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> Operation In US History -
> Scores Israelis Held
> By Charles R. Smith
> 12-20-1
> In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has
> stumbled on the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside the
> United States. The U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly 100
> Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and
> intelligence services. The spy ring reportedly includes employees
> of two Israeli-owned companies that currently perform almost all the
> official wiretaps for U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement.
> The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the
> Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), appear to
> have been breached by organized crime units working inside Israel and
> the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. Both Attorney General
> John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were warned on Oct. 18
> in a hand-delivered letter from local, state and federal law
> enforcement officials. The warning stated, "Law enforcement's current
> electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than
> they > were at the time CALEA was enacted." The spy ring enabled
> criminals to use reverse wiretaps against U.S. intelligence and law
> enforcement operations. The illegal monitoring may have resulted in
> the deaths of several informants and reportedly spoiled planned
> anti-drug raids on crime syndicates. Global Spy and Crime Network
> The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant spy
> hunt across the globe by American intelligence agencies. U.S.
> intelligence officials now suspect the spy ring shared and sold
> information to other nations. "Why do you think Putin so
> nonchalantly and with such great fanfare announced the shutdown of
> the Lourdes listening post in Cuba?" noted Douglas Brown, president
> of Multilingual Data Solutions Inc. and program director at the
> Nathan Hale Institute. "Besides the PR benefit right before his
> visit here, the Russians don't need it anymore. They've scraped
> together a cheaper, more effective monitoring system. Is the Israeli
> company an element of that system? I don't know," stated Brown.
> "With all the whining and crying about Echelon and Carnivore,
> critics, domestic and foreign, of U.S. electronic eavesdropping
> vastly overestimate our abilities to process and disseminat> e the
> stuff," noted Brown. "The critics also underestimated the
> incompetence and total ineptness of the people running our
> intelligence and law enforcement services during the Clinton-Gore
> years. One guy uses his home computer for storing top secret
> documents; another high-tech guru guy can't figure out how to save
> and retrieve his e-mail, and the guy in charge of everything is
> having phone sex over an open line with one of his employees," said
> Brown. "On the other hand, the Europeans, including the Russians,
> have been much more focused on the nuts and bolts of practical
> systems to process the information they scoop up. The stories linking
> German intelligence and the L scandal got very little play here but
> were widely noted in the European software community," said Brown.
> "Except for a few Germans and an occasional Pole, nobody can match
> the Russians in designing and developing algorithms. We may have some
> of the world's greatest programmers, but the Russians and Europeans
> do a better job of matching up linguists and area experts with their
> programmers," noted Brown. The discovery of a major spy ring
> inside the United States is straining the already tense relations
> with Israel. Although, Israel denied any involvement with the
> penetration of the U.S. wiretap system, the CIA and FBI are
> investigating the direct government ties to the former Israeli
> military and intelligence officials now being held by the Justice
> Department. Israeli Company Provides U.S. Wiretaps One
> company reported to be under investigation is Comverse Infosys, a
> subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm.
> Comverse provides almost all the wiretapping equipment and software
> for U.S. law enforcement. Custom computers and software made by
> Comverse are tied into the U.S. phone network in order to intercept,
> record and store wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them
> to investigators. The penetration of Comverse reportedly allowed
> criminals to wiretap law enforcement communications in reverse and
> foil authorized wiretaps with advance warning. One major drug bust
> operation planned by the Los Angeles police was foiled by what now
> appear to be reverse wiretaps placed on law enforcement phones by the
> criminal spy ring. Flawed laws Led to Compromise Several U.S.
> privacy and security advocates contend the fault actually lies in the
> CALEA legislation passed by Congress that allowed the spy ring to
> operate so effectively. Lisa Dean, vice president for technology
> policy at Free Congress Foundation, delivered a scathing critique of
> t> he breach of the U.S. law enforcement wiretap system. "We are
> exercising our 'I told you so' rights on this," said Dean. "From
> the beginning, both the political right and left warned Congress and
> the FBI that they were making a huge mistake by implementing CALEA.
> That it would jeopardize the security of private communications,
> whether it's between a mother and her son or between government
> officials. The statement just issued by law enforcement agencies has
> confirmed our worst fears," concluded Dean. "How many more 9/11s
> do we have to suffer?" asked Brad Jansen, deputy director for
> technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation. "The CALEA
> form of massive surveillance is a poor substitute for real law
> enforcement and intelligence work. It is an after-the-fact method of
> crime fighting. It is not designed to prevent crime. Massive
> wiretapping does not equal security. Instead, we have elected to
> jeopardize our national security in exchange for poor law
> enforcement," said Jansen. "For example, FINCEN monitoring of all
> money transactions did not detect al-Qaeda, nor did it find Mohamed
> Atta before he boarded his last flight. It was an ATM receipt left in
> his rental car that led the FBI to the bin Laden bank accounts,"
> noted Jansen. U.S. National Security Compromised "The CALEA
> approach is the same approach law enforcement has been pushing for a
> number of years. It's the same approach that was used to push
> Carnivore, Magic Lantern, FINCEN and ev> en the failed Clipper
> project. This approach leads to a compromise in national security and
> in personal security for the American public," said Jansen. "In
> addition, there is always government abuse of these kinds of
> systems," stated Jansen. "Law enforcement on all levels does a very
> poor job in policing itself. We need to hold our police and
> government officials to the highest standards." "This also hurts
> the U.S. economy when the whole world knows that our communication
> systems are not secure. We cannot compete with inferior products when
> other countries are exporting secure software and hardware. New
> Zealand, India and Chili already offer security products that
> actually provide real security," stated Jansen. "The current
> mentality of law enforcement is what failed to protect us from 9/11.
> CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from terror attacks in the future.
> The system does not provide better intelligence information. It
> actually leads to less security and more crime. We get the worst of
> both worlds," concluded Jansen. All Rights Reserved ©
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