Spy Network Not Targeting Businesses, EU Is Assured

The United States and Britain have offered reassurances that their giant eavesdropping network is not involved in economic espionage, a European Union commissioner testified Thursday.

European Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen testified during a special European Parliament debate that he received a letter from the U.S. State Department and Britain. Both governments denied accusations that the American-led Echelon spy network is used to snoop on Europeans and European businesses.

“The U.S. intelligence community is not engaged in industrial espionage. . . . The United States government and the intelligence community do not accept tasking from private firms and do not collect propriety commercial, technical or financial information for the benefit of private firms,” the letter said, according to Liikanen.

The letter from Britain stated that its intelligence services “work within a legal framework.”

The Echelon issue surfaced last month when a European Parliament report discussed the existence and practice of the network. It said that Echelon comprises surveillance-interception stations across the globe that listen in on and intercept “billions of messages per hour,” including telephone calls, fax transmissions and private e-mails.

The report by British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell was presented to the EU assembly last month. It urged the EU to take action to protect against unwanted interception of communications, insisting that the intercepts violated human rights and could be used for industrial espionage.

Portuguese Interior Minister Fernando Gomes said there was no evidence to confirm the parliamentary report or that there was any wrongdoing.

“There is no information to conclude whether there are companies which have either benefited or have been damaged by it,” he said. “We have no evidence; otherwise, we would have acted right away.”

Liikanen similarly denied there was evidence of widespread electronic eavesdropping in Europe by the Echelon network, which also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But a majority of European Parliament members rejected Gomes’ and Liikanen’s opinions and said they will vote in April for a much wider investigation.

“Unfortunately, a great deal of questions have not been answered,” Maria Berger, an Austrian socialist, said during the debate.