Breaking the Taboo on Israel's Spying Efforts on the United States

By Christopher Ketcham, AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2009.

According to Jim Bamford, who cites knowledgeable sources, Verizon’s eavesdropping program is run by a competing Israeli firm called Verint, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, which was founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer in 1984.  Incorporated in New York and Tel Aviv, Comverse is effectively an arm of the Israeli government: 50 percent of its R&D costs are reimbursed by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.  The Verint technology deployed throughout Verizon’s network, known as STAR-GATE, boasts an array of Orwellian capabilities.  "With STAR-GATE, service providers can access communications on virtually any type of network," according to the company’s literature.  "Designed to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications, STAR-GATE transparently accesses targeted communications without alerting subscribers or disrupting service."  As with the Narus system, the point is to be able to tap into communications unobtrusively, in real time, all the time.  A Verint spinoff firm, PerSay, takes the tap to the next stage, deploying "advanced voice mining," which singles out "a target’s voice within a large volume of intercepted calls, regardless of the conversation content or method of communication."   Verint’s interception systems have gone global since the late 1990s, and sales in 2006 reached $374 million (a doubling of its revenues over 2003).  More than 5,000 organizations -- mostly intelligence services and police units -- in at least 100 countries today use Verint technology.

What troubles Bamford is that executives and directors at companies like Narus and Verint formerly worked at or maintain close connections with the Israeli intelligence services, including Mossad; the internal security agency Shin Bet; and the Israeli version of the NSA, Unit 8200, an arm of the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Corps.  Unit 8200, which Bamford describes as "hypersecret," is a key player in the eavesdropping industrial complex in Israel, its retired personnel dispersed throughout dozens of companies.  According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, "Many of the [eavesdropping] technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by [Unit 8200] veterans."  A former commander of Unit 8200, cited by Bamford, states that Verint technology was "directly influenced by 8200 technology….[Verint parent company] Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology."   The implications for U.S. national security, writes Bamford, are "unnerving."  "Virtually the entire American telecommunications system," he avers, "is bugged by [Israeli-formed] companies with possible ties to Israel’s eavesdropping agency."  Congress, he says, maintains no oversight of these companies’ operations, and even their contracts with U.S. telecoms -- contracts pivotal to NSA surveillance -- are considered trade secrets and go undisclosed in company statements.

U.S. intelligence officers have not been quiet in their concerns about Verint (I reported on this matter in CounterPunch.org last September).  "Phone calls are intercepted, recorded, and transmitted to U.S. investigators by Verint, which claims that it has to be ‘hands on’ with its equipment to maintain the system," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi.  The "hands on" factor is what bothers Giraldi, specifically because of the possibility of a "trojan" embedded in Verint wiretap software.   A trojan in information security hardware/software is a backdoor that can be accessed remotely by parties who normally would not have access to the secure system.   Allegations of widespread trojan spying have rocked the Israeli business community in recent years.  "Top Israeli blue chip companies," reported the AP in 2005, "are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies."  Over 40 companies have come under scrutiny.  "It is the largest cybercrime case in Israeli history," Boaz Guttmann, a veteran cybercrimes investigator with the Israeli national police, told me.  "Trojan horse espionage is part of the way of life of companies in Israel.  It’s a culture of spying."

In a wide-ranging four-part investigation into Israel-linked espionage that aired in December 2001, Carl Cameron, a correspondent at Fox News Channel, reported the distress among U.S. intelligence officials warning about possible trojans cached in Verint technology.   Sources told Cameron that "while various FBI inquiries into [Verint] have been conducted over the years," the inquiries had "been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks."   Cameron also cited a 1999 internal FCC document indicating that "several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system."   Much of this access was facilitated through "remote maintenance."

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Christopher Ketcham writes for Vanity Fair, Harper’s, GQ and many other magazines. He is working on a book about the history of Israeli espionage in the United States. He can be reached at cketcham99@mindspring.com.

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