Opinion The Kremlin Device
Why Russias RT television channels defence of free speech makes for news by itself
In an interesting role reversal,Russia has emerged as a defender of free speech,opposing an apparently repressive US which is determined to protect its political and corporate interests from foreign devils. The RT TV channel (formerly Russia Today,rt.com) had championed Julian Assange in the months before he jumped parole and dived into the Embassy of Ecuador in London. Now,the state-backed channel is offering a lot of play to the ongoing saga of Kim Dotcom. Yes,that is the mans real name,by lawful affidavit.
Dotcom is the first major victim of what he calls the US copyright militia since the takedown of Napster in the Nineties. In case youve forgotten,Napster was the first big file-sharing site,which ramped up the culture of copyright violation to industrial scale. Kim Dotcom had carried on its great tradition with Megaupload,a global stash for bootleg goodies. And to elude the long arm of the American copyright militia,he had taken New Zealand citizenship. However,he was arrested and Megaupload was shut down.
RT has diligently followed the German-born Kim Dotcoms saga and this month,its been putting out a story every two or three days. An amazingly high rate of coverage for an issue that weve mostly forgotten about. Of course,in this period,Dotcom got the goods on his nemesis,New Zealands Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). The countrys Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has determined that the GCSB had monitored Dotcoms communications for months before his arrest. This was illegal,since a New Zealand citizen cannot be subjected to such undercover surveillance,which is restricted to suspected foreign spies. This technicality compromises the case against Dotcom.
But a man like Dotcom must leverage the tiniest advantage to the limit. He has expanded on the theme of illegal surveillance and taken it to the level of full-blown international conspiracy. The core of the story that RT is following is that Dotcom has been the target of a shadowy organisation that Dan Brown would have been proud to invent. It is called Echelon,it actually exists,but whether it is capable of the misdeeds that Dotcom accuses it of is uncertain. But no wonder the Russians are playing up that angle,since Echelon was created to monitor Soviet Bloc communications during the Cold War.
Echelon was a distributed signals intelligence network serving the Five Eyes the US,UK,Canada,Australia and New Zealand. It could intercept,archive and analyse all communications over public switched telephone networks. That meant voice calls,fax,telex,microwave and Internet traffic. Everything but the post,the diplomatic bag and the dead drop,the old faithful of spycraft. And now,apparently,its targeted Dotcom.
Neat story,but Echelon was built for the Sixties. Its foundation was a set of listening posts across the world which eavesdropped on satellite communications. But in the decades since,almost all of the worlds communications has shifted to optical fibre. New surveillance networks have risen to monitor it. Like Room 641A,AT&Ts massive beam-splitting wiretap in San Francisco which was exposed in 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Echelon was exposed by the pioneering work of the journalists Nicky Hager and Duncan Campbell of New Zealand and the UK respectively. The EU invited Hager to testify in an investigation into Echelon,which concluded that all European agencies should encrypt communications to protect themselves. Now,saying that Echelon is sweeping the Internet is not the same as claiming that it is tapping Kim Dotcom. But naturally,a TV channel backed by the Kremlin would get a kick out of this story.
pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
Share
