BERLIN - Fresh outrage in Japan over alleged U.S. satellite-based spying, coupled with European pressure on the same subject, could add urgency to calls for Congress to engage in a serious investigation of the so-called Echelon system.
Early next week, the European Parliament temporary committee investigating Echelon is scheduled to vote in Strasbourg on its final recommendations. It will call on the United States and international bodies to take action to protect individual rights from intrusive high-tech surveillance systems that can tap e-mail, faxes and phone calls all over the world.
The international push for more accountability could have added resonance now that a Japanese newspaper has reported that the so-called Echelon system, reportedly operated by the U.S. National Security Agency, has been tapping Japanese diplomatic communications for 20 years to access economic information.
The article in the Mainichi newspaper cited the research of Nicky Hagger, one of many experts on Echelon who testified before the European Parliament committee during its year-long inquiry. The Japanese controversy is likely to fuel arguments that Congress needs to look seriously into the actions of agencies like Echelon or risk growing diplomatic frictions with Europe and Japan.
"I've been in Japan twice in the last two years, and met both with privacy activists and members of the Japanese Parliament," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which maintains the echelonwatch.org website.
"Both the press in Japan and the opposition members are very concerned about Echelon. There's a growing concern about the role of the U.S. and U.S. intelligence agencies in Japan."
It's one more sign, he said, that it's time for the U.S. government to get serious about owning up to its international responsibilities.
"What really needs to happen next is a committee of the U.S. Congress that's not tied to the intelligence agencies needs to take a close look at Echelon," he said. "They are the only ones with the subpoena power and the security clearance to bring the NSA to the table. Only the U.S. Congress has the capability to ferret out the truth.
"We all have foot-high stacks of documents, but they don't tell you much, because they are mostly a series of blacked-out documents. We need the equivalent of the Church Committee, which investigated the NSA and the other intelligence agencies in the 1970s."
John Young, a privacy activist in New York whose website features frequent updates on Echelon, agrees that much more needs to be done to bring intelligence agencies' activities to some kind of accountability.
The European Parliament Echelon committee was a useful start, he said, in that it helped raise public awareness of Echelon and other technologies used by intelligence agencies.
But, he said, "We've got a long way to go."
"Journalists seem to be pursuing this more energetically. All that helps. People tend to say more things. There are more people covering it now, but I am personally pushing for more investigation of these other technologies," he said.
"The European Parliament could do more based on its reports. If it follows up on all these technologies, as it has for Echelon, that would be fantastic."
But any such investigation features limitations on its breadth, he said.
"You never get intelligence information in the public that is not at least in part disinformation," he said. "They are not allowed to disclose classified information. This is not paranoia. This is standard intelligence services. The European Parliament is doing what government organizations are obliged to do -- they put out comforting information. The European Parliament will never attack other governments or organizations. It's just not done."
The ACLU's Steinhardt got an up-close look at just how difficult it can be to get the U.S. government to respond to calls for disclosure on the system known as Echelon, which it reportedly operates in conjunction with Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
He had just been talking to members of a visiting delegation from the European Parliament Echelon committee last month in Washington when it became clear that the delegation's meetings with the State Department, the Commerce Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA had all been abruptly cancelled.
"I happened to be meeting with the committee that day," Steinhardt said. "It generated a lot of bad press for the U.S. in Europe. It's the classic NSA response. They are only giving ground very grudgingly. The U.S. stonewalled the committee, essentially."
He was surprised by how the Europeans reacted to that rebuff, he said.
"I'm disappointed that they didn't keep going, essentially, that they let the stonewall by the United States end the inquiry," he said. "I think they should have kept going."
But at some point, the onus is on the United States -- and so far, the American public seems less concerned about high-tech spying than Europeans.
"The idea that the United States government is eavesdropping on our lives should be distressing to everyone, but few Americans even know about it or are as riled up about it as our European neighbors," a "security expert" named Robert Vamosi wrote in ZDNet.
But Steinhardt sees that changing in the United States.
"I think there's a greater and greater awareness of the capability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to engage in communication surveillance, and an increasing wariness about the role of government," he said. "Poll after poll in the United States shows that people are extraordinarily concerned about privacy."
