Australia, Singapore accused of monitoring communications line
By Thomas Kean | Sunday, 01 December 2013
For years, we assumed Big Brother was watching – listening to phone calls, reading emails.
It turns out, he was. Only Big Brother was not Military Intelligence, or officials in the Ministry of Communications or Home Affairs. It was apparently Singapore and Australia, which were sharing intelligence with members of what is known as the “Five Eyes”, a partnership that includes Australia as well as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
A top secret US National Security Agency map, taken from a 2012 PowerPoint slide leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, shows that Singapore has assisted Five Eyes members in monitoring communications in the region. Media reports say this cooperating extends to tapping the SEA-ME-WE-3 undersea cable, which stretches from Europe to Australia and Japan.
The map – published last week in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad – shows that Singapore is one of 20 locations across the globe where Five Eyes partners monitor communications on high-speed fibre optic cables, sometimes through third parties such as Singapore or South Korea.
Why does this matter for Myanmar? As The Myanmar Times outlines in its Technology section this week (see page 29 for more), almost all of Myanmar’s internet traffic is funnelled through this one cable, leaving the country particularly vulnerable to such monitoring. Myanmar was not allowed to expand its telecoms capacity by joining the SEA-ME-WE-4 consortium because it still owed money over SEA-ME-WE-3; however, according to the map, the newer cable was also being monitored as of 2012.
Myanmar’s connection leaves the main SEA-ME-WE-3 cable near Singapore and runs up through the Andaman Sea to the Ayeyarwady delta, making landfall near Pyapon.
Australian newspaper The Age has previously reported that Australia’s electronic espionage agency, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), is partnering with Singaporean intelligence to tap the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable.
Australian intelligence sources told the newspaper that the Security and Intelligence Division of Singapore’s Ministry of Defence co-operates with DSD in accessing and sharing communications carried by the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable. It said access to communications in the cable is facilitated by Singapore’s government-owned operator SingTel, which is part of a consortium that commissioned the development of the 39,000-kilometre (about 24,233 miles) cable in 2000. SingTel declined to comment last week, while the Singaporean embassy in Yangon did not respond to requests for comment.
The Myanmar Times contacted DSD, which is now known as Australian Signals Directorate, to confirm the report but a spokesperson said it was the established practice of successive Australian governments not to comment on intelligence matters.
The Myanmar government is also yet to comment publicly on the report, while officials from state-run telecoms firm Myanma Posts and Telecommunications said they were unaware of the allegations.
But the revelations of possible spying on fibre optic traffic have already sparked a diplomatic row between Singapore and Malaysia, with Malaysia’s foreign ministry summoning the Singaporean ambassador, Ong Keng Yong, on November 26.
Malaysia is “extremely concerned” about the report on Singapore, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman was quoted as saying by AFP. “If those allegations are eventually proven, it is certainly a serious matter that the government of Malaysia strongly rejects and abhors.”
Australia, Singapore accused of monitoring communications line
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