In the last few decades the United States and its allies, notably the United Kingdom, have developed the ability to monitor most electronic traffic using radio intercept equipment, advanced computers and a range of software, including the original voice recognition program.  It has long been a complaint of France and other continental European countries that America’s NSA and the UK’s equivalent agency, GCHQ, based at Cheltenham, have monitored virtually all Europe’s Internet, and telephone traffic, from their UK-based facilities and from satellite receivers, under a program called “Echelon.”  The European Parliament published a critical report in 2000 which the British ignored.  This facility is obviously a key intelligence resource, individual numbers can be monitored and its voice recognition programs can reportedly scan all traffic for particular words and names.

The US and UK are also pressing ahead with tighter border controls, and the UK is planning to introduce a form of identity cards, although there is genuine opposition to this on civil liberties grounds.  The UK announced in September 2004 that it was planning to introduce electronic embarkation controls at UK ports by the end of 2004, a £15 million  ($30 million) pilot scheme is called Project Semaphore and it was aimed at the six million passengers who use high risk airline routes each year.  The US has a similar program called US-VISIT.  The UK’s e-borders program is planned to record all movement across UK borders by 2008[1].  The Labour Government in the UK is also planning to introduce an identity card scheme, but there is considerable parliamentary opposition to this on civil rights and costs grounds. The US is also using a pre-flight screening program called CAPPSII, and has been using this for travelers from the European Union.  It is thought that data from CAPPSII could be feed into the US-VISIT system.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of the British Security Service, MI5, said in September 2005, in a talk to the Dutch Secret Service, that “the most important limitation on intelligence is its incompleteness.” 

All governments, but especially the US Government, have been investing heavily in new computer-based technologies in order to combat terrorism, in addition to the border control systems referred to above.  The Global Intelligence Grid (GIG), is the heart of the planned systems which will coordinate and control US intelligence resources. The Department of Defense says it “shall support all DoD missions with information technology, for national security systems, joint operations, joint task force (JTF), and/or combined-task force commands, that offers the most effective, efficient, and assured information handling capabilities available, consistent with national military strategy, operational requirements, and best-value enterprise-level business practices.” [2]  I understand that GIG will be the most complex system operated by the US Government.  In addition to coordinating intelligence inputs GIG will also be used to run covert operations and military responses to terrorist and other national security threats.  GIG will be supported by an ultra sophisticated sensor network and will sent real time data to GIG, the proposed sensors will be able to detect vibration, chemicals, radiation, explosives, voice and will be able to relay voice and video to GIG. Some of the sensors will be very small (nanotechnology is a planned future development in this area).  GIG will exploit and extend technology currently used in geographic information  systems (GIS) and tools like data fusion and advanced relationship mapping programs in order to evaluate data and produce useable information for intelligence evaluation.  GIG is layered and used IP, so it will be like a very special military Internet system, all US military and intelligence systems will integrate with it (and probably some close allies like the UK will be permitted some level of integration, if not full access, doubtless subject to the provision of their intelligence data into the system) this system will take 15 to 20 years to complete in its entirety, but the US will see the initial benefits over the next few years. The GIG is already being integrated into existing programs, like as Theater Deployed Communications, Combat Information Transport System, and Joint-STARS.

GIG is actually the technology environment in which all new US systems will be integrated, not just a system, it will be literally America’s command, control and communication infrastructure for the first half of the 21^st century.  Many other organizations have proposed uses for technology which will enhance the capabilities of GIG, including the RAND Corporation.  In a recent report, issued in 2004,[3] the RAND Corporation proposed “connecting the dots” by the use of ASAP – Atypical Signal Analysis and Processing. As proposed by RAND the ASAP system would assist detection and analysis based on the processing of out-of-the-ordinary data, suspicions logged by agents, passenger movement information, car rental by certain individuals, financial transactions, telephone calls, any data that may carry useful pieces of intelligence, ASAP would then run hypotheses on the data looking for anything that joins previously unrelated dots.

All this technology will inevitably mean that the authorities of the State will have unprecedented levels of information about their citizens and the threat to democracy in the 21^st century will be from the threat to civil liberties.  Citizens will need to resist the intrusions of the state, because if they don’t they will suffer from the effects of Al-Qaeda’s terrorist acts long after Bin Ladin has been killed and his group is just a distant memory.  In particular people must resist any suggestion that they are fitted with sensors owned by the State in order to track them and monitor them at all times, because that will be the realization of Orwell’s nightmare of 1984.