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Echelon

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see ECHELON :''This article is about the spy network; for other uses see Echelon (disambiguation).'' Image:Silvermine Echelon Antenna 4 - Through the wire.JPG Silvermine (ECHELON) thumb|right|Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at [[Silvermine (ECHELON)|Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa..html" title="Meaning of Silvermine.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at [[Silvermine (ECHELON)|Silvermine">thumb|right|Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at [[Silvermine (ECHELON)|Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa.">Silvermine.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at [[Silvermine (ECHELON)|Silvermine">thumb|right|Antenna 4 (through the wire) in former Echelon intelligence gathering station at [[Silvermine (ECHELON)|Silvermine, Cape Peninsula, South Africa. '''ECHELON''' is a highly secretive world-wide SIGINT signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community. [http://cryptome.org/echelon-nh.htm] ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. [http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm] ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.

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, ECHELON is today believed to also search for hints of terrorism terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence. But some critics claim the system is also being used for large-scale commercial theft and invasion of privacy. In May 2001, the European Parliament produced a report on ECHELON [http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep.htm] which, amongst other things, recommended that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy. In the United Kingdom UK, the government introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which gives authorities the power to demand that citizens hand over their key (cryptography) encryption keys, without a judge-approved warrant. In April 2004, the European Union decided to spend 11 million EUR developing secure communication based on quantum cryptography — the SECOQC project — a system that would theoretically be unbreakable by ECHELON or any other espionage system. ECHELON monitoring of mobile phones in Pakistan was reportedly used to track Khalid Shaikh Mohammed before he was arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1, 2003. Before the September 11, 2001 attacks and the legislation which followed it, US intelligence agencies were 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 facilites spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data (perhaps even automatically through the ECHELON system without human intervention). 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 George W. Bush administration Bush Administration extended the ECHELON program to NSA warrantless surveillance controversy domestic surveillance. This controversy was the subject of the New York Times eavesdropping exposÃ© of December, 2005. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/echelon_in_your_backyard] [http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/12/22/124426/39] [http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette185.html]. During the Clinton administration, testimony by then-CIA director George Tenet indicates that the use of ECHELON during the Clinton administration was authorized by the FISA Court, as required by law [http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/20/the-echelon-myth/].

Organization
The members of the English language English-speaking alliance are part of the UKUSA intelligence alliance that has maintained ties in collecting and sharing intelligence since World War II. Various sources claim that these states have positioned electronic-intercept stations and space satellites to capture most radio, satellite, microwave, mobile phone cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic. The captured signals are then processed through a series of supercomputers, known as ''dictionaries'', that are programmed to search each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices. Each member of the UKUSA alliance is assigned responsibilities for monitoring different parts of the globe. Canada 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 embassy 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 America 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 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 China. New Zealand sweeps the western Pacific ocean 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. National Security Agency, with headquarters at Fort Meade just outside Washington, DC, has a global staff of 38,000 and a budget estimated at more than US$3.6-billion. The UK equivalent organisation is the Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ based near Cheltenham. 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 (Canada) Department of National Defence. It has a staff of 890 people and an annual budget of $110-million (Cdn). The CSE's headquarters is the Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley 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, Ontario Leitrim, just south of Ottawa. UKUSA member nations Australia and New Zealand have already confirmed that ECHELON exists (though not specifying any details of its capabilities or operations), and the Netherlands (which isn't an ECHELON participant) have also confirmed the spynet's existence (through a parliamentary hearing). Furthermore, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has admitted using the system to uncover information about foreign companies using bribery bribes to win contracts. The information was passed on to US companies and foreign governments were pressed to stop the bribes. Media coverage of a couple of such events tended to give the impression that ECHELON was being used to give the trade secrets of foreign companies to US companies. European aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia after the NSA reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm]. "The United States will occasionally have the United Kingdom keep an eye on individuals in this country, with the understanding that if Britain turns up any interesting tidbits, it will slide them across the table." - from the book, CHATTER: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping

Limits
The limits of a large system such as ECHELON are defined by its very size. Though the system intercepts 3 billion communications daily, clients must know which intercepted communications to monitor before they can realize an intelligence advantage. For example, in the months before the September 11 attacks on the United States, signal intelligence produced by ECHELON developed considerable "chatter", or snippets of dialogue, that suggested some sort of attack was imminent. Analysts were unable to pin down the details of the attack, though, because operatives planning the attack relied largely on non-electronic communications.

Hardware
An [http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2430 article] by Chris Mellor claims that ECHELON is built by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Zeta Associates. Margaret Newsham [http://www.agitprop.org.au/stopnato/20000221echelbladn.htm claims] that she designed the software for the system at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale, California, under the code name ''P415''. The two main programs are called SILKWORTH and SIRE.

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

The largest and best-attested ground stations
* Fort Meade (Maryland, US) (headquarters of NSA) * Geraldton, Western Australia Geraldton (Western Australia, Australia) * Menwith Hill (Yorkshire, UK) * Misawa Air Base (Japan) * GCHQ CSO Morwenstow Morwenstow (Cornwall, UK) * Pine Gap (Northern Territory, Australia - close to Alice Springs) * Sabana Seca (Puerto Rico - US) * Shoal Bay (Northern Territory, Australia) * Sugar Grove, West Virginia Sugar Grove (West Virginia, USA) * Yakima (Washington, US) [http://maps.google.com/?ll=46.68209,-120.356544&spn=0.003077,0.007317&t=k Map] * Waihopai (New Zealand) * West Cape, Western Australia (Exmouth Gulf, Australia - US)

Various other ground stations
The following are various intelligence gathering stations of US intelligence agencies and armed forces or their allies. * Alert (Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada) * Ayios Nikolaos (Cyprus) Agios Nikolaos (Cyprus - UK) * Bremerhaven (Germany - UK) * Buckley Air Force Base (Colorado, US) * Chicksands (Bedfordshire, UK) * Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean - US-UK) * Digby (Lincolnshire, UK) * Elmendorf Air Force Base (Alaska - US) * Feltwell (Norfolk, UK) * Fort Gordon (Georgia (U.S. state) Georgia, US) * Gander (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada) * Gibraltar (UK) * Griesheim (Germany - US) * Guam (Pacific Ocean, US) * Karamursel (Turkey - US) * Kunia (Hawaii, US) * Leitrim, Canada Leitrim (south of Ottawa, Canada) * Malta (Malta - UK) * Masset (British Columbia, Canada) * Medina Annex (Texas, US) * Osan Air Base (South Korea, US) * Rota, Spain (Spain - US) * Silvermine (ECHELON) Silvermine (near Cape Town, South Africa - US) * scampton

Former ground stations
* Augsburg (Germany - US) - closed in 1993 * Bad Aibling (Germany - US) - closed in 2004 * 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

See also
* ANCHORY SIGINT intercept database * Carnivore (FBI) Carnivore * COINTELPRO * Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act CALEA ''to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes'' * Counterintelligence Field Activity is a US Department of Defense (DoD) agency that has legal authority to spy on Americans. * Frenchelon * High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program * Magic Lantern (software) Magic Lantern * Mass surveillance * Oasis (software) Oasis * Onyx (interception system), the Swiss "Echelon" equivalent * Policeware * Project MINARET * PROMIS strategic computer system * Right to privacy * Text mining

Further reading
* Hager, Nicky; ''Secret Power, New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network''; Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, NZ; ISBN 0908802358; 1996 * Keefe, Patrick Radden ''Chatter: dispatches from the secret world of global eavesdropping''; Random House Publishing, New York, NY; ISBN 1400060346; 2005 *Michael Barker. [http://www.thechangeagency.org/resources/resources/socact/Barker2005_Online_privacy.pdf Online privacy? Surveillance of social movements on the Internet], [http://www.thechangeagency.org/resources_socact.htm The Change Agency], November 2005.

Sources
{{Commons|Category:Echelon}}
- Project Echelon intercepting global communications
- Overview
- Development of Surveillance Technology & Risk of Abuse of Economic Information | PDF
- European Parliament report on ECHELON | (PDF)
- Big Brother Capabilities in an Online World. State Surveillance in the Internet (academic research), by Francisco J. Bernal
- Report to the US Congress about ECHELON, by Patrick S. Poole
- Echelon Research Resources, by Patrick S. Poole
- GlobalSecurity.org's page on ECHELON
- Cryptome article reporting claimed interview with 'architect of ECHELON II'
- The NSA's ECHELON System
- Echelon Watch
- Inside Echelon: The history, structure and function of the global surveillance system known as Echelon (comprehensive article)
- "How mobile phones and an Â£18m bribe trapped 9/11 mastermind", The Guardian, March 11 2003
- Pictures of Radomes used for Echelon in Griesheim - Germany
- World Infostructure - ECHELON
- US expands Echelon spying in UK
- translation of LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - January 1999 article TOP SECRET SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM : How the United States spies on us all - by PHILIPPE RIVIERE
- Inside Echelon - The history, structure und function of the global surveillance system known as Echelon by Duncan Campbell 25.07.2000 [http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/law/infotech/echelon.htm same article here at Global Policy] [http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6929/1.html and here at Heise.de]
- Sources about echelon including "STOA, An appraisal of technologies of political control, Interim study, Luxemburg 19 January] [[1998."]
- PDF file titled "Chapter six: Politics, Parapolitics, and the State"
- Executive Order 12139 on 23 May] [[1979] "the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order" *Michael Barker. [http://www.thechangeagency.org/resources/resources/socact/Barker2005_Online_privacy.pdf Online privacy? Surveillance of social movements on the Internet], [http://www.thechangeagency.org/resources_socact.htm The Change Agency], November 2005. * Jeffrey Richelson. [http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ma00richelson Desperately Seeking Signals], Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2000. * Kurt Nimmo. [http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=169 NSA snoop story: Tell me something I donâ€™t already know], ''Another Day in the Empire'', December 24 2005. Category:National Security Agency Category:Government databases in the United States Category:Espionage Category:Data collection Category:Security Category:State security da:ECHELON de:Echelon es:ECHELON eo:Echelon fr:Echelon ko:ì—?ì…œë¡ it:ECHELON he:×?×©×œ×•×Ÿ lv:ECHELON lt:ECHELON nl:ECHELON ja:ã‚¨ã‚·ãƒ¥ãƒãƒ³ no:Echelon pl:Echelon pt:Echelon fi:ECHELON sv:Echelon (data) '''Echelon''' can refer to: * A matrix (mathematics) matrix in '''echelon form''' in mathematics. * The '''echelon formation''' in bird migration migratory bird flight, aerial combat, tank warfare, naval warfare and medieval warfare. * '''ECHELON''' is an intelligence gathering network rumoured to be run by an international alliance of signals intelligence organisations known as UKUSA Community UKUSA. * '''Echelon (warez) Echelon''' is a game console warez organization. * '''Echelon (flight simulator) Echelon''' is a flight simulator series developed by MADIA. * '''Echelon (computer game) Echelon''' is a vintage computer game which could employ acoustic steering commands. * '''Echelon (card game) Echelon''' is a card game by '''Echelon Games'''. * '''Echelon''' in geology refers to a set of short linear features that overlap or are staggered in a line that runs obliquely to the strike of the individual features. Echelon fault Echelon faults are an example of this. * Riding in an '''echelon''' is a Road bicycle racing bicycle racing technique to make maximum use of other riders' Slipstream slipstreams in a crosswind. * '''Echelon (Thirty Seconds to Mars) Echelon''' is the street team of the band 30 Seconds to Mars. * Echelon is a US Corporation. Self identified as a pioneer in control networks. Creators of the LonWorks distributed control platform. *In Deus Ex, Minor_Deus_Ex_characters#Daedalus Daedalus is a fictional computer surveillance system descended from the current ECHELON system. The system it replaced, Echelon IV is found in the game. {{disambig}} sv:Echelon

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