The European Union is quietly getting ready to approve legislation that will allow the police to eavesdrop both on Internet conversations and Iridium satellite telephone calls without obtaining court authorization.
The legislation is part of a much wider memorandum of understanding between the EU, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway, a nonmember European nation. That agreement allows authorities to conduct telecom surveillance across international borders, according to a Europol document leaked to members of the European Parliament.
"Security measures are often necessary in the cases of terrorism or organized crime," said Glyn Ford, a member of the European Parliament for the British Labour Party and a director of the EU's Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs Committee. "But what we need is some sort of democratic control. It seems to me that many security services are a law unto themselves."
That will presumably be a topic of discussion when the European Council of Ministers meets behind closed doors Thursday to update a 1995 wiretap agreement known as the Legal Interception of Telecommunications Resolution.
If approved, it would permit real-time, remote monitoring of email, as well as of calls placed on satellite telephone networks such as those maintained by Iridium and Globalstar. Unlike most laws in Europe, the agreement will allow law enforcement to listen in without a court order.
"This is a US export," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It's a European version of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act." The act, passed in 1984, was intended to allow law enforcers to tap the digital lines of tomorrow, just as they tap analog phone lines now.
Ironically, in September, the European Parliament called for accountability of Echelon, the US National Security Agency's spying network that is reportedly able to intercept, record, and translate any electronic communication -- telephone, data, cellular, fax, email, or telex.
Under European law, representatives of each member nation can pass legally binding resolutions. Further, the resolutions don't require the approval of either the European Parliament or the individual parliaments of EU members.
