Topic 5: The Big Brother on Menwith Hill
Read the "Inside Echelon" by Duncan Campbell. Write a blog opinion about the present situation of the system, what it is used for and how it can influence the global community. You can also draw a couple of hypothetical scenarios (what if).
Echelon - what it is (supposed to be) and what it is used for
Echelon was reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s, but since the end of the Cold War it is believed to search also for hints of terrorist plots, drug dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence.Intelligence monitoring of people has caused concern in the global community. Some critics claim the system is also being used for large-scale commercial theft, international economic espionage and invasion of privacy. Although routinely denied, commercial and economic intelligence is now a major target of international sigint activity - in short, to promote the economic well-being of countries like the US and the UK in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside. An article in The Baltimore Sun reported in 1995 that European aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the US National Security Agency (NSA) reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract.
Campbell reveals: "During the WWII as well as in the Cold War and since, British and US intelligence agencies monitored the signals and broke the codes of allies and friends, as well as of civilians and commercial communications around the world. The diplomatic communications of every country were and are attacked. In 1960, two NSA defectors, Bernon Mitchell and William Martin, told the world what NSA was doing: "Both enciphered and plain text communications are monitored from almost every nation in the world, including the nations on whose soil the intercept bases are located." These networks could carry anything from birthday telegrams to detailed economic or commercial information exchanged by companies, to encrypted diplomatic messages. Together with the leaders of African guerrilla movements, many prominent Americans were added to the 'watch lists'. The international communications of the actress Jane Fonda, Dr Benjamin Spock and hundreds of others were put under surveillance because of their opposition to the war in Vietnam. Black power leader Eldridge Cleaver and his colleagues were included because of their civil rights activities in the US.
How does Echelon operate?
The first component of the Echelon network are stations specifically targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats) used by the telephone companies of most countries. The next component of the Echelon system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by Intelsat. A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based telecommunications systems is the final element of the Echelon system. Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting large quantities of public, business, and government communications is a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks over land. Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country.
Any information sent via global communications satellites is pulled down by one of the main UKUSA spy stations around the world and automatically decoded by computer. The messages are put into bundles according to key words. Workers at GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) and its UKUSA partners type in a category and then are able to download a bundle of documents which they can read, translate from a foreign language or summarise. Reports prepared in one agency are available to others. The basic framework is set by the NSA and largely serves US spy interests.A lesson to re-learn
In the information age, we need to re-learn a lesson now a century old. Despite the sophistication of 21st century technology, today's e-mails are as open to the eyes of snoopers and intruders as were the first crude radio telegraph messages.
In 2001 the Temporary Committee on the Echelon Interception System recommended to the European Parliament that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with Echelon has been conducted by the US intelligence. Until such protections become effective and ubiquitous, Echelon or systems like it, will remain with us. Though the largest surveillance network is run by the US NSA, it is far from alone. Russia, China, France and other nations operate worldwide networks. Dozens of advanced nations use sigint as a key source of intelligence.
Let us have an intelligence agency, but let all its methods and results be public
Spying thrives on secrecy and this is nowhere more true than in the world of signals intelligence or sigint. This entire process is so secret that even most politicians know almost nothing about it. According to Brian Martin, sigint is remarkably useless. It is hard to point to a single "success", namely a benefit to society that would justify the expenditure on this sort of spying. "It seems that covertly sifting through vast volumes of electronic communications seldom provides any insight beyond what is available in publicly available sources. This suggests that the best way to develop real "intelligence" is through an open system. By all means let us have an "intelligence" agency, but let all its methods and results be public, open to scrutiny. This would be much more democratic. A regular process of scrutiny and debate would undoubtedly produce better insights into world affairs", he writes in his review of Secret Power by Nicky Hager.
Hager says, regarding the Echelon system, that "the secrecy surrounding it makes it so impervious to democratic oversight, that the temptation to use it for questionable projects seems irresistible" (p. 52). This is the crux of the matter. Highly secret spy operations are not appropriate in a democracy. Hager quotes a GCSB officer: "The secrecy is not for the Russians, it is for the general public. If they knew what the bureau does, it would not be allowed to continue." (p. 250).
Duncan Campbell names Secret Power by Nicky Hager the best informed and most detailed account of how Echelon works.Free version of the full book can be downloaded here.
"An astonishing number of people have told him things that I, as Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told. It is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little." - David Lange, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1984-1989
Topic 6: Rid the Fools of Their Money: The Online World of Crime and Fraud
Write a blog description of an Internet fraud (scam) scheme. Review the scambaiting websites mentioned. Analyse them from an ethical point of view.
As pointed out in the lecture material, Fraud.org gives a good overview of the trends. The statistics have been updated and list the 2007 Top 10 Internet Scams. The highest % of complaints is now filed against Fake Check Scams, 29% (only 6% in 2005), and General Merchandise, 23%, average financial loss being $3,310.87 and $1,136.84 accordingly. The Nigerian Money Offers have also gained a bigger 'market share', 11%, fortunately with a notable decline in average loss from $6,937 in 2005 to $4,043.14 in 2007. Despite the drop, it is still the most expensive scam. At the bottom of the Top 10, two new scams can be found: Prizes/Sweepstakes and Friendship and Sweetheart Swindles. The saying "love hurts" is proving true for consumers who have searched for romance online, only to lose thousands of dollars to a supposed suitor. The average loss per victim is similarly high here, $3,038.31. However, the full extent of the fraud is unknown, given many victims' reluctance to admit to being scammed.
Love Stinks: The Scheme of the Scam
The Sweetheart Swindle is often a long, drawn out process in which the con artist nurtures a relationship, and eventually convinces the victim to send money repeatedly over an extended period of time. Scammers lurk in chat rooms and on online dating sites, attempting to earn someone's affections and trust so that they can persuade him or her to send money. What consumers using these dating websites fail to recognize, is that they may be working with professional con artists, many who may even be using stolen identities with which to fabricate information they're giving out.
Though the details of the scammers' stories vary with each individual case, the scenario commonly revolves around a tragedy having befallen the scammer, and he or she desperately needs money. After spending time communicating and building a relationship with the victim, the scammer asks for help in the form of money.
An Example Tale of 'Love' Gone Wrong: Victim Sweethearts
In April 2007, Donna cautiously ventured into the world of online dating. Within a week, she was contacted by a man with whom she began to chat. They chatted multiple times a day for seven months. He said he was a wealthy business man, who lived in a nearby city and was temporarily in Africa on business. In October, he said his contract in Africa would soon be up and that he wanted to meet, but he needed $250 to hold him over until a check cleared. Donna offended her new sweetie when she expressed her hesitancy to give money to a stranger. So she sent him the money, and later another $1,500, never to hear from him again.
Note: Another such scam is when a woman contacts several, sometimes many, men, usually older and lonely. First she starts up a email relationship. Then within a week or two, it gets heated, then she hits the mark. She wants to visit him in person. She has sent him her picture, usually a picture of a model taken from an online website. He is smitten. She asks either for money to buy a 'first class' airline ticket, or asks him to buy the ticket, which she can resell. She may do this to 10 or 20 men. A first class ticket, especially across country (U.S.), can run $1000 to $3000. Multiply that by 10 or 20 men, a sizable sum. He never hears from her again. She moves to another town or state, and starts all over again. The next time you hear a song "love hurts", you know.
Read more: News from Fraud.org
Social Engineering Supreme: Letting the Scammers Taste Their Own Medicine
Scambaiting's objective is to keep the scam going as long as possible, costing the scammer time and energy, and to gather as much information as possible to share with authorities. Amusement that the baiter may gain from the interaction include fooling the scammer into falling for claims just as ludicrous as the ones that the scammer is using to bilk the victim of money. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice.
Having visited a few scambaiting websites, such as 419 Eater, theScamBaiter, Scam-O-Rama and WhatsTheBloodyPoint, my impression was rather dodgy from the start. Is it possible to fight the bad with bad, fraud with fraud? How do I know the roles won't change and I won't end up in a position of a victim? Although scambaiting tips can be found on all of the above mentioned websites and 419 Eater even invities newcomers to join their mentor program, it is strongly advised that you must not enter into any communications with scammers unless you feel you are adequately prepared to deal with them.
Don't try this at home. Though it may seem very tempting to reply to one of these scam letters to see just what happens, your best friend is the button on your computer that is marked "delete", use it often. This is a piece of advice given by Mike Potter, an experienced scam baiter from England.
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