Spying on US near Cold War levels

Washington: Spying on the United States by Russia and China has rebounded almost to Cold War levels, the top US spy chief told Congress on Tuesday in seeking a permanent expansion of US eavesdropping authority.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell made the accusation as the White House stepped up lobbying a sceptical Democratic-led Congress for broadened surveillance powers, which are primarily cast as a counterterrorism tool.

"China and Russia's foreign intelligence services are among the most aggressive in collecting against sensitive and protected US systems, facilities and development projects," McConnell told the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee in written testimony.

"Their efforts are approaching Cold War levels," he said.

Eavesdropping authority

His spokesman, Ross Feinstein, said the testimony was meant to emphasise that the eavesdropping authority under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, or FISA, is needed for traditional counterintelligence as well as terrorism surveillance. "FISA is beyond a terrorist tool, we are talking about foreign intelligence as well," he said.

China and Russia, along with Iran, have long been considered leading countries which spy on the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, has overseen the re-emergence of the Russian security apparatus and promoted Cold War intelligence successes against the West.

US National Counterintelligence Executive Joel Brenner cited China earlier this year as among countries who seek civilian and military advantage by spying on the United States.

"The Chinese are leveraging the American R&D [research and development] budget ... in support of their own war-fighting capability," Brenner said in a March speech to the American Bar Association.

Democratic lawmakers last month helped pass temporary legislation expanding federal authority to eavesdrop on foreign conversations. But many are wary of granting permanent authority without more restrictions to protect against broad eavesdropping on Americans' international calls.

They say US President George W. Bush abused his trust by creating and not properly informing the US Congress of a programme of warrantless eavesdropping of international communications by people in the United States with suspected foreign enemies.

Invading privacy

"The power to invade people's privacy cannot be exercised unchecked," New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said at the hearing.

The eavesdropping programme was put under court supervision earlier this year, and in August Congress passed six-month authority for the eavesdropping to continue.

McConnell said that no Americans had been targeted for warrantless eavesdropping since he took over the job in February.

What is Cold War?

A war without the occurrence of actual warfare

Cold War is the term used to describe the post-World War II struggle between the United States and its allies and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies.

During the Cold War period, which lasted from the mid-1940s until the end of the 1980s, international politics were heavily shaped by the intense rivalry between these two great blocs of power and the political ideologies they represented

The principal allies of the United States during the Cold War included Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and Canada.

On the Soviet side were many of the countries of Eastern Europe-including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Romania-and, during parts of the Cold War, Cuba and China. Countries that had no formal commitment to either bloc were known as neutrals or, within the Third World, as nonaligned nations.

American journalist Walter Lippmann first popularised the term cold war in a 1947 book by that name. By using the term, Lippmann meant to suggest that relations between the USSR and its World War II allies (primarily the United States, Britain, and France) had deteriorated to the point of war without the occurrence of actual warfare.

- Encarta encyclopaedia