficiently responsible for human rights violations and
to whom sensitive goods and services should not be supplied.
(b) Enable Member States to monitor and regulate all
exhibitions promoting the sale of security equipment and
technology to ensure that any proposed transfers such as
electroshock weapons, will not contribute to unlawful
killings, or to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
(c) Explore mechanisms to ensure that all military, police
and security exhibitions are required to publish guest lists,
names of exhibitors, products and services on display and no
visas or invitations should be issued to governments or
representatives of security forces, known to carry out human
rights violations.
(d) Find more effective means for ensuring that the sender
should take legal responsibility for the stated use of
military, security and police transfers in practice, for
example making future contracts dependent on adherence to
human rights criteria and that such criteria are central to
the regulatory process.
(iii) That the Commission should be requested to achieve
agreement between Member States to undertake changes to their
respective strategic export controls so that:
(a) All proposed transfers of security or police equipment
are publicly disclosed in advance, especially electroshock
weapons, (including those arranged on European territory
where the equipment concerned remains outside Member States'
borders) so that the human rights situation in the intended
receiving country can be taken into consideration before any
such transfers are allowed. and that reports are issued on
the human rights situation in the receiving countries.
(b) Member States Parliaments are notified of all information
necessary to enable them to exercise proper control over the
implementation of their legal obligations and commitments to
international human rights agreements, including receiving
information on human rights violations from non-governmental
organisations.
9. CONCLUSIONS
With proper accountability and regulation, some of the
technologies discussed above do have a legitimate law
enforcement function; without such democratic control, they
can provide powerful tools of oppression.The real threat to
civil liberties and human rights in the future, is more
likely to arise from an incremental erosion of civil
liberties, than it is from some conscious plan. As the
globalisation of political control technologies increases,
Members of the European Parliament have a right and a
responsibility to challenge the costs, as well as the alleged
benefits of many so-called advances in law enforcement. This
report has sought to highlight some of the areas which are
leading to the most undesirable social and political
consequences.
Members of the Parliament are requested to consider the
policy options provided in the report as just a first step to
help bring the technology of political control, back within
systems of democratic accountability.
Sources:
1. The Interim Report on "An Appraisal of Technologies of
Political Control" (PE 166.499), is available free on request
from the STOA secretariat in Luxembourg. Where appropriate,
readers of this summary report seeking further detail are
referred to the relevant pages of the interim study.
2. Ackroyd C, Margolis, K., Rosenhead, J., Shallice, T.,
(1977) The Technology of Political Control, Penguin Books,
Middlesex, UK.
3. Statewatch, October, 1996, pp 6-7. A more recent related
example concerns the proposed WEU creation of an 800 strong
armed paramilitary police force drawn from existing
specialist squads at the national level, for intervention in
Central and Eastern Europe, to deal with public order, riot
control and terrorism. (Statewatch, Vol 8, No.3-4, August
1998)
4. The Interim Report discusses in further detail specific
innovations in area denial technology; surveillance
technology including biometric systems such as face
recognition; data-veillance; discrete order vehicles;
less-lethal weapons; lethal weapons; and execution
technologies (Interim Report, Sections 3.1-3.6, pp 8-15).
5. Interim Report, pp 22-39
6. "Critics Question Use of Pepper Spray," Rutland Herald and
Barre Times-Argus, 22.2.98, Vermont, USA.
7. Amnesty International Press Release, AI: "USA: Police use
of pepper spray is tantamount to torture," 7 November 1997.
8. No one from the police or home office has subsequently
visited this inspector who remains partially sighted - See
The Guardian, 29 January 1998.
9. Interim Report, p 39.
10. Pugwash Newsletter, November 1997, p. 276.
11. Bill Arkin writing in Journal of Medicine, Conflict and
Survival, quoted in The Guardian, 9 December 1997.
12. Pugwash, Ibid.
13. Principle 3 states that: "the development and deployment
of non-lethal incapacitating weapons should be carefully
evaluated in order to minimise the risk of endangering
uninvolved persons, and the use of such weapons should be
carefully controlled"; principle 4 requires governments to
take steps to ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force
is not used by law enforcement officers, and that force is
used "only if other means remain ineffective".
14. Interim Report, pp. 40-43.
15. Jessica Mitford's, The American Prison Business, Penguin
1977, provided a good discussion of early behaviour
modification techniques tested in US gaols.
16. For example in 1996, the UK treasury announced enforced
cutbacks of some 3,000 prison jobs. With the UK prison
population expected to grow by 20,000 over the next 10 years
due to the sentencing changes introduced by Home Secretary
Michael Howard, staffing levels are sliding back to those
prevailing at the time of the prison riots in the late
1980's. In these circumstances, the shortsighted prospect is
one of expensive wardens being replaced with cheaper and more
malleable technology, both passive and punitive.
17. Warren P, "Prisons go shopping in face of staff cuts,"
Computing, 25 January 1996
18. Restricted Contract Procedure (CC3160) for Her Majesty's
Prison Service, Supply and Transport Services, Tenders
Electronic Daily, Luxembourg.
19. Quoted in Amnesty International, United States of America
- Use of electro-shock belts, June 1996.
20. Interim Report, pp 44-52; 54-57.
21. In its report Arming the Torturers (Amnesty
International, 1997) Amnesty named the fifty countries where
electroshock torture and ill treatment had been carried out
in prisons, police stations and detention centres. They are:
Afghanistan, Algeria,Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia,
Brazil, Bulgaria, Chad, Chile, China, Cyprus, Colombia,
Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Greece,
Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia/East Timor, Iran, Iraq,
Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco/Western Sahara, Nepal, Netherlands
Antilles, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russian
federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sri
Lanka, Sudan, Togo, Turkey, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet
Nam, Yemen, Yugoslavia - Kosovo province, Zaire.
Amnesty recognises that the real figure is probably higher,
"as the use of these weapons in torture can be