Guardian on EU-FBI Wiretap Pact

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Thanks to CM.

The Guardian Weekly, Volume 156, Issue 9
Week ending March 2, 1997, Page 4:

UK to join FBI phone taps

Richard Norton-Taylor and Alison Daniels

BRITAIN has secretly agreed with its European Union partners to set up
an international telecommunications tapping system in co-operation
with the FBI, it was revealed on Monday.

The agreement covers telephones and written communications -- telexes,
faxes and e-mail. To make tapping easier, telecommunications companies
will be obliged to give security and intelligence agencies the key to
codes installed in equipment sold to private customers.

Detailed plans are being drawn up by officials in a secret network of
EU committees established under the "third pillar" of the Maastricht
Treaty, covering co-operation on law and order issues.

Civil liberties groups, while agreeing that there was a need for such
an agreement to fight against serious crime, said the plans raised a
number of privacy and data protection issues and must be the subject
of a full public debate.

Britain is an enthusiastic supporter of joint action in this area,
which is conducted on an inter-governmental basis with no role for the
European Commission, the European Parliament or the European Court of
Justice. It is an area where the EU's "democratic deficit" is most
evident.

Key points of the plan are outlined in a memorandum of understanding
signed by EU states in 1995, which is still classified. It reflects
increasing concern among European intelligence agencies that modern
technology will prevent them from tapping private communications.
EU governments agreed to co-operate closely with the FBI in Washington
as they work out detailed plans.

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As posted yesterday, for a report on EU-FBI wiretapping:

   http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/tapping/