Top of Form 1

THE FOLLOWING YOURE ABOUT TO READ HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM DIFFERENT MAGAZINES, WEB SITES AND BOOKS. ENJOY

ECHELON - GLOBAL MONITORING

This article has been archived and are not updated. The content may be outdated, and it is possible that the links do not work. The article comes from Data Security magazine, which the UNI-C published 1998-2001
By J. Toftegaard, UNI • C

The centrally controlled global electronic spy surveillance is upon us. Monitoring is not only military affairs, terrorist movements, critical political factions and organized crime like drug trafficking.

Increasingly focused on monitoring governments, organizations, and business ventures, and virtually no country in the world is spared. The electronic spy surveillance has a name, Echelon, and the U.S. is the driving force behind the surveillance.

The above is not taken from a science fiction book. Ours is a relatively well-documented reality, mentioned in a draft report prepared for Europaparlementet. The draft, released a commentary on 6 January 1998, entitled "An assessment of the technologies behind political control" ("An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control") and describes such development of surveillance technology. The draft report brings about this topic is not new revelations, but transmits only what is already in some years has been common knowledge for a small group of civil rights campaigners. The draft report calls for a necessary debate about how to ensure democratic control of the monitoring.

An integrated electronic intelligence system Echelon, which actually means a army formation built in different stages, is the code name for an electronic intelligence system in the late 80s was formed by intelligence services from USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Already in the late 70s, appeared in England revelations a forerunner of this electronic spy cooperation between countries, but the greatest source of knowledge on Echelon was made by Nicky Hager from New Zealand in the book "Secret Power" from 1996. Here he gives - including through a long series of interviews - some accurate descriptions of intelligence: The five countries involved can from their different positions on the globe intercept and coordinate extreme amounts of electronic communications - e-mail, telex, fax and telephone. By using electronic dictionaries in different languages, they can then based on keywords to find the information in intelligence eyes are interesting. The U.S. Secret Service, NSA (National Security Agency), has designed the system so that the computers in each country's intelligence stations function as an integrated whole.

Economic espionage
As most of the international intelligence company Echelon solid roots in the Cold War period. But as a distinctive feature is primarily designed Echelon to spy on non-military targets, and it's not small change, you put in the Echelon project. Alone NSA has - according to an article in the Financial Post on 28 February 1998 to 40,000 employees and a budget that is four times as large as the CIA. In turn, the economic benefit big.
According to the above article, there are several examples that the United States in different ways have profited in this espionage. In 1990 the United States went so secret about a planned contract for about $ 200 million between Indonesia and the Japanese telephone company, NEC Corp.. The then President George Bush intervened and the contract was split between NEC and the American AT & T. In 1994, NSA intercepted interesting telephone conversations between France and Brazil and the USA so the cards that you could go in and grab a trade of $ 1.4 billion under the nose of France. The article reports several examples of such economic espionage in the heavyweight class, including GATT negotiations.

Cooperation with EU
In the early '90s, however, some very big problems for surveillance because people increasingly began to use encryption in electronic communication, and different encodings in the digital telecommunications - not least in connection with the explosive use of mobile phones. Certainly it has been in the NSA very large engine power to decrypt electronic communications, but still were prospects for incalculable. Therefore contacted the FBI, among others, EU to find some common standards for the use of coding in connection with electronic communications. According to the above article in Berlingske Tidende led to the inquiry on 17 January 1995 between the U.S., EU and certain other countries adopted a resolution calling on countries promised each other that together they would make demands on telecommunications companies to use eavesdropping friendly equipment and decoding the digitized telephone calls, if the police had a need for this in intelligence gathering.

The agreement was made in secret at ministerial level and the European Parliament and individual EU countries' parliaments were not indraget. The Danish parliament first heard on the resolution on 15 November 1996, when Foreign Affairs brief the European Affairs Committee announced that the Resolution was published in the Official Journal of 4 November 1996.

The draft report prepared by the European Parliament shows that the mentioned Resolution no mention about the economic consequences of the agreement. The draft refers rather to a calculation prepared by the German government stating that the mere organization of mobile interception would amount to four billion Deutschmarks.

The draft report also shows that not even the EU parliament's Committee for Justice and civil rights have been consulted in this matter. This committee must ensure that citizens' rights are not violated, including illegal surveillance and recording.

Requirements for monitoring
The draft report cites the journal Statewatch for a conclusive opinion on the EU instead of a democratic discussion has helped to sponsor a solid basis for the Echelon system now can get uncontrollable power. Even just the draft to conclude that the intelligence agreements certainly should be discussed very carefully before entering into agreements on further financial obligations.
As a basis for such a discussion is made, the draft report a number of requirements for intelligence services to electronic monitoring. Of the major requirements may include, inter alia include:

For all monitoring must be set some standard procedures to ensure a democratic control and there must be some clear rules to ensure compensation if the resulting abuse. One must agree on some explicit decision criteria for determining who should be monitored, and who is not monitored and how monitoring data must be stored, handled and protected.
The rules for monitoring to ensure that all are now monitoring technology works in accordance with data protection legislation
There must be rules, so the sale and purchase of monitoring equipment subject to control
The European Parliament should reject proposals from the U.S. to make private Internet communications are freely available to U.S. surveillance. Parliament will not approve new, costly control measures with encryption without an extensive debate within the EU on the implications of this.
This relates both to protect the individual rights of citizens and commercial enterprises right in law to act freely, without supervision from the intelligence services, working with multinational competitors.

Article from data security magazine

Echelon (1971 -) is believed to be history's most comprehensive network of collection and analysis of electronic communications. The network was originally documented by the British journalist Duncan Campbell in 1988. Echelon intercept radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, fax transmissions and emails from almost every country in the world and subjecting the material is an automated analysis. Its capacity is believed to be 3 billion transmissions daily.

The network is believed originally created to monitor the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe's military and diplomatic communications, but after the Soviet collapse in 1991 is believed mainly to be used for interception of terrorist plans, drug trafficking and political and diplomatic intelligence - including the interception of communications for the UN member countries' missions at the UN Headquarters in New York. Critics of Echelon also believes that it is used for interception and theft of trade secrets and breach of privacy.

Fans of ECHELON argue that the network simply is one of many tools in the toolbox for intelligence agencies, besides the still more advanced systems for eavesdropping and interception of communications, surveillance satellites, systems for fingerprint recognition, and systems that can determine the DNA, odor or recognize corneas.

UKUSA alliance
The network run by U.S. and British intelligence, with support from Canada, Australia and New_Zealand:

USA - National Security Agency (NSA)
UK - Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
Canada - Communications Security Establishment (CSE)
Australia - Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)
New Zealand - Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)
This English-speaking alliance have since 2 World collaborated on the collection and sharing of intelligence material. Each of the countries in the alliance has specific responsibilities. Canada's role was originally to collect communication from the northern part of the Soviet Union and the Embassy of communication around the world. After the Soviet collapse is Canada's role expanded to the interception of satellite, radio and cell phone communications from Central and South America. Primarily aimed to track drug trafficking and other crime in this area. USA has a very comprehensive system of spy satellites and listening posts, covering most of Latin America, Asia, Russia and northern China. Britain covers Europe, Russia west of the Ural Mountains and Africa, while Australia covering Southeast Asia and southern China. Finally covers New Zealand the western Pacific.

Also other countries is part of the Echelon network - including Denmark. At Sandager Yard station at Aflandshage on Amager collected Danish communication and communication from the Baltic region before it is forwarded via London to the U.S..

The material collected from the Echelon network is sent through a larger number of super computers that are programmed to search for specific addresses, words, phrases or voices.

United States dominates the alliance, has satellite capacity, mostly listening stations, the majority of computer capacity and expertise to use it, and most spies. National Security Agency (NSA) has its headquarters at Fort Meade outside Washington DC. It has 38,000 employees worldwide and a budget of 3.6 billion. U.S. $ - more than the FBI and CIA combined.

Echelon reader with the Internet
Communication via the Internet since early 1990 has grown explosively, but this network has direct access to Echelon. The Internet started as namely, a network operated by the U.S. Defense, DARPA network, and the military still controls a large number of network nodes. The content on the network is sent in clear text - eg. the content of websites or emails - and the NSA was already in the mid-1990s agreements with browser manufacturers like Microsoft and Netscape, that the encryption they built into their products to enable secure commercial transfer of information - eg. by payments on the internet - only came in weakly encrypted version outside the U.S.. If the NSA else was interested in what could be the security services read encrypted information about Internet payments. Whatever standard encryption across the Internet, therefore as one large open book, Exhelon can read with i.

The Canadian contribution to the network is performed by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is a branch of the Canadian Department of Defense. It has 890 employees and a budget of 110 million. CD $. Its headquarters is also called the farm and located in the capital Ottawa. Its main listening station is an old military base in Leitrim south of Ottawa.

Echelon has been shrouded in secrecy strong. The governments of Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands has confirmed the existence of the network. Former CIA director James Woolsey has also admitted to having used the system for collecting information about foreign companies that had used bribes to win contracts - including Airbus consortium bribery of Saudi officials User Functions. a large aircraft dea in 1994. The information was passed to France to set bribery business, and also to the North American rivals Boeing and McDonnell Douglas who ended up getting the order. Media coverage of a number of these cases have indicated that Echelon is used for collection of trade secrets from foreign companies for use of their North American competitors.

EU and Echelon
In May 2001 the European Parliament a report on Echelon, which include recommended population in member countries to encrypt their communications to protect their privacy. This demand was offset by new legislation in Britain, which gives authorities the right to demand encryption keys are handed over without a warrant. In April 2004 the EU decided to develop a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography - SECOQC project. This form of encryption should in theory be impossible to break by Echelon or other spy network.

Echelon's limitation is the lack to anticipate what information should be searched and how. Despite monitoring of 3 billion. daily communications network units was therefore unable to detect the activities leading up to implementation of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, although it subsequently be determined that there had been talk about both money transfers and electronic communications. One of the limitations were, moreover, that intelligence agencies was not allowed to gather information in their own country. However, sources claim that this was circumvented by allowing the UK collect information in the U.S. and the U.S. in the UK, then this information was exchanged and the limitations thus bypassed.

Echelon

Sniffing for words like:
assassinate, terrorist, bomb, militia, Mossad, assault rifle, ATF, DOD, Waco, Ruby Ridge, OKC, Oklahoma City, gun, handgun, milgov, terrorism, drug, Koresh, promis, manifesto, revolt, NASA, mi5, ONI, CID, AK47, M16, C4, Malcolm X, revolution, Cherokee, Hillary, Bill Clinton, Gore, George Bush

The world's most secret electronic surveillance system has its main origin in the conflicts of the Second World War. In a deeper sense, it results from the invention of radio and the fundamental nature of telecommunications. The creation of radio permitted governments and other communicators to pass messages to receivers over transcontinental distances. But there was a penalty - anyone else could listen in. Previously, written messages were physically secure (unless the courier carrying them was ambushed, or a spy compromised communications). The invention of radio thus created a new importance for cryptography, the art and science of making secret codes. It also led to the business of signals intelligence, now an industrial scale activity. Although the largest surveillance network is run by the US NSA, it is far from alone. Russia, China, France and other nations operate worldwide networks. Dozens of advanced nations use sigint as a key source of intelligence. Even smaller European nations such as Denmark, the Netherlands or Switzerland have recently constructed small, Echelon-like stations to obtain and process intelligence by eavesdropping on civil satellite communications.

The system was established under a secret 1947 "UKUSA Agreement," which brought together the British and American systems, personnel and stations. To this was soon joined the networks of three British commonwealth countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Later, other countries including Norway, Denmark, Germany and Turkey signed secret sigint agreements with the United States and became "third parties" participants in the UKUSA network.

Besides integrating their stations, each country appoints senior officials to work as liaison staff at the others' headquarters. The United States operates a Special US Liaison Office (SUSLO) in London and Cheltenham, while a SUKLO official from GCHQ has his own suite of offices inside NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, between Washington and Baltimore.

The scale and significance of the global surveillance system has been transformed since 1980. The arrival of low cost wideband international communications has created a wired world. But few people are aware that the first global wide area network (WAN) was not the internet, but the international network connecting sigint stations and processing centres. The network is connected over transoceanic cables and space links. Most of the capacity of the American and British military communications satellites, Milstar and Skynet, is devoted to relaying intelligence information. It was not until the mid 1990s that the public internet became larger than the secret internet that connects surveillance stations. Britain's sigint agency GCHQ now openly boasts on its

web sitethat it helps operate "one of the largest WANs [Wide Area Networks} in the world" and that "all GCHQ systems are linked together on the largest LAN in Europe ... connected to other sites around the world". The same pages also claim that "the immense size and sheer power of GCHQ's supercomputing architecture is difficult to imagine".

The UKUSA alliance's wide area network is engineered according to the same principles as the internet, and provides access from all field interception stations to and from NSA's central computer system, known as Platform. Other parts of the system are known as Embroidery, Tideway and Oceanfront. The intelligence news network is Newsdealer. A TV conference system, highly encrypted like every other part of the network, is called Gigster. They are supported by applications known as Preppy and Droopy. NSA's e-mail system looks and feels like everybody else's e-mail, but is completely separate from the public network. Messages addressed to its secret internal internet address, which is simply "nsa", will not get through.

The delivery of NSA intelligence also now looks and feels like using the internet. Authorised users with appropriate permissions to access "Special Compartmented Intelligence" use standard web browsers to look at the output of NSA's Operations Department from afar. The system, known as "Intelink", is run from the NSA's Fort Meade HQ. Completed in 1996, Intelink connects 13 different US intelligence agencies and some allied agencies with the aim of providing instant access to all types of intelligence information. Just like logging onto the world wide web, intelligence analysts and military personnel can view an atlas on Intelink's home page, and then click on any country they choose in order to access intelligence reports, video clips, satellite photos, databases and status reports.

The full details of Echelon would probably never have come to serious public attention but for 6 further years of research by New Zealand writer Nicky Hager, who assiduously investigated the new Echelon station that started operating at Waihopai on the South Island of New Zealand in 1989. His 1996 book Secret Power is based on extensive interviews with and help from members of the New Zealand signals intelligence organisation. It remains the best informed and most detailed account of how Echelon works.

Early in 2000, information and documents leaked to a US researcher provided many details of how Echelon was developed for use worldwide. Under a 1982 NSA plan assigned to Lockheed Space and Missiles Systems, engineers and scientists worked on Project P-377 - also known as CARBOY II. This project called for the development of a standard kit of "ADPE" (automated data processing equipment) parts for equipping Echelon sites. The "commonality of automated data processing equipment (ADPE) in the Echelon system" included the following elements:

Local management subsystem

Remote management subsystem

Radio frequency distribution

Communications handling subsystem

Telegraphy message processing subsystem

Frequency division multiplex telegraphy processing subsystem

Time division multiplex telegraphy processing subsystem

Voice processing subsystem

Voice collection module

Facsimile processing subsystem

[Voice] Tape Production Facility

The CARBOY II project also called for software systems to load and update the Dictionary databases. At this time, the hardware for the Dictionary processing subsystem was based on a cluster of DEC VAX mini-computers, together with special purpose units for processing and separating different types of satellite communications.

In 1998 and 1999, the intelligence specialist Dr Jeff Richelson of the National Security ArchiveWashington, DC used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a series of modern official US Navy and Air Force documents which have confirmed the continued existence, scale and expansion of the Echelon system. The documents from the US Air Force and US Navy identify Echelon units at four sites and suggest that a fifth site also collects information from communications satellites as part of the Echelon system.