Brussels, 01/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - Jonathan Faull, spokesperson for the European Commission, denied on Thursday the information reported by the French daily Liberation according to which the American National Security Agency (NSA) had access to secret Commission data through a European civil servant who had asked the Americans to test the encryption systems installed. According to Liberation, the civil servant, Desmond Perkins, recognised the fact before the European Parliament temporary committee on the Echelon system. Jonathan Faull qualified this case as a "misunderstanding".
He explained to the press that Perkins' remarks refer to a commercial argument used ten years ago for the Siemens company, which manufactures the system, whereby the system had been tested by NSA without being able to decypher it. He added that a letter was has been sent to the parliamentary committee to clarify matters. Gunnar Wiegand, spokesman for Commissioner Patten, pointed out that the system in question is used by most European countries and by NATO and that a distinction must be made between the cyphering machine, of the same kind for all users, and the code, known by just one person and renewed everyday. In this case the Saphil system is used, that the Commission plans to replace by an e-mail encryption.
According to information we have received, Mr Perkins, head of the office for encryption of confidential Commission information (Cypher squad), had told the Echelon Committee on 6 February that he had always had "very good contacts with the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington, and they usually check our systems to see that they are being well looked after and not being misused". He said he is very pleased that the American secret services have not managed to decypher the encryption in two weeks. He added that the NSA employs thousands of people who read everything and look at everything. After this hearing, on 8 February, German MEP Gerhard Schmid (German Social-Democrat, Chair of the Echelon Committee) wrote a letter to Commissioner Chris Patten, Mr Perkins' senior, asking him for explanations on the relations between the Commission and NSA. Mr Schmid warned that, if no answer were received, the Commission's attitude on the more general issue of interception could be severely criticised. Chris Patten's chef de cabinet replied the same day by addressing to Mr Schmid a letter of apologies drafted by Mr Perkins to Mr Legras, his director general at the Commission. In the letter, he specifies: 1) regarding his "very good contacts" with NSA, that it was a question off a friend dating back to the time when he worked in the private sector and a member of his family now retired; 2) on the "usual" surveillance of the NSA, that he was referring to declarations made by Siemens ten years ago, without ever insinuating that it regularly checked the Commission's system or code; 3) although it is true that the NSA "reads and looks at everything", it does not decypher.
The temporary committee on the Echelon system was created in Parliament in July 2000 to seek any information allowing to establish with certainty whether or not the American-British system of communication interception existed (see, notably, EUROPE of 12 September 2000). Mr. Legras will be before the EP's Echelon Committee on Monday to provide further explanations on the nature of the relationship between the Commission and the NSA in this affair.