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ECHELON

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   A radome at RAF Menwith Hill, a site with satellite downlink
   capabilities used by ECHELON.
   Enlarge
   A radome at RAF Menwith Hill, a site with satellite downlink
   capabilities used by ECHELON.

   ECHELON is a name used to describe a highly secretive world-wide
   signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community
   (otherwise described as the "Anglo-Saxon alliance") that has been
   reported by a number of sources including, in 2001, a committee of the
   European Parliament (EP report). According to some sources ECHELON can
   capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes,
   e-mails and other data streams nearly anywhere in the world and
   includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts . The EP
   committee, however, concluded that "the analysis carried out in the
   report has revealed that the technical capabilities of the system are
   probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had
   assumed" (EP report, p. 11).

Name

   The EP committee stated that "it seems likely, in view of the evidence
   and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of
   individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its
   name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail."
   (EP report, p. 11) The U.S. intelligence community uses many code
   names. See, for example, CIA cryptonym.

   Margaret Newsham claims that she worked on the configuration and
   installation of some of the software that makes up the ECHELON system
   while employed at Lockheed Martin, for whom she worked from 1974 to
   1984 in Sunnyvale, California and in Menwith Hill, England.. At that
   time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA's term for
   the computer network itself. Lockheed called it P415 . The software
   programs were called SILKWORTH and SIRE. A satellite named VORTEX would
   intercept communications. An image available on the internet of a
   fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed
   along with several other code names.

History

   Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic
   communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies during the
   Cold War in the early sixties, today ECHELON is believed to search also
   for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and
   diplomatic intelligence. But some critics, including the European
   Union, claim the system is being used also for large-scale commercial
   theft and invasion of privacy. This is in fact why the report was
   commissioned (see EU report).

   While details of methods and capabilities are highly sensitive and
   protected by special laws (e.g. 18 USC 798), gathering signals
   intelligence ( SIGINT) is an acknowledged mission of the U.S. National
   Security Agency. As of August 2006, their web site had a FAQ page on
   the topic, which states:

          "NSA/CSS’s Signal Intelligence mission is to intercept and
          analyze foreign adversaries' communications signals, many of
          which are protected by codes and other complex countermeasures.
          We collect, process, and disseminate intelligence reports on
          foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence
          requirements set at the highest levels of government. ...
          Foreign intelligence means information relating to the
          capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers,
          organizations or persons."

   In 2001, the EP report (p. 19) recommended that citizens of member
   states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect
   their privacy. In the UK, the government introduced the Regulation of
   Investigatory Powers Act which gives authorities the power to demand
   that citizens hand over their encryption keys, without a judge-approved
   warrant. In April 2004, the European Union decided to spend 11 million
   euros developing secure communication based on quantum cryptography —
   the SECOQC project — a system that would theoretically be unbreakable
   by ECHELON or any other espionage system. European governments have
   been leery of ECHELON since a December 3, 1995 story in the Baltimore
   Sun claiming that aerospace company Airbus lost a $6Billion contract
   with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the NSA reported that Airbus officials
   had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract .

Capabilities

   The ability to intercept communications depends on the medium used, be
   it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fibre-optic (EP report p.
   30 ff) During World War II and through the 1950s, high frequency
   ("short wave") radio was widely used for military and diplomatic
   communication (The Codebreakers, Ch. 10, 11), and could be intercepted
   at great distances (EP report p. 33). The rise of geostationary
   communications satellites in the 1960s presented new possibilities for
   intercepting international communications. The EP report states (p. 34)
   "If UKUSA states operate listening stations in the relevant regions of
   the earth, in principle they can intercept all telephone, fax and data
   traffic transmitted via such satellites." Many, if not most reports on
   ECHELON focus on satellite interception. (e.g. )

   The role of satellites in point-to-point voice and data communications
   has largely been supplanted by fibre optics. As of 2006, 99 percent of
   the world's long-distance voice and data traffic is carried over
   optical-fibre cables. The 2001 EP report (p. 37) states that "the
   proportion of international communications accounted for by satellite
   links has decreased substantially over the past few years in Central
   Europe; it lies between 0.4 and 5%." Even in less developed parts of
   the world, such as Latin America, communications satellites are used
   largely for point-to-multipoint applications, such as video . The EU
   report concludes (p. 11) "this means that the majority of
   communications cannot be intercepted by earth stations, but only by
   tapping cables and intercepting radio signals, something which — as the
   investigations carried out in connection with the report have shown —
   is possible only to a limited extent.

   One approach is to place intercept equipment at locations where fibre
   optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the
   switching occurs at a relatively small number of sites. There have been
   reports of one such intercept site in the United States. In the past,
   much Internet traffic was routed through the U.S. and the UK. However
   this is less true at present. According the to the 2001 EP report (p.
   33), "95% of intra-German Internet communications are routed via a
   switch in Frankfurt." Thus for a worldwide surveillance network to be
   comprehensive, either illegal intercept sites would be required on the
   territory of friendly nations or cooperation of local authorities would
   be needed. The EP report points out (p. 27) "interception of private
   communications by foreign intelligence services is by no means confined
   to the US or British foreign intelligence services." U.S. intelligence
   maintains liaison relationships with countries all over the world .
   Some reports of cooperation involving signals intelligence have come to
   light since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
   Monitoring of mobile phones in Pakistan was reportedly used to track
   Khalid Shaikh Mohammed before he was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1,
   2003 (How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web,
   New York Times, March 4, 2004).

   According to many reports, the captured signals are then processed
   through a series of computers, that are programmed to search for
   targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices.

Controversy

   US intelligence agencies are generally prohibited from spying on people
   inside the US, and other Western countries' intelligence services
   generally faced similar restrictions within their own countries. There
   are allegations, however, that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance were used
   to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK
   facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilities spy on
   people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data. The NSA state on
   its SIGINT FAQ web page "We have been prohibited by executive order
   since 1978 from having any person or government agency, whether foreign
   or U.S., conduct any activity on our behalf that we are prohibited from
   conducting ourselves. Therefore, NSA/CSS does not ask its allies to
   conduct such activities on its behalf nor does NSA/CSS do so on behalf
   of its allies."

   The proposed US-only " Total Information Awareness" program relied on
   technology similar to ECHELON, and was to integrate the extensive
   sources it is legally permitted to survey domestically with the "taps"
   already compiled by ECHELON. It was cancelled by the U.S. Congress in
   2004.

   It has been alleged that in 2002 the Bush Administration extended the
   ECHELON program to domestic surveillance. This controversy was the
   subject of the New York Times eavesdropping exposé of December, 2005 .

Organization

   The UKUSA intelligence alliance has maintained ties in collecting and
   sharing intelligence since World War II. Each member of the UKUSA
   alliance is allegedly assigned responsibilities for monitoring
   different parts of the globe. Canada's main task used to be monitoring
   northern portions of the former Soviet Union and conducting sweeps of
   all communications traffic that could be picked up from embassies
   around the world. In the post-Cold War era, a greater emphasis has been
   placed on monitoring satellite, radio and cellphone traffic originating
   from Central and South America, primarily in an effort to track drugs
   and non-aligned paramilitary groups in the region. The United States,
   with its vast array of spy satellites and listening posts, monitors
   most of Latin America, Asia, Asiatic Russia and northern mainland
   China. Britain listens in on Europe and Russia west of the Urals as
   well as Africa. Australia hunts for communications originating in
   Indochina, Indonesia and southern mainland China. New Zealand sweeps
   the western Pacific.

   Supporters stress that ECHELON is simply a method of sorting captured
   signals and is just one of the many arrows in the intelligence
   community's quiver, along with increasingly sophisticated bugging and
   communications interception techniques, satellite tracking,
   through-clothing scanning, automated biometric recognition systems that
   can recognize faces, fingerprints & retina patterns.

   The U.S. communications-intelligence agency is the National Security
   Agency (NSA), which is headquartered at Fort Meade, just outside
   Washington, DC. Although the NSA budget is classified, as of 1996 the
   agency was estimated to have a global staff of roughly 38,000 and a
   budget of approximately US$3.6-billion. The UK equivalent organisation
   is the Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ based at Cheltenham,
   Gloucestershire. Further, smaller organisations exist to provide
   communications technology and expertise (e.g. Her Majesty's Government
   Communication Centre HMGCC).

   By comparison, Canada's communications-intelligence operations are
   conducted by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), a branch
   of the Canadian Department of National Defence. It has a staff of 1600
   people and an annual budget of $110 million CAD. The CSE's headquarters
   is the Sir Leonard Tilley Building on Heron Road in the nation's
   capital of Ottawa, Ontario, and its main communications intercept site
   is located on an old armed-forces radio base in Leitrim, just south of
   Ottawa.

   On July 6, 2000 the BBC published an article called Echelon: Big
   brother without a cause? that said:

          The Echelon spy system, whose existence has only recently been
          acknowledged by US officials, is capable of hoovering up
          millions of phone calls, faxes and emails a minute. [...]
          Echelon evolved out of Cold War espionage arrangements set up by
          the US and UK in 1948, and later bringing in Australia, Canada
          and New Zealand, in their capacity as Britain's Commonwealth
          partners. The biggest of Echelon's global network of listening
          posts is at Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, where about 30 "giant
          golf balls" called radomes litter the landscape. The system also
          boasts 120 American satellites in geostationary orbit. Bases in
          the five countries are linked directly to the headquarters of
          the secretive US National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at
          Fort Mead, Maryland. The system's superpowerful voice
          recognition capability enables it to filter billions of
          international communications for whatever key words or word
          patterns are programmed in.

Hardware

   According to its web site NSA is "a high technology organization, ...
   on the frontiers of communications and data processing." In 2006, the
   Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA was at risk of electrical overload,
   because of insufficient internal electrical infrastructure at Fort
   Meade to support the amount of computer equipment being installed.

   While there are occasional stories speculating on the types of
   computers involved, Jonathan Meier, in his biography, has stated of his
   time at the NSA that:

          "Conjecture and speculation were rampant on the [ECHELON]
          projects, even internally. Truthfully, very few individuals were
          privy to the logistics involved."

   At least one company, Narus, is publicly selling systems for mass
   surveillance of Internet traffic and one of its systems was apparently
   installed in 2003 in Room 641A, allegedly an intercept station run by
   AT&T on behalf of NSA.

   In 1999 the Australian Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was
   told by Professor Desmond Ball that the Pine Gap facility was used as a
   ground station for a satellite based interception network. The
   satellites are claimed to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100
   metres across, parked in geostationary orbits. The original purpose of
   the network was to monitor the telemetry from 1970s Soviet weapons, air
   defence radar, communications satellites and ground based microwave
   communications. The network is still operational and coordinated by US,
   British and Australian intelligence communities.

Ground stations

   Some of the ground stations suspected of belonging to or participating
   in the ECHELON network include:

Likely satellite intercept stations

   The following stations are listed in the EP report (p.54 ff) as likely
   to have a role in intercepting transmissions from telecommunications
   satellites:
     * Hong Kong (since closed)
     * Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station ( Geraldton,
       Western Australia)
     * Menwith Hill ( Yorkshire, UK)
     * Misawa Air Base (Japan)
     * Morwenstow ( Cornwall, UK)
     * Pine Gap ( Northern Territory, Australia - close to Alice Springs)
     * Sabana Seca (Puerto Rico - US)
     * Sugar Grove (West Virginia, US)
     * Yakima ( Washington, US) Map
     * Waihopai (New Zealand)

Possible satellite intercept stations

   The following stations are listed in the EP report (p.57 ff) as ones
   whose roles "cannot be clearly established":
     * Agios Nikolaos (Cyprus - UK)
     * Bad Aibling (Germany - US) - moved to Griesheim in 2004
     * Buckley Air Force Base ( Colorado, US)
     * Fort Gordon ( Georgia, US)
     * Guam (Pacific Ocean, US)
     * Kunia ( Hawaii, US)
     * Leitrim (south of Ottawa, Canada)
     * Medina Annex ( Texas, US)

Various other ground stations

   The following facilities have been claimed to host various intelligence
   gathering stations of U.S. intelligence agencies and armed forces or
   their allies.
     * Alert ( Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada)
     * Bremerhaven (Germany - UK)
     * RAF Chicksands ( Bedfordshire, UK)
     * Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean - US-UK)
     * RAF Digby ( Lincolnshire, UK)
     * Elmendorf Air Force Base ( Alaska - US)
     * Feltwell (Norfolk, UK)
     * Fort Meade ( Maryland, US) (headquarters of NSA)
     * Gander ( Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)
     * Gibraltar (UK)
     * Griesheim (near Darmstadt, Germany - US)
     * Mount Gabriel, Midleton, Co. Cork, Ireland (Eircom satellite
       communications station)
     * Karamursel (Turkey - US)
     * Malta (Malta - UK)
     * Masset ( British Columbia, Canada)
     * Osan Air Base (South Korea, US)
     * Rota, Spain (Spain, US)
     * Shoal Bay Receiving Station ( Northern Territory, Australia)
     * West Point, New York ( NY, US)
     * Aflandshage, Denmark (Denmark)
     * Tangimoana (New Zealand)
     * Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt ( Exmouth, Western
       Australia)

Former ground stations

     * Augsburg (Germany - US) - closed in 1993
     * Clark Air Base (Philippines - US) - closed in 1997
     * Edzell (Scotland, UK) - closed in 1997
     * Kabkan (Iran - US) - closed in 1979
     * Little Sai Wan (Hong Kong - UK) - closed in 1984
     * Nurrungar ( South Australia, Australia - south of Woomera, South
       Australia) - closed in 1999
     * San Vito dei Normanni (Italy - US) - closed in 1994
     * Teufelsberg ( West Berlin, Germany - US) - closed in 1989
     * Silvermine (near Cape Town, South Africa - US)

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
