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AUSTRALIA'S DSD
CONFIRMS "UKUSA' PACT
AND 'ECHELON' SPYING
the ECHELON system. The report
is therefore available for public dis-
tribution from the European
Parliament office in Luxembourg,
and a web version is available at
website .
(Source: Intelligence, 3] May 1999)
n 23 May, on Channel 9 TV's
Sunday program, Australia
became the first country to admit
participation in a global electronic
surveillance system that intercepts
the private and commercial interna-
tional communications of citizens
and companies from its own and
other countries.
The disclosure was made by
Martin Brady, director of the
Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)
in Canberra, who acknowledged the
existence of the UKUSA agreement
in a letter to Channel 9, stating that
the DSD "does cooperate with
counterpart signals intelligence
organisations overseas under the
UKUSA relationship".
The DSD's main contribution is a base at
Kojarena, near Geraldton in Western
Australia, built in the early 1990s, where
four satellite tracking dishes intercept
Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean communi -
cations satellites. Reportedly, 80 per cent
of intercepts are sent automatically to the
CIA or the NSA. Although it is under
Australian command, the station—like its
controversial counterpart at Pine Gap, cen-
tral Australia—employs American and
British staff in key posts.
In return, Australia can ask for informa-
tion collected at other UKUSA stations via
MOUNTAIN GLACIERS IN
RAPID RETREAT
N° data collected by scientists
at Jawaharlal Nehru University
in Delhi, India, show that glaciers in
the Himalayas are retreating faster
than anywhere else on Earth.
Together with those on the neigh-
bouring Tibetan mountain plateau,
the Himalayan glaciers make up the
largest body of ice outside the polar
caps. Now there are fears that as
the glaciers retreat, the meltwater
will produce catastrophic flooding as
mountain lakes overflow.
"The moraine is unstable," said Syed
Hasnain, the principal author of the new
report. "Occasionally these lakes burst,
releasing enormous amounts of water."
"All the glaciers in the middle
Himalayas are retreating," said Professor
Hasnain, who warns that glaciers could
disappear from the central and eastern
Himalayas by 2035.
Last year, research by a team at the
University of Colorado, in Boulder,
revealed that mountain glaciers every-
where are in retreat. The Alps have lost
about 50% of their ice in the past century,
while 14 of 27 glaciers that existed in
Spain in 1980 have disappeared. The
largest glacier on Mt Kenya has shrunk by
8% in the last 100 years, while those on Mt
Kilimanjaro are only 25% as big.
(Source: From an article by Charles Arthur,
The Independent, UK, 8 June 1999; website
)
the ECHELON system [see feature article
this issue]. A second and larger, although
not so technologically sophisticated, DSD
satellite station has been built at Shoal
Bay, near Darwin, Northern Territory,
where nine dishes listen to regional com-
munications satellites, including systems
covering Indonesia and southwest Asia.
On 6 May, in Strasbourg, the Science
and Technology Options Assessment Panel
(STOA) of the European Parliament
approved as a working document the
"Interception Capabilities 2000" (IC2000)
report on communications interception and
US COURT CLEARS
"LOCKERBIE TRAIL" AGENT
ormer US intelligence officer Lester
Coleman, convicted of perjury after
alleging United States complicity in the
Lockerbie bombing, has been cleared by a
court of appeal. Coleman, co-author of
Trail of the Octopus, has now launched an
action for US$10 million against the US
Government.
Three judges issued a sealed ruling—an
unusual step—which means that not even
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