EU: "If you believe in God, Iridium is God manifesting himself through us"
01 September 1998
One of the outstanding, and contentious, questions still being discussed by the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers are the Articles in the draft Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters covering the interception of telecommunications. The Articles have to cover the interception of traditional networks (land and sea lines and microwave towers), GSM networks and future international satellite-based networks. Control of the new satellite-based networks is in the hands of just three US based multinational companies - Iridium, Globalstar and ICO Global Communications. A fourth consortium, Odyssesy, folded before it launched any satellites.
The main stakeholder in Iridium is Motorola the US electronics giant which has put together a consortium of private companies and investors from around the world. On 18 May this year five satellites carried in a Delta II rocket were launched from Vandenburg Air Force base in the US. These five completed Iridium's global network of 66 satellites criss-crossing the globe to provide anyone, anywhere, anytime to communicate by phone or pager. Iridium's adverts for its services started appearing in the UK press in October. Its two rivals are way behind - Globalstar will not be complete until 1999 and ICO until the year 2000.
The launch of Iridium has taken 13 years and cost $5 billion. Its chief technical officer, Raymond Leopold, describing all the agreements with telecom authorities, software developments and satellite launches said: "If you believe in God, Iridium is God manifesting himself through us".
Iridium, Globalstar and ICO will each only have one "ground station" in the EU. Iridium's is in central Italy (the other two will be in either France, UK, Germany or Finland). All telecommunications beamed from the 66 global satellite network coming into the EU will go through Iridium's Italian ground station and will then be routed to "service providers" in each EU member state.
A report discussed by the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers on 24 September says that the existing draft Articles assumed that the interception of satellite-based telecommunications would require provisions to cover the country in which the "ground station" was based. These would have to cover an agreement to assist a "requesting" member state and data protection according to the national laws of the "requested" member state where the "ground station" is based.
Then along comes Iridium. The report says:
"information provided recently by the Iridium satellite telecommunications network.. shows that another option is available technically. Iridium has a ground station in Italy and will have at least one service provider in each member state responsible for the contact to local clients. It is technically possible to provide that interception may be carried out by remote control by these service providers on request."
The Council agreed to go ahead with this option, the "service provider solution". One member state still maintains a general reservation taking the view that the interception of telecommunications should not be included in the Convention. Some delegations were "concerned" that the legal implications of this "solution" needed to be examined, however, there was "general agreement" that the "service provider" solution was "from a technical point of view, a convenient option". The "service provider" option would allow law enforcement agencies to receive "the signals intercepted directly [from] a service provider on their own territory in their own language".
This may seem straightforward as the interception of telecommunications within a member state can simply be done through the national "service providers". But where a communication (phone, fax, e-mail) involves another member state then Iridium's Italian ground station could play a crucial role. It will provide "remote access" from the Italian ground station to the member stat