Echelon
-(Signals-Intelligence)-
Echelon by definition is a level of command, authority, or rank however in this case the word is also the name of the program. Echelon is a government intelligence program created in conjunction with the UKUSA Agreement which is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence among the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It was first signed in March 1946 by the United Kingdom and the United States and later extended to encompass the three former British dominions. The agreement established an alliance of five English-speaking countries for the purpose of sharing intelligence, especially signals intelligence. It formalized the intelligence sharing agreement in the Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941, before the entry of the U.S. into the conflict. However since its inception Echelon has grown considerably larger as well as encompassing more and more types of communication as well as the means in which it is legally allowed to do so and to whom.
It's important to note that it is illegal for the United States to gather intelligence on its own citizens, likewise in Britain etc., however it is not illegal for Britain to spy on America and likewise. The genius in this system is that both countries are using the same system and under the UKUSA Agreement they share their collected data, so in effect both countries can subvert their own laws in the interest of espionage against their own citizens. The best part of the UKUSA Agreement is that since all countries involved are using the same collection system, any agent from any of the countries may work at any of the collection centers. This means that an American NSA agent could be living overseas working at the Menwith Hill facility and gather intelligence on American citizens without either nation having to formally approve or disclose the interception. Now you might be wondering, so what? I'm not a spy what do I have to worry about? Well, Echelon is a global spy network and it intercepts EVERY communication and records it. So every text message, email, phone call, fax you have sent EVER has been filtered through the NSA. What do they do with this information? Most of it, absolutely nothing. Being that the government has denied the existence of Echelon for decades the information they gathered that may be creditable at all is useless unless of course the person being intercepted were to disappear. Echelon was able to remain undetected from scrutiny during the Cold War era under the guise of monitoring the U.S.S.R. for possible nuclear attack, after the end of the Cold War it would seem like reason to disband such a network. But the NSA wasn't going to give up their ultra spy network that easily, instead it took up the new cause of "fighting terrorism". However in 1997 their cover was blown and the existence of Echelon had to be made public to the countries which were secretly being monitored (although Britain was aware and helped build and conceal the network hubs they were not aware of the level of monitoring by the NSA).
| Here is the article that ran in the London Telegraph. |
| Tuesday 16 December 1997 Issue 936 Spies like US A European Commission report warns that the United States has developed an extensive network spying on European citizens and we should all be worried. Simon Davies reports Cooking up a charter for snooping A GLOBAL electronic spy network that can eavesdrop on every telephone, email and telex communication around the world will be officially acknowledged for the first time in a European Commission report to be delivered this week. The report - Assessing the Technologies of Political Control - was commissioned last year by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. It contains details of a network of American-controlled intelligence stations on British soil and around the world, that "routinely and indiscriminately" monitor countless phone, fax and email messages. It states: "Within Europe all email telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency transfering all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York moors in the UK." The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive ECHELON system. Until now, evidence of such astounding technology has been patchy and anecdotal. But the report - to be discussed on Thursday by the committee of the office of Luxembourg - confirms that the citizens of Britain and other European states are subject to an intensity of surveillance far in excess of that imagined by most parliaments. Its findings are certain to excite the concern of MEPs. "The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system (Cooking up a charter for snooping) but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country. "The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like MEMEX to find key words". According to the report, ECHELON uses a number of national dictionaries containing key words of interest to each country. For more than a decade, former agents of US, British, Canadian and New Zealand national security agencies have claimed that the monitoring of electronic communications has become endemic throughout the world. Rumours have circulated that new technologies have been developed which have the capability to search most of the world's telex, fax and email networks for "key words". Phone calls, they claim, can be automatically analysed for key words. Former signals intelligence operatives have claimed that spy bases controlled by America have the ability to search nearly all data communications for key words. They claim that ECHELON automatically analyses most email messaging for "precursor" data which assists intelligence agencies to determine targets. According to former Canadian Security Establishment agent Mike Frost, a voice recognition system called Oratory has been used for some years to intercept diplomatic calls. The driving force behind the report is Glyn Ford, Labour MEP for Greater Manchester East. He believes that the report is crucial to the future of civil liberties in Europe. "In the civil liberties committee we spend a great deal of time debating issues such as free movement, immigration and drugs. Technology always sits at the centre of these discussions. There are times in history when technology helps democratise, and times when it helps centralise. This is a time of centralisation. The justice and home affairs pillar of Europe has become more powerful without a corresponding strengthening of civil liberties." The report recommends a variety of measures for dealing with the increasing power of the technologies of surveillance being used at Menwith Hill and other centres. It bluntly advises: "The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network (Internet) accessible to US intelligence agencies." The report also urges a fundamental review of the involvement of the American NSA (National Security Agency) in Europe, suggesting that their activities be either scaled down, or become more open and accountable. Such concerns have been privately expressed by governments and MEPs since the Cold War, but surveillance has continued to expand. US intelligence activity in Britain has enjoyed a steady growth throughout the past two decades. The principal motivation for this rush of development is the US interest in commercial espionage. In the Fifties, during the development of the "special relationship" between America and Britain, one US institution was singled out for special attention. The NSA, the world's biggest and most powerful signals intelligence organisation, received approval to set up a network of spy stations throughout Britain. Their role was to provide military, diplomatic and economic intelligence by intercepting communications from throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The NSA is one of the shadowiest of the US intelligence agencies. Until a few years ago, it existence was a secret and its charter and any mention of its duties are still classified. However, it does have a Web site (www.nsa.gov:8080) in which it describes itself as being responsible for the signals intelligence and communications security activities of the US government. One of its bases, Menwith Hill, was to become the biggest spy station in the world. Its ears - known as radomes - are capable of listening in to vast chunks of the communications spectrum throughout Europe and the old Soviet Union. In its first decade the base sucked data from cables and microwave links running through a nearby Post Office tower, but the communications revolutions of the Seventies and Eighties gave the base a capability that even its architects could scarcely have been able to imagine. With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telex and voice messages. Then, with the development of the Internet, electronic mail and electronic commerce, the listening posts were able to increase their monitoring capability to eavesdrop on an unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications. This activity has been all but ignored by the UK Parliament. When Labour MPs raised questions about the activities of the NSA, the Government invoked secrecy rules. It has been the same for 40 years. Glyn Ford hopes that his report may be the first step in a long road to more openness. "Some democratically elected body should surely have a right to know at some level. At the moment that's nowhere". Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1997. Terms & Conditions of reading. Information about Telegraph Group Limited and Electronic Telegraph. "Electronic Telegraph" and "The Daily Telegraph" are trademarks of Telegraph Group Limited. These marks may not be copied or used without permission. Information for webmasters linking to Electronic Telegraph. |
So why does Echelon target ordinary citizens? Why not governments, leaders, and political elite or military leaders? The idea is to catch spies living among us who may be a sleeper cell or transmitting sensitive information back to their home country about U.S. military or government secrets. But how to hone in on such a select group without knowing who and where they are to begin with? That is the basis for the mass collection of communication, the system is able to interconnect all systems of communication and monitor them all simultaneously. The system is crosschecking communications for key word hits, a master list of words sensitive to each country monitored was compiled in what is dubbed "The Echelon Dictionary", essentially if a part of a communication has a key word this will generate a hit for the sender to be more closely monitored whats more is that each monitoring location has specific key words to search for given the country being monitored and the agency in which it is collecting for (NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE). You might be thinking, but the internet hasn't been around that long so how could they have been monitoring all communication without a global network since the 1940's? How astute of you to make such a poignant observation generic internet user. The answer lies in the fact that each country that allowed the NSA to build and operate intelligence gathering facilities on their soil never actually saw any of the data collected by the NSA, so inadvertently the NSA collected data in all of the participating countries for all of the networks (NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE) and shared at liberty the information they chose to divulge.
With the newest guise of protection from "terrorism" Echelon's massive multi-billion dollar budget is still approved year after year, but you wont see it on the National Defense Budget anywhere. It is hidden under several other miscellaneous names and sections of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government in order to continue to hide its real cost and purpose. The last time it was even public or available to view a section of the intelligence budget was 1999 and at that point $27.6 Billion was allocated to imagery intelligence [IMINT], signals intelligence [SIGINT], and human intelligence [HUMINT] which would be a likely way to support Echelon through misleading means (http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611746/100438658785).Another way which the government has been able to strengthen and encourage use of the system in the United States at least is via the Patriot Act, officially named "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. ". Within the "Patriot Act" several new laws and abilities are granted to U.S. intelligence and Federal institutions as well as increasing their budgets on expenditures that relate to espionage against the American public. You can access the full document here if you like but I will outline some particularly interesting sections of the document that seem a little off base, yet they were hands down approved because if you opposed the act, well you aren't a patriot then are you?
SEC. 103. INCREASED FUNDING FOR THE TECHNICAL SUPPORT
CENTER AT THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION.
There are authorized to be appropriated for the Technical Support Center established in section 811 of the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–132) to help
meet the demands for activities to combat terrorism and support
and enhance the technical support and tactical operations of the
FBI, $200,000,000 for each of the fiscal years 2002, 2003, and
2004.
SEC. 105. EXPANSION OF NATIONAL ELECTRONIC CRIME TASK FORCE
INITIATIVE.
The Director of the United States Secret Service shall take
appropriate actions to develop a national network of electronic
crime task forces, based on the New York Electronic Crimes Task
Force model, throughout the United States, for the purpose of
preventing, detecting, and investigating various forms of electronic
crimes, including potential terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure and financial payment systems.
SEC. 201. AUTHORITY TO INTERCEPT WIRE, ORAL, AND ELECTRONIC
COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO TERRORISM.
Section 2516(1) of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(1) by redesignating paragraph (p), as so redesignated by
section 434(2) of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–132; 110 Stat. 1274), as paragraph
(r); and
(2) by inserting after paragraph (p), as so redesignated
by section 201(3) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (division C of Public
Law 104–208; 110 Stat. 3009–565), the following new paragraph:
‘‘(q) any criminal violation of section 229 (relating to chemical
weapons); or sections 2332, 2332a, 2332b, 2332d, 2339A, or 2339B
of this title (relating to terrorism); or’’.
SEC. 202. AUTHORITY TO INTERCEPT WIRE, ORAL, AND ELECTRONIC
COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO COMPUTER FRAUD
AND ABUSE OFFENSES.
Section 2516(1)(c) of title 18, United States Code, is amended
by striking ‘‘and section 1341 (relating to mail fraud),’’ and inserting
‘‘section 1341 (relating to mail fraud), a felony violation of section
1030 (relating to computer fraud and abuse),’’.
These are just a few of the provisions given within the Patriot Act, a large portion are also amendments to public law and banking laws relating to supporting international terrorists. However its easy to see that the document erodes several civil liberties pertaining to electronic communication as well as the ability of the intelligence agencies to obtain your records freely without obstruction by the company that provides you the service, therefore negating any privacy agreement within the contract between the customer and parent company. What this does is it gives the FBI and the NSA full right to pull and view any electronic information from your cell phone calls to texts to emails to your browser history without warrant or anything beyond suspicion. It also gives the FBI the right to enter your home when you are not there and confiscate your hard drives from your computers if you are suspected of supporting or aiding in terrorism. And being that nearly all of our communications these days go through a network of some kind, and Echelon is connected to all networks that means that literally all communication you make aside from handwritten notes and word of mouth is heard by the NSA.
Now in the interest of preventing something such as say a dirty nuclear bomb going off in one of our cities and killing millions in the blast and thousands more in the aftermath of fires and radiation poison, I would say that some of this is a good thing. But how much is too much? When does the invasion of privacy become big brother looking over your shoulder every second of every day? I believe this system is too powerful and has gone too far, if at some point our government declares a police state type action you literally have nowhere to turn. No one can help you when every communication is tapped and tagged with a GPS location. This might seem like a lot of fear mongering and maybe you think that what the NSA and Echelon does helps fight terrorism, but it is definitely something to ponder. Also when you think that this country is helping to "fight terrorism" you should also consider that the C.I.A. both trained and armed the initial Al Qaeda troops as well as funded them with $3 billion dollars in 1979. Nothing is what it seems, don't take my word for it, dig for yourself and uncover even the surface of the corruption and deceit of ours and most of the world's superpowers and their consorts.
