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ECHELON The NSA's Global Spying Network ECHELON The NSA's Global Network Spying Using a system of satellites and supercomputers that recognise code-words, the US National Security Agency and its UKUSA partners keep governments, corporations and citizens under constant surveillance. Part 1 of 2 n the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, code-named ECHELON, which captures and analyses virtually every phone call, fax, e-mail and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) of the UK, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defence Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organisations are bound together under a secret agreement, the UKUSA Security Agreement of 1948, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today. The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fibre-optic communications traf- fic, and then process this information through the NSA's massive computer capabilities— including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) pro- grams—and look for code-words or code-phrases (using what's known as the ECHELON Dictionary) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and tran- scribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective "listening sta- tions" maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyse any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency head- quarters that requested the intercept. But apart from directing their ears towards terrorists and rogue states, ECHELON is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of "unpopular" political affiliation or for no probable cause at all—in violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution—is consistently impeded by very elaborate and com- plex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US Government. The guardians and caretakers of our liberties, our duly elected political rep- resentatives, give scarce attention to these activities, let alone to the abuses that occur under their watch. Among the activities that the ECHELON targets are: ¢ Political spying: Since the close of World War II, the US intelligence agencies have developed a consistent record of trampling the rights and liberties of the American people. Even after the investigations into the domestic and political surveillance activities of the agencies that followed in the wake of the Watergate fiasco, the NSA continues to target the political activity of "unpopular" political groups and our duly elected representatives. One whistleblower charged, in a 1988 Cleveland Plain Dealer interview, that while she was stationed at the Menwith Hill facility in the 1980s she heard real-time intercepts of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. A former Maryland Congressman, Michael Barnes, claimed in a 1995 Baltimore Sun article that under the Reagan Administration his phone calls were regularly intercepted—something he discovered only after reporters had been passed transcripts of his conversations by the White House. One of the most shock- ing revelations came to light after several GCHQ officials became concerned about the targeting of peaceful political groups, and told the London Observer in 1992 that the ECHELON Dictionaries targeted Amnesty International, Greenpeace and even Christian ministries. ¢ Commercial espionage: Since the demise of communism in Eastern Europe, the intelligence agencies have searched for a new justification for their surveillance capability in order to protect their prominence and their bloated budgets. Their solution was to by Patrick S. Poole © 1998/99 E-mail: pspoole@hiwaay.net Website: http://fly.hiwaay.net/ ~pspoole/echelon.htm! E-mail: pspoole@hiwaay.net Website: http://fly.hiwaay.net/ ~pspoole/echelon.htm! NEXUS - 19 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1999