ECHELON : America's Secret Global Surveillance Network

By Patrick S. Poole

Copyright 1999/2000


In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US
National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy
system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes
virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message
sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA
and is operated in conjunction with the Government
Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the
Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the
Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the
General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New
Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a
secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, 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 fiber-optic
communications traffic, and then process this information
through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA,
including advanced voice recognition and optical character
recognition (OCR) programs, and look for code words or
phrases (known as the ECHELON "Dictionary") that will prompt
the computers to flag the message for recording and
transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at
each of the respective "listening stations" maintain
separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation
or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded
to the respective intelligence agency headquarters 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 Constitution, are consistently
impeded by very elaborate and complex legal arguments and
privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US
government. The guardians and caretakers of our liberties,
our duly elected political representatives, give scarce
attention to these activities, let alone 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, which he discovered only after
reporters had been passed transcripts of his conversations
by the White House. One of the most shocking 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 redefine the notion of national
security to include economic, commercial and corporate
concerns. An office was created within the Department of
Commerce, the Office of Intelligence Liaison, to forward
intercepted materials to major US corporations. In many
cases, the beneficiaries of this commercial espionage effort
are the very companies that helped the NSA develop the
systems that power the ECHELON network. This incestuous
relationship is so strong that sometimes this intelligence
information is used to push other American manufacturers out
of deals in favor of these mammoth US defense and
intelligence contractors, who frequently are the source of
major cash contributions to both political parties.

While signals intelligence technology was helpful in
containing and eventually defeating the Soviet Empire during
the Cold War, what was once designed to target a select list
of communist countries and terrorist states is now
indiscriminately directed against virtually every citizen in
the world. The European Parliament is now asking whether the
ECHELON communications interceptions violate the sovereignty
and privacy of citizens in other countries. In some cases,
such as the NSA's Menwith Hill station in England,
surveillance is conducted against citizens on their own soil
and with the full knowledge and cooperation of their
government.

This report suggests that Congress pick up its
long-neglected role as watchdog of the Constitutional rights
and liberties of the American people, instead of its current
role as lap dog to the US intelligence agencies.
Congressional hearings ought to be held, similar to the
Church and Rockefeller Committee hearings held in the
mid-1970s, to find out to what extent the ECHELON system
targets the personal, political, religious, and commercial
communications of American citizens. The late Senator Frank
Church warned that the technology and capability embodied in
the ECHELON system represented a direct threat to the
liberties of the American people. Left unchecked, ECHELON
could be used by either the political elite or the
intelligence agencies themselves as a tool to subvert the
civil protections of Constitution and to destroy
representative government in the United States.


Introduction

The culmination of the Cold War conflict brought home hard
realities for many military and intelligence agencies who
were dependent upon the confrontation for massive budgets
and little civilian oversight. World War II Allied political
and military alliances had quickly become intelligence
alliances in the shadow of the Iron Curtain that descended
upon Eastern Europe after the war.

But for some intelligence agencies the end of the Cold War
just meant a shift in mission and focus, not a loss of
manpower or financial resources. One such US governmental
organization is the National Security Agency (NSA). Despite
the disintegration of Communism in the former Soviet Union
and throughout Eastern Europe, the secretive NSA continues
to grow at an exponential rate in terms of budget, manpower
and spying abilities. Other countries have noticed the rapid
growth of NSA resources and facilities around the world, and
have decried the extensive spying upon their citizens by the
US.

A preliminary report released by the European Parliament in
January 1998 detailed research conducted by independent
researchers that uncovered a massive US spy technology
network that routinely monitors telephone, fax and email
information on citizens all over the world, but particularly
in the European Union (EU) and Japan. Titled "An Appraisal
of Technologies of Political Control,"<1> this report,
issued by the Scientific and Technological Options
Assessment (STOA) committee of the European Parliament,
caused a tremendous stir in the establishment press in
Europe. At least one major US media outlet, The New york
Times,<2> covered the issuance of the report as well.

The STOA report also exposed a festering sore spot between
the US and our EU allies. The widespread surveillance of
citizens in EU countries by the NSA has been known and
discussed by European journalists since 1981. The name of
the system in question is ECHELON, and it is one of the most
secretive spy systems in existence.

ECHELON is actually a vast network of electronic spy
stations located around the world and maintained by five
countries: the US, England, Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand. These countries, bound together in a still-secret
agreement called UKUSA, spy on each other's citizens by
intercepting and gathering electronic signals of almost
every telephone call, fax transmission and email message
transmitted around the world daily. These signals are fed
through the massive supercomputers of the NSA to look for
certain keywords called the ECHELON "dictionaries."

Most of the details of this mammoth spy system and the UKUSA
agreement that supports it remain a mystery. What is known
of ECHELON is the result of the efforts of journalists and
researchers around the world who have labored for decades to
uncover the operations of our government's most secret
systems. The 1996 publication of New Zealand journalist
Nicky Hager's book, Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the
International Spy Network,<3> provided the most detailed
look at the system and inflamed interest in ECHELON as well
as the debate regarding its propriety.

This paper examines the expanse of the ECHELON system along
with the intelligence agreements and exchanges that support
it. The operation of ECHELON serves the NSA's goal of spying
on the citizens of other countries while also allowing them
to circumvent the prohibition on spying on US citizens.
ECHELON is not only a gross violation of our Constitution,
but it violates the good will of our European allies and
threatens the privacy of innocent civilians around the
world. The existence and expansion of ECHELON is a
foreboding omen regarding the future of our Constitutional
liberties. If a government agency can willingly violate the
most basic components of the Bill of Rights without so much
as Congressional oversight and approval, we have reverted
from a republican form of government to tyranny.

The Parties

The success of the Allied military effort in World War II
was due in no small part to successes in gathering enemy
intelligence information and cracking those military and
diplomatic messages. In addition, the Allied forces were
able to create codes and encryption devices that effectively
concealed sensitive information from prying Axis Power eyes.
These coordinated signal intelligence (SIGINT) programs kept
Allied information secure and left the enemies vulnerable.

But at the close of the conflict, a new threatening power -
the Soviet Union - was beginning to provoke the Cold War by
enslaving Eastern Europe. These signal intelligence agencies
now had a new enemy toward which to turn their electronic
eyes and ears to ensure that the balance of power could be
maintained. The volleys of electronic hardware and espionage
that would follow for forty years would be the breeding
ground of the ECHELON spy system.

The diplomatic foundation that was the genesis of ECHELON is
the UKUSA agreement. The agreement has its roots in the
BRUSA COMINT (communications intelligence) alliance formed
in the early days of World War II and ratified on May 17,
1943 by the United Kingdom and the United States.<4> The
Commonwealth SIGINT Organization formed in 1946-47 brought
together the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand post-war
intelligence agencies.<5> Forged in 1947 between the US and
UK, the still-secret UKUSA agreement defined the relations
between the SIGINT departments of those various governments.
Direct agreements between the US and these agencies also
define the intricate relationship that these organizations
engage in.

Foremost among those agencies is the US National Security
Agency (NSA), which represents the American interest. The
NSA is designated as the "First Party to the Treaty." The
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) signed the
UKUSA agreement on behalf of the UK and its Commonwealth
SIGINT partners. This brought Australia's Defense Signals
Directorate (DSD), the Canadian Communications Security
Establishment (CSE) and New Zealand's Government
Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) into the arrangement.
While these agencies are bound by additional direct
agreements with the US and each other, these four countries
are considered the "Second Parties to the (UKUSA) Treaty."
Third Party members include Germany, Japan, Norway, South
Korea and Turkey. There are sources that indicate China may
be included in this group on a limited basis as well.<6>

National Security Agency (US)

The prime mover in the UKUSA arrangement is undeniably the
National Security Agency (NSA). The majority of funds for
joint projects and facilities (discussed below) as well as
the direction for intelligence gathering operations are
issued primarily through the NSA. The participating agencies
frequently exchange personnel, divide up intelligence
collection tasks and establish common guidelines for
classifying and protecting shared information. However, the
NSA utilizes its role as the largest spy agency in the world
to have its international intelligence partners do its
bidding.

President Harry Truman established the NSA in 1952 with a
presidential directive that remains classified to this day.
The US government did not acknowledge the existence of the
NSA until 1957. Its original mission was to conduct the
signal intelligence (SIGINT) and communications security
(COMSEC) for the US. President Ronald Reagan added the tasks
of information systems security and operations security
training in 1984 and 1988 respectively. A 1986 law charged
the NSA with supporting combat operations for the Department
of Defense.<7>

Headquartered at Fort George Meade, located between
Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, the NSA boasts the
most enviable array of intelligence equipment and personnel
in the world. The NSA is the largest global employer of
mathematicians, featuring the best teams of codemakers and
codebreakers ever assembled. The latter's job is to crack
the encryption codes of foreign and domestic electronic
communications, forwarding the revealed messages to their
enormous team of skilled linguists to review and analyze the
messages in over 100 languages. The NSA is also responsible
for creating the encryption codes that protect the US
government's communications.

In its role as gang leader for UKUSA, the NSA is primarily
involved with creating new surveillance and codebreaking
technology, directing the other cooperating agencies to
their targets, and providing them with training and tools to
intercept, process and analyze enormous amounts of signals
intelligence. By possessing what is arguably the most
technologically advanced communications, computer and
codebreaking equipment of any government agency in the
world, the NSA serves as a competent and capable taskmaster
for UKUSA.

The ECHELON Network

The vast network created by the UKUSA community stretches
across the globe and into the reaches of space. Land-based
intercept stations, intelligence ships sailing the seven
seas and top-secret satellites whirling twenty thousand
miles overhead all combine to empower the NSA and its UKUSA
allies with access to the entire global communications
network. Very few signals escape its electronic grasp.

Having divided the world up among the UKUSA parties, each
agency directs its electronic "vacuum-cleaner" equipment
towards the heavens and the ground to search for the most
minute communications signals that traverse the system's
immense path. The NSA facilities in the US cover the
communications signals of both American continents; the GCHQ
in Britain is responsible for Europe, Africa and Russia west
of the Ural Mountains; the DSD in Australia assists in
SIGINT collection in Southeastern Asia and the Southwest
Pacific and Eastern Indian Ocean areas; the GSCB in New
Zealand is responsible for Southern Pacific Ocean
collections, particularly the South Pacific island nations
group; and CSE in Canada handles interception of additional
northern Russian, northern European and American
communications.<8>

The Facilities

The backbone of the ECHELON network is the massive listening
and reception stations directed at the Intelsat and Inmarsat
satellites that are responsible for the vast majority of
phone and fax communications traffic within and between
countries and continents. The twenty Intelsat satellites
follow a geo-stationary orbit locked onto a particular point
on the Equator.<9> These satellites carry primarily
civilian traffic, but they do additionally carry diplomatic
and governmental communications that are of particular
interest to the UKUSA parties.

Originally, only two stations were responsible for Intelsat
intercepts: Morwenstow in England and yakima in the state of
Washington. However, when the Intelsat 5 series was replaced
with the Intelsat 701 and 703 satellites, which had much
more precise transmission beams that prohibited reception of
Southern Hemisphere signals from the yakima base in the
Northern Hemisphere, additional facilities were constructed
in Australia and New Zealand.<10>

Today, the Morwenstow station directs its ears towards the
Intelsats traversing the atmosphere above the Atlantic and
Indian Oceans and transmiting to Europe, Africa and western
parts of Asia. The yakima station, located on the grounds of
the yakima Firing Station, targets Pacific Ocean
communications in the Northern Hemisphere as well as the Far
East. Another NSA facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia,
covers traffic for the whole of North and South America. A
DSD station at Geraldton, Australia, and the Waihopai, New
Zealand GCSB facility cover Asia, the South Pacific
countries and the Pacific Ocean. An additional station on
Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and
Angola is suspected of covering the Atlantic Intelsat's
Southern Hemisphere communications.<11>

Non-Intelsat satellites are monitored from these same
stations, as well as from bases in Menwith Hill, England;
Shoal Bay, Australia; Leitrim, Canada; Bad Aibling, Germany,
and Misawa, Japan. These satellites typically carry Russian
and regional communications.<12> It is known that the Shoal
Bay facility targets a series of Indonesian satellites and
that the Leitrim station intercepts communications from
Latin American satellites, including the Mexican telephone
company's Morelos satellite.<13>

Several dozen other radio listening posts operated by the
UKUSA allies dot the globe as well, located at military
bases on foreign soil and remote spy posts. These stations
played a critical role in the time prior to the development
of satellite communications because much of the world's
communications traffic was transmitted on radio frequency
bands. Particularly in the high-frequency (HF) range, radio
communications continue to serve an important purpose
despite the widespread use of satellite technology because
their signals can be transmitted to military ships and
aircraft across the globe. Shorter range very
high-frequencies (VHF) and ultra high-frequencies (UHF) are
also used for tactical military communications within
national borders. Major radio facilities in the UKUSA
network include Tangimoana, New Zealand; Bamaga, Australia,
and the joint NSA/GCHQ facility at the Indian Ocean atoll of
Diego Garcia.<14>

A separate high frequency direction finding (HFDF) network
intercepts communications signals for the unique purpose of
locating the position of ships and aircraft. While these
stations are not actually involved in the analysis of
messages, they play a critical role in monitoring the
movements of mobile military targets. The Canadian CSE
figures prominently in the HFDF UKUSA network, codenamed
CLASSIC BULLSEyE and hosting a major portion of the Atlantic
and Pacific stations that monitored Soviet ship and
submarine movements during the Cold War. Stations from
Kingston and Leitrim (Ontario) to Gander (Newfoundland) on
the Atlantic side, to Alert (Northwest Territories) located
at the northernmost tip of Canada on the Arctic Ocean that
listens to the Russian submarine bases at Petropavlovsk and
Vladivostok, and finally to Masset (British Columbia) in the
Pacific -- monitor shipping and flight lanes under the
direction of the NSA.<15>. The CSE also maintains a small
contingent at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas,
which probably monitors Latin American communications
targets.

Another major support for the ECHELON system is the US spy
satellite network and its corresponding reception bases
scattered about the UKUSA empire. These space-based
electronic communications "vacuum cleaners" pick up radio,
microwave and cell phone traffic on the ground. They were
launched by the NSA in cooperation with its sister spy
agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Ferret series of
satellites in the 1960s; the Canyon, Rhyolite and Aquacade
satellites in the 1970s; and the Chalet, Vortex, Magnum,
Orion, and Jumpseat series of satellites in the 1980s, have
given way to the new and improved Mercury, Mentor and
Trumpet satellites during the 1990s.

Table I. US Spy Satellites in Current Use

Satellite
No.
Orbit
Manufacturer
Purpose
Advanced KH-11
3
200 miles
Lockheed Martin
5-inch resolution spy photographs
LaCrosse Radar Imaging
2
200-400 miles
Lockheed Martin
3 to 10-foot resolution spy photographs
Orion/Vortex
3
22,300 miles
TRW
Telecom surveillance
Trumpet
2
200-22,300 miles
Boeing
Surveillance of cellular phones
Parsae
3
600 miles
TRW
Ocean surveillance
Satellite Data Systems
2
200-22,300 miles
Hughes
Data Relay
Defense Support Program
4+
22,300 miles
TRW/Aerojet
Missile early warning
Defense Meteorological Support Program
2
500 miles
Lockheed Martin
Meteorology, nuclear blast detection

Source: MSNBC

These surveillance satellites act as giant scoops picking up
electronic communications, cell phone conversations and
various radio transmissions. The downlink stations that
control the operations and targeting of these satellites are
under the exclusive control of the United States, despite
their location on foreign military bases. The two primary
downlink facilities are at Menwith Hill, England, and Pine
Gap, Australia.

Inside Menwith Hill

The Menwith Hill facility is located in North yorkshire near
Harrogate, England. The important role that Menwith Hill
plays in the ECHELON system was recognized by the recent
European Parliament STOA report:

Within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications
are routinely intercepted by the United States National
Security Agency, transferring all target information from
the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then
by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub
at Menwith Hill in the North york Moors of the UK.<17> The
existence and importance of the facility was first brought
to light by British journalist and researcher Duncan
Campbell in 1980.<18> Today, it is the largest spy station
in the world, with over twenty-five satellite receiving
stations and 1,400 American NSA personnel working with 350
UK Ministry of Defense staff on site. After revelations that
the facility was coordinating surveillance for the vast
majority of the European continent, the base has become a
target for regular protests organized by local peace
activists. It has also become the target of intense
criticism by European government officials who are concerned
about the vast network of civilian surveillance and economic
espionage conducted from the station by the US.<19>

The beginnings of Menwith Hill go back to December 1951,
when the US Air Force and British War Office signed a lease
for land that had been purchased by the British government.
The NSA took over the lease of the base in 1966, and they
have continued to build up the facility ever since. Up until
the mid-1970s, Menwith Hill was used for intercepting
International Leased Carrier (ILC) and Non-Diplomatic
Communications (NDC). Having received one of the first
sophisticated IBM computers in the early 1960s, Menwith Hill
was also used to sort through the voluminous unenciphered
telex communications, which consisted of international
messages, telegrams and telephone calls from the government,
business and civilian sectors looking for anything of
political, military or economic value.<20>

The addition of the first satellite intercept station at
Menwith Hill in 1974 raised the base's prominence in
intelligence gathering. Eight large satellite communications
dishes were installed during that phase of construction.
Several satellite-gathering systems now dot the
facility:<21>

STEEPLEBUSH - Completed in 1984, this $160 million system
expanded the satellite surveillance capability and mission
of the spy station beyond the bounds of the installation
that began in 1974.

RUNWAy - Running east and west across the facility, this
system receives signals from the second-generation
geosynchronous Vortex satellites, and gathers miscellaneous
communications traffic from Europe, Asia and the former
Soviet Union. The information is then forwarded to the
Menwith Hill computer systems for processing. RUNWAy may
have recently been replaced or complemented by another
system, RUTLEy.

PUSHER - An HFDF system that covers the HF frequency range
between 3 MHz and 30 MHz (radio transmissions from CB
radios, walkie-talkies, and other radio devices). Military,
embassy, maritime and air flight communications are the main
target of PUSHER.

MOONPENNy - Uncovered by British journalist Duncan Campbell
in the 1980s, this system is targeted at the communication
relay satellites belonging to other countries, as well as
the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Intelsat satellites.

KNOBSTICKS I and II - The purpose of these antennae arrays
are unknown, but they probably target military and
diplomatic traffic throughout Europe.

GT-6 - A new system installed at the end of 1996, GT-6 is
believed to be the receiver for the third generation of
geosynchronous satellites termed Advanced Orion or Advanced
Vortex. A new polar orbit satellite called Advanced Jumpseat
may be monitored from here as well.

STEEPLEBUSH II - An expansion of the 1984 STEEPLEBUSH
system, this computer system processes information collected
from the RUNWAy receivers gathering traffic from the Vortex
satellites.

SILKWORTH - Constructed by Lockheed Corporation, the main
computer system for Menwith Hill processes most of the
information received by the various reception systems.

One shocking revelation about Menwith Hill came to light in
1997 during the trial of two women peace campaigners
appealing their convictions for trespassing at the facility.
In documents and testimony submitted by British Telecomm in
the case, R.G. Morris, head of Emergency Planning for
British Telecomm, revealed that at least three major
domestic fiber-optic telephone trunk lines - each capable of
carrying 100,000 calls simultaneously - were wired through
Menwith Hill.<22> This allows the NSA to tap into the very
heart of the British Telecomm network. Judge Jonathan
Crabtree rebuked British Telecomm for his revelations and
prohibited Mr. Morris from giving any further testimony in
the case for "national security" reasons. According to
Duncan Campbell, the secret spying alliance between Menwith
Hill and British Telecomm began in 1975 with a coaxial
connection to the British Telecomm microwave facility at
Hunter's Stone, four miles away from Menwith Hill - a
connection maintained even today.<23>

Additional systems (TROUTMAN, ULTRAPURE, TOTALISER,
SILVERWEED, RUCKUS, et. al.) complete the monumental SIGINT
collection efforts at Menwith Hill. Directing its electronic
vacuum cleaners towards unsuspecting communications
satellites in the skies, receiving signals gathered by
satellites that scoop up the most minute signals on the
ground, listening in on the radio communications throughout
the air, or plugging into the ground-based
telecommunications network, Menwith Hill, alongside its
sister stations at Pine Gap, Australia, and Bad Aibling,
Germany, represents the comprehensive effort of the NSA and
its UKUSA allies to make sure that no communications signal
escapes its electronic net.

The ECHELON Dictionaries

The extraordinary ability of ECHELON to intercept most of
the communications traffic in the world is breathtaking in
its scope. And yet the power of ECHELON resides in its
ability to decrypt, filter, examine and codify these
messages into selective categories for further analysis by
intelligence agents from the various UKUSA agencies. As the
electronic signals are brought into the station, they are
fed through the massive computer systems, such as Menwith
Hill's SILKWORTH, where voice recognition, optical character
recognition (OCR) and data information engines get to work
on the messages.

These programs and computers transcend state-of-the-art; in
many cases, they are well into the future. MAGISTRAND is
part of the Menwith Hill SILKWORTH super-computer system
that drives the powerful keyword search programs.<24> One
tool used to sort through the text of messages, PATHFINDER
(manufactured by the UK company, Memex),<**Be sure to read
footnote for update 25 **> sifts through large databases of
text-based documents and messages looking for keywords and
phrases based on complex algorithmic criteria. Voice
recognition programs convert conversations into text
messages for further analysis. One highly advanced system,
VOICECAST, can target an individual's voice pattern, so that
every call that person makes is transcribed for future
analysis.

Processing millions of messages every hour, the ECHELON
systems churn away 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, looking
for targeted keyword series, phone and fax numbers, and
specified voiceprints. It is important to note that very few
messages and phone calls are actually transcribed and
recorded by the system. The vast majority are filtered out
after they are read or listened to by the system. Only those
messages that produce keyword "hits" are tagged for future
analysis. Again, it is not just the ability to collect the
electronic signals that gives ECHELON its power; it is the
tools and technology that are able to whittle down the
messages to only those that are important to the
intelligence agencies.

Each station maintains a list of keywords (the "Dictionary")
designated by each of the participating intelligence
agencies. A Dictionary Manager from each of the respective
agencies is responsible for adding, deleting or changing the
keyword search criteria for their dictionaries at each of
the stations.<26> Each of these station dictionaries are
given codewords, such as COWBOy for the yakima facility and
FLINTLOCK for the Waihopai facility.<27> These codewords
play a crucial identification role for the analysts who
eventually look at the intercepted messages.

Each message flagged by the ECHELON dictionaries as meeting
the specified criteria is sorted by a four-digit code
representing the source or subject of the message (such as
5535 for Japanese diplomatic traffic, or 8182 for
communications about distribution of encryption
technology,)<28> as well as the date, time and station
codeword. Also included in the message headers are the
codenames for the intended agency: ALPHA-ALPHA (GCHQ),
ECHO-ECHO (DSD), INDIA-INDIA (GCSB), UNIFORM-UNIFORM (CSE),
and OSCAR-OSCAR (NSA). These messages are then transmitted
to each agency's headquarters via a global computer system,
PLATFORM,<29> that acts as the information nervous system
for the UKUSA stations and agencies.

Every day, analysts located at the various intelligence
agencies review the previous day's product. As it is
analyzed, decrypted and translated, it can be compiled into
the different types of analysis: reports, which are direct
and complete translations of intercepted messages; "gists,"
which give basic information on a series of messages within
a given category; and summaries, which are compilations from
both reports and gists.<30> These are then given
classifications: MORAy (secret), SPOKE (more secret than
MORAy), UMBRA (top secret), GAMMA (Russian intercepts) and
DRUID (intelligence forwarded to non-UKUSA parties). This
analysis product is the raison d'tre of the entire ECHELON
system. It is also the lifeblood of the UKUSA alliance.

The Problem

The ECHELON system is the product of the Cold War conflict,
an extended battle replete with heightened tensions that
teetered on the brink of annihilation and the diminished
hostilities of detente and glasnost. Vicious cycles of
mistrust and paranoia between the United States and the
Soviet Empire fed the intelligence agencies to the point
that, with the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe,
the intelligence establishment began to grasp for a mission
that justified its bloated existence.

But the rise of post-modern warfare - terrorism - gave the
establishment all the justification it needed to develop
even greater ability to spy on our enemies, our allies and
our own citizens. ECHELON is the result of those efforts.æ
The satellites that fly thousands of miles overhead and yet
can spy out the most minute details on the ground; the
secret submarines that troll the ocean floors that are able
to tap into undersea communications cables;<31> and all
power the efficient UKUSA signals intelligence machine.

There is a concerted effort by the heads of intelligence
agencies, federal law enforcement officials and
congressional representatives to defend the capabilities of
ECHELON. Their persuasive arguments point to the tragedies
seen in the bombings in Oklahoma City and the World Trade
Center in New york City. The vulnerability of Americans
abroad, as recently seen in the bombing of the American
embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya,
emphasizes the necessity of monitoring those forces around
the world that would use senseless violence and terror as
political weapons against the US and its allies.

Intelligence victories add credibility to the arguments that
defend such a pervasive surveillance system. The discovery
of missile sites in Cuba in 1962, the capture of the Achille
Lauro terrorists in 1995, the discovery of Libyan
involvement in the bombing of a Berlin discotheque that
killed one American (resulting in the 1996 bombing of
Tripoli) and countless other incidents that have been
averted (which are now covered by the silence of
indoctrination vows and top-secret classifications) all
point to the need for comprehensive signals intelligence
gathering for the national security of the United States.

But despite the real threats and dangers to the peace and
protection of American citizens at home and abroad, our
Constitution is quite explicit in limiting the scope and
powers of government. A fundamental foundation of free
societies is that when controversies arise over the
assumption of power by the state, power never defaults to
the government, nor are powers granted without an
extraordinary, explicit and compelling public interest. As
the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan pointed out:

The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and
has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the
visage of overriding importance, there is always a
temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an
encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the
military-security argument must be approached with a healthy
skepticism: Its very gravity counsels that courts be
cautious when military necessity is invoked by the
Government to justify a trespass on [Constitutional]
rights.<32> Despite the necessity of confronting terrorism
and the many benefits that are provided by the massive
surveillance efforts embodied by ECHELON, there is a dark
and dangerous side of these activities that is concealed by
the cloak of secrecy surrounding the intelligence operations
of the United States.

The discovery of domestic surveillance targetting 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 Constitution is regularly
impeded by very elaborate and complex legal arguments and
privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US
government. The guardians and caretakers of our liberties -
our duly elected political representatives - give scarce
attention to the activities, let alone the abuses, that
occur under their watch. As pointed out below, our elected
officials frequently become targets of ECHELON themselves,
chilling any effort to check this unbridled power.

In addition, the shift in priorities resulting from the
demise of the Soviet Empire and the necessity to justify
intelligence capabilities resulted in a redefinition of
"national security interests" to include espionage committed
on behalf of powerful American companies. This quiet
collusion between political and private interests typically
involves the very same companies that are involved in
developing the technology that empowers ECHELON and the
intelligence agencies.

Domestic and Political Spying

When considering the use of ECHELON on American soil, the
pathetic historical record of NSA and CIA domestic
activities in regards to the Constitutional liberties and
privacy rights of American citizens provides an excellent
guidepost for what may occur now with the ECHELON system.
Since the creation of the NSA by President Truman, its
spying capability has frequently been used to monitor the
activities of an unsuspecting public.

Project SHAMROCK

In 1945 Project SHAMROCK was initiated to obtain copies of
all telegraphic information exiting or entering the United
States. With the full cooperation of RCA, ITT and Western
Union (representing almost all of the telegraphic traffic in
the US at the time), the NSA's predecessor and later the NSA
itself wereprovided with daily microfilm copies of all
incoming, outgoing and transiting telegraphs. This system
changed dramatically when the cable companies began
providing magnetic computer tapes to the agency that enabled
the agency to run all the messages through its HARVEST
computer to look for particular keywords, locations, senders
or addressees.

Project SHAMROCK became so successful that the in 1966 NSA
and CIA set up a front company in lower Manhattan (where the
offices of the telegraph companies were located) under the
codename LPMEDLEy. At the height of Project SHAMROCK,
150,000 messages a month were printed and analyzed by NSA
agents.<33>

NSA Director Lew Allen brought Project SHAMROCK to a
crashing halt in May 1975 as congressional critics began to
rip open the program's shroud of secrecy. The testimony of
both the representatives from the cable companies and of
Director Allen at the hearings prompted Senate Intelligence
Committee chairman Sen. Frank Church to conclude that
Project SHAMROCK was "probably the largest government
interception program affecting Americans ever
undertaken."<34>

Project MINARET

A sister project to Project SHAMROCK, Project MINARET
involved the creation of "watch lists" by each of the
intelligence agencies and the FBI of those accused of
"subversive" domestic activities. The watch lists included
such notables as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jane Fonda,
Joan Baez and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

After the Supreme Court handed down its 1972 Keith
decision,<35> which held that -- while the President could
act to protect the country from unlawful and subversive
activity designed to overthrow the government -- that same
power did not extend to include warrantless electronic
surveillance of domestic organizations, pressure came to
bear on Project MINARET.<36> Attorney General Elliot
Petersen shut down Project MINARET as soon as its activities
were revealed to the Justice Department, despite the fact
that the FBI (an agency under the Justice Department's
authority) was actively involved with the NSA and other
intelligence agencies in creating the watch lists.

Operating between 1967 and 1973, over 5,925 foreigners and
1,690 organizations and US citizens were included on the
Project MINARET watch lists. Despite extensive efforts to
conceal the NSA's involvement in Project MINARET, NSA
Director Lew Allen testified before the Senate Intelligence
Committee in 1975 that the NSA had issued over 3,900 reports
on the watch-listed Americans.<37> Additionally, the NSA
Office of Security Services maintained reports on at least
75,000 Americans between 1952 and 1974. This list included
the names of anyone that was mentioned in a NSA message
intercept.

Operation CHAOS

While the NSA was busy snooping on US citizens through
Projects SHAMROCK and MINARET, the CIA got into the domestic
spying act by initiating Operation CHAOS. President Lyndon
Johnson authorized the creation of the CIA's Domestic
Operations Division (DOD), whose purpose was to "exercise
centralized responsibility for direction, support, and
coordination of clandestine operations activities within the
United States."

When Johnson ordered CIA Director John McCone to use the DOD
to analyze the growing college student protests of the
Administration's policy towards Vietnam, two new units were
set up to target anti-war protestors and organizations:
Project RESISTANCE, which worked with college
administrators, campus security and local police to identify
anti-war activists and political dissidents; and Project
MERRIMAC, which monitored any demonstrations being conducted
in the Washington D.C. area. The CIA then began monitoring
student activists and infiltrating anti-war organizations by
working with local police departments to pull off
burglaries, illegal entries (black bag jobs), interrogations
and electronic surveillance.<38>

After President Nixon came to office in 1969, all of these
domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into
Operation CHAOS. After the revelation of two former CIA
agents' involvement in the Watergate break-in, the
publication of an article about CHAOS in the New york
Times<39> and the growing concern about distancing itself
from illegal domestic spying activities, the CIA shut down
Operation CHAOS. But during the life of the project, the
Church Committee and the Commission on CIA Activities Within
the United States (the Rockefeller Commission) revealed that
the CIA had compiled files on over 13,000 individuals,
including 7,000 US citizens and 1,000 domestic
organizations.<40>

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)

In response to the discovery of such a comprehensive effort
by previous administrations and the intelligence agencies,
Congress passed legislation (the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978)<41> that created a top-secret
court to hear applications for electronic surveillance from
the FBI and NSA to provide some check on the domestic
activities of the agencies. In 1995, Congress granted the
court additional power to authorize surreptitious entries.æ
In all of these actions, Congressional intent was to provide
a check on the domestic surveillance abuses mentioned above.

The seven-member court, comprised of federal District Court
judges appointed by the Supreme Court Chief Justice, sits in
secret in a sealed room on the top floor of the Department
of Justice building. Public information about the court's
hearings is scarce; each year the Attorney General is
required by law to transmit to Congress a report detailing
the number of applications each year and the number granted.
With over 10,000 applications submitted to the FISC during
the past twenty years, the court has only rejected one
application (and that rejection was at the request of the
Reagan Administration, which had submitted the application).

While the FISC was established to be the watchdog for the
Constitutional rights of the American people against
domestic surveillance, it quickly became the lap dog of the
intelligence agencies. Surveillance requests that would
never receive a hearing in a state or federal court are
routinely approved by the FISC. This has allowed the FBI to
use the process to conduct surveillance to obtain evidence
in circumvention of the US Constitution, and the evidence is
then used in subsequent criminal trials. But the process
established by Congress and the courts ensures that
information regarding the cause or extent of the
surveillance order is withheld from defense attorneys
because of the classified nature of the court.<42> Despite
Congress's initial intent for the FISC, it is doubtful that
domestic surveillance by means of ECHELON comes under any
scrutiny by the court.

Political Uses of ECHELON and UKUSA

Several incidents of domestic spying involving ECHELON have
emerged from the secrecy of the UKUSA relationship. What
these brief glimpses inside the intelligence world reveal is
that, despite the best of intentions by elected
representatives, presidents and prime ministers, the
temptation to use ECHELON as a tool of political advancement
and repression proves too strong.

Former Canadian spy Mike Frost recounts how former British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made a request in February
1983 to have two ministers from her own government monitored
when she suspected them of disloyalty. In an effort to avoid
the legal difficulties involved with domestic spying on high
governmental officials, the GCHQ liaison in Ottawa made a
request to CSE for them to conduct the three-week-long
surveillance mission at British taxpayer expense. Frost's
CSE boss, Frank Bowman, traveled to London to do the job
himself. After the mission was over, Bowman was instructed
to hand over the tapes to a GCHQ official at their
headquarters.<43>

Using the UKUSA alliance as legal cover is seductively easy.
As Spyworld co-author Michel Gratton puts it,

The Thatcher episode certainly shows that GCHQ, like NSA,
found ways to put itself above the law and did not hesitate
to get directly involved in helping a specific politician
for her personal political benefit. [T]he decision to
proceed with the London caper was probably not put forward
for approval to many people up the bureaucratic ladder. It
was something CSE figured they would get away with easily,
so checking with the higher-ups would only complicate things
unnecessarily.<44> Frost also told of how he was asked in
1975 to spy on an unlikely target - Prime Minster Pierre
Trudeau's wife, Margaret Trudeau. The Royal Canadian Mounted
Police's (RCMP) Security Service division was concerned that
the Prime Minister's wife was buying and using marijuana, so
they contacted the CSE to do the dirty work. Months of
surveillance in cooperation with the Security Service turned
up nothing of note. Frost was concerned that there were
political motivations behind the RCMP's request: "She was in
no way suspected of espionage. Why was the RCMP so adamant
about this? Were they trying to get at Pierre Trudeau for
some reason or just protect him? Or were they working under
orders from their political masters?"<45>

The NSA frequently gets into the political spying act as
well. Nixon presidential aide John Ehrlichman revealed in
his published memoirs, Witness to Power: The Nixon years,
that Henry Kissinger used the NSA to intercept the messages
of then-Secretary of State William P. Rogers, which
Kissinger used to convince President Nixon of Rogers'
incompetence. Kissinger also found himself on the receiving
end of the NSA's global net. Word of Kissinger's secret
diplomatic dealings with foreign governments would reach the
ears of other Nixon administration officials, incensing
Kissinger. As former NSA Deputy Director William Colby
pointed out, "Kissinger would get sore as hellbecause he
wanted to keep it politically secret until it was ready to
launch."<46>

However, elected representatives have also become targets of
spying by the intelligence agencies. In 1988, a former
Lockheed software manager who was responsible for a dozen
VAX computers that powered the ECHELON computers at Menwith
Hill, Margaret Newsham, came forth with the stunning
revelation that she had actually heard the NSA's real time
interception of phone conversations involving South Carolina
Senator Strom Thurmond. Newsham was fired from Lockheed
after she filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the
company was engaged in flagrant waste and abuse. After a top
secret meeting in April 1988 with then-chairman of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Louis
Stokes, Capitol Hill staffers familiar with the meeting
leaked the story to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.<47> While
Sen. Thurmond was reluctant to pressure for a thorough
investigation into the matter, his office revealed at the
time that the office had previously received reports that
the Senator was a target of the NSA.<48> After the news
reports an investigation into the matter discovered that
there were no controls or questioning over who could enter
target names into the Menwith Hill system.<49>

The NSA, under orders from the Reagan administration, also
targeted Maryland Congressman Michael Barnes. Phone calls he
placed to Nicaraguan officials were intercepted and
recorded, including a conversation he had with the Foreign
Minister of Nicaragua protesting the implementation of
martial law in that country. Barnes found out about the
NSA's spying after White House officials leaked transcripts
of his conversations to reporters. CIA Director William
Casey, later implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, showed
Barnes a Nicaraguan embassy cable that reported a meeting
between embassy staff and one of Barnes' aides. The aide had
been there on a professional call regarding an international
affairs issue, and Casey asked for Barnes to fire the aide.
Barnes replied that it was perfectly legal and legitimate
for his staff to meet with foreign diplomats.

Says Barnes, "I was aware that NSA monitored international
calls, that it was a standard part of intelligence
gathering. But to use it for domestic political purposes is
absolutely outrageous and probably illegal."<50> Another
former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has
also expressed his concerns about the NSA's domestic
targeting. "It has always worried me. What if that is used
on American citizens?" queried former Arizona Senator Dennis
DeConcini. "It is chilling. Are they listening to my private
conversations on my telephone?"<51>

Seemingly non-controversial organizations have ended up in
the fixed gaze of ECHELON, as several former GCHQ officials
confidentially told the London Observer in June 1992. Among
the targeted organizations they named were Amnesty
International, Greenpeace and Christian Aid, an American
missions organization that works with indigenous pastors
engaged in ministry work in countries closed to Western,
Christian workers.<52>

In another story published by the London Observer, a former
employee of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, Robin
Robison, admitted that Margaret Thatcher had personally
ordered the communications interception of the parent
company of the Observer, Lonrho, after the Observer had
published a 1989 expose charging bribes had been paid to
Thatcher's son, Mark, in a multi-billion dollar British arms
deal with Saudi Arabia. Despite facing severe penalties for
violating his indoctrination vows, Robison admitted that he
had personally delivered intercepted Lonrho messages to Mrs.
Thatcher's office.<53>

It should hardly be surprising that ECHELON ends up being
used by elected and bureaucratic officials to their
political advantage or by the intelligence agencies
themselves for the purpose of sustaining their privileged
surveillance powers and bloated budgets. The availability of
such invasive technology practically begs for abuse,
although it does not justify its use to those ends. But what
is most frightening is the targeting of such "subversives"
as those who expose corrupt government activity, protect
human rights from government encroachments, challenge
corporate polluters, or promote the gospel of Christ. That
the vast intelligence powers of the United States should be
arrayed against legitimate and peaceful organizations is
demonstrative not of the desire to monitor, but of the
desire to control.

Commercial spying

With the rapid erosion of the Soviet Empire in the early
1990s, Western intelligence agencies were anxious to
redefine their mission to justify the scope of their global
surveillance system. Some of the agencies' closest corporate
friends quickly gave them an option - commercial espionage.
By redefining the term "national security" to include spying
on foreign competitors of prominent US corporations, the
signals intelligence game has gotten ugly. And it very well
may have prompted the recent scrutiny by the European Union
that ECHELON has endured.

While UKUSA agencies have pursued economic and commercial
information on behalf of their countries with renewed vigor
after the passing of communism in Eastern Europe, the NSA
practice of spying on behalf of US companies has a long
history. Gerald Burke, who served as Executive Director of
President Nixon's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, notes
commercial espionage was endorsed by the US government as
early as 1970: "By and large, we recommended that henceforth
economic intelligence be considered a function of the
national security, enjoying a priority equivalent to
diplomatic, military, and technological intelligence."<54>

To accommodate the need for information regarding
international commercial deals, the intelligence agencies
set up a small, unpublicized department within the
Department of Commerce, the Office of Intelligence Liaison.
This office receives intelligence reports from the US
intelligence agencies about pending international deals that
it discreetly forwards to companies that request it or may
have an interest in the information. Immediately after
coming to office in January 1993, President Clinton added to
the corporate espionage machine by creating the National
Economic Council, which feeds intelligence to "select"
companies to enhance US competitiveness. The capabilities of
ECHELON to spy on foreign companies is nothing new, but the
Clinton administration has raised its use to an art:

* In 1990 the German magazine Der Speigel revealed that
the NSA had intercepted messages about an impending $200
million deal between Indonesia and the Japanese satellite
manufacturer NEC Corp. After President Bush intervened in
the negotiations on behalf of American manufacturers, the
contract was split between NEC and AT&T.

* In 1994, the CIA and NSA intercepted phone calls
between Brazilian officials and the French firm Thomson-CSF
about a radar system that the Brazilians wanted to purchase.
A US firm, Raytheon, was a competitor as well, and reports
prepared from intercepts were forwarded to Raytheon.<55>

* In September 1993, President Clinton asked the CIA to
spy on Japanese auto manufacturers that were designing
zero-emission cars and to forward that information to the
Big Three US car manufacturers: Ford, General Motors and
Chrysler.<56> In 1995, the New york Times reported that the
NSA and the CIA's Tokyo station were involved in providing
detailed information to US Trade Representative Mickey
Kantor's team of negotiators in Geneva facing Japanese car
companies in a trade dispute.<57> Recently, a Japanese
newspaper, Mainichi, accused the NSA of continuing to
monitor the communications of Japanese companies on behalf
of American companies.<58>

* Insight Magazine reported in a series of articles in
1997 that President Clinton ordered the NSA and FBI to mount
a massive surveillance operation at the 1993 Asian/Pacific
Economic Conference (APEC) hosted in Seattle. One
intelligence source for the story related that over 300
hotel rooms had been bugged for the event, which was
designed to obtain information regarding oil and
hydro-electric deals pending in Vietnam that were passed on
to high level Democratic Party contributors competing for
the contracts.<59> But foreign companies were not the only
losers: when Vietnam expressed interest in purchasing two
used 737 freighter aircraft from an American businessman,
the deal was scuttled after Commerce Secretary Ron Brown
arranged favorable financing for two new 737s from
Boeing.<60>

But the US is not the only partner of the UKUSA relationship
that engages in such activity. British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher ordered the GCHQ to monitor the activities
of international media mogul Robert Maxwell on behalf of the
Bank of England.<61> Former CSE linguist and analyst Jane
Shorten claimed that she had seen intercepts from Mexican
trade representatives during the 1992-1993 NAFTA trade
negotiations, as well as 1991 South Korean Foreign Ministry
intercepts dealing with the construction of three Canadian
CANDU nuclear reactors for the Koreans in a $6 billion
deal.<62> Shorten's revelation prompted Canadian Deputy
Prime Minister Sheila Copps to launch a probe into the
allegations after the Mexicans lodged a protest.

But every spy agency eventually gets beat at their own game.
Mike Frost relates in Spyworld how an accidental cell phone
intercept in 1981 of the American Ambassador to Canada
discussing a pending grain deal that the US was about to
sign with China provided Canada with the American
negotiating strategy for the deal. The information was used
to outbid the US, resulting in a three year, $2.5 billion
contract for the Canadian Wheat Board. CSE out-spooked the
NSA again a year later when Canada snagged a $50 million
wheat sale to Mexico.<63>

Another disturbing trend regarding the present commercial
use of ECHELON is the incestuous relationship that exists
between the intelligence agencies and the US corporations
that develop the technology that fuels their spy systems.
Many of the companies that receive the most important
commercial intercepts - Lockheed, Boeing, Loral, TRW and
Raytheon - are actively involved in the manufacturing and
operation of many of the spy systems that comprise ECHELON.
The collusion between intelligence agencies and their
contractors is frightening in the chilling effect it has on
creating any foreign or even domestic competition. But just
as important is that it is a gross misuse of
taxpayer-financed resources and an abuse of the intelligence
agencies' capabilities.

The Warning

While the UKUSA relationship is a product of Cold War
political and military tensions, ECHELON is purely a product
of the 20th Century - the century of statism. The modern
drive toward the assumption of state power has turned
legitimate national security agencies and apparati into
pawns in a manipulative game where the stakes are no less
than the survival of the Constitution. The systems developed
prior to ECHELON were designed to confront the expansionist
goals of the Soviet Empire - something the West was forced
out of necessity to do. But as Glyn Ford, European
Parliament representative for Manchester, England, and the
driving force behind the European investigation of ECHELON,
has pointed out: "The difficulty is that the technology has
now become so elaborate that what was originally a small
client list has become the whole world."<64>

What began as a noble alliance to contain and defeat the
forces of communism has turned into a carte blanche to
disregard the rights and liberties of the American people
and the population of the free world. As has been
demonstrated time and again, the NSA has been persistent in
subverting not just the intent of the law in regards to the
prohibition of domestic spying, but the letter as well. The
laws that were created to constrain the intelligence
agencies from infringing on our liberties are frequently
flaunted, re-interpreted and revised according to the
bidding and wishes of political spymasters in Washington
D.C. Old habits die hard, it seems.

As stated above, there is a need for such sophisticated
surveillance technology. Unfortunately, the world is filled
with criminals, drug lords, terrorists and dictators that
threaten the peace and security of many nations. The thought
that ECHELON can be used to eliminate or control these
international thugs is heartening. But defenders of ECHELON
argue that the rare intelligence victories over these forces
of darkness and death give wholesale justification to
indiscriminate surveillance of the entire world and every
member of it. But more complicated issues than that remain.

The shameless and illegal targeting of political opponents,
business competitors, dissidents and even Christian
ministries stands as a testament that if America is to
remain free, we must bind these intelligence systems and
those that operate them with the heavy chains of
transparency and accountability to our elected officials.
But the fact that the ECHELON apparatus can be quickly
turned around on those same officials in order to maintain
some advantage for the intelligence agencies indicates that
these agencies are not presently under the control of our
elected representatives.

That Congress is not aware of or able to curtail these
abuses of power is a frightening harbinger of what may come
here in the United States. The European Parliament has begun
the debate over what ECHELON is, how it is being used and
how free countries should use such a system. Congress should
join that same debate with the understanding that
consequences of ignoring or failing to address these issues
could foster the demise of our republican form of
government. Such is the threat, as Senator Frank Church
warned the American people over twenty years ago.

At the same time, that capability at any time could be
turned around on the American people and no American would
have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor
everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't
matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government
ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in
this country, the technological capacity that the
intelligence community has given the government could enable
it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to
fight back, because the most careful effort to combine
together in resistance to the government, no matter how
privately it was done, is within the reach of the government
to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge.
I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in
America, and we must see to it that this agency and all
agencies that possess this technology operate within the law
and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over
that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no
return.<65>

------------------------------------------------------------

Endnotes

1. Steve Wright, An Appraisal of Technologies of Political
Control, European Parliament: Scientific and Technologies
Options Assessment, Luxembourg, January 6, 1998.

2. Bruno Giussani, "European Study Paints a Chilling
Portrait of Technology's Uses," The New york Times, February
24, 1998.

3. Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton Publishing, 1996.

4. Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson, The Ties That Bind:
Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries,
(Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985) pp. 137-8.

5. Ibid., 142-143.

6. Secret Power, p. 40. See note 3.

7. National Security Agency, About the NSA.

8. The Ties that Bind, p. 143.

9. The coverage area of the various Intelsat satellites can
be found at the Intelsat website at:
http://www.intelsat.com/cmc/connect/globlmap.htm

10. Secret Power, p. 28.

11. Ibid., p. 35.

12. Ibid.

13. Marco Campagna, Un Systeme De Surveillance Mondial,
Cahiers de Television (CTV-France), June 1998; Peter Hum, "I
Spy," The Ottawa Citizen, May 10, 1997.

14. Secret Power, pp. 35-36, 150; Ties That Bind, pp.
204-207.

15. Mike Frost and Michel Graton, Spyworld: How C.S.E. Spies
on Canadians and the World (Toronto: Seal/McClelland-Bantam,
1995), p. 35

16. Robert Windrem, "Spy Satellites Enter New Dimension,"
MSNBC and NBC News, August 8, 1998.

17. An Appraisal of Technology of Political Control, p. 19.

18. Duncan Campbell and Linda Melvern, "America's Big Ear on
Europe," New Statesman, July 18, 1980, pp. 10-14.

19. Simon Davies, "EU Simmers Over Menwith Listening Post,"
London Telegraph, July 16, 1998.

20. Nicholas Rufford, "Spy Station F83," The Sunday (London)
Times, May 31, 1998.

21. Duncan Campell, "Somebody's Listening," The New
Statesman, August 12, 1988, pp. 10-12; "The Hill,"
Dispatches, BBC Channel 4, October 6, 1993 (transcript
provided by Duncan Campbell); Loring Wirbel, "Space -
Intelligence Technology's Embattled Frontier," Electronic
Engineering Times, April 22, 1997; Nicholas Rufford,
"Cracking the Menwith Codes," The Sunday (London) Times, May
31, 1998.

22. Duncan Campbell, BT Condemned for Listing Cables to US
SIGINT Station, September 4, 1997.

23. Ibid.; Spy Station F83.

24. Mentioned in Dispatches: The Hill.

25. An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control, p.
19. Memex maintains a website describing their defense and
intelligence products and contracts:
http://www.memex.co.uk/prod/intelligence/comm.html **UPDATE:
The infromation originally included is incorrect. The
Pathfinder software is manufactured by the US company,
Presearch Inc. (http://www.presearch.com). Memex is the
commercial search engine that acts as the database and
retrieval mechanism. (Email to the author date 12.29.99 from
Pete Graner, Senior Scientist, Information Technology Group,
Presearch Inc.)

26. Secret Power, p. 49.

27. Ibid., pp. 165-166.

28. Ibid., p. 44

29. James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National
Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence
Organization, (New york: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 138-139.

30. Secret Power, p. 45.

31. Ties That Bind, pp. 223-224.

32. Brown v. Glines, 444 U.S. 348 (1980).

33. Puzzle Palace, p. 314, 459.

34. External Collection Program: U.S. Senate, Select
Committee on Intelligence, Supplementary Detailed Staff
Reports on Intelligence and the Rights of Americans, Final
Report, Book III, April 23, 1976, p. 765.

35. United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S.
297 (1972)

36. Puzzle Palace, pp. 370-373.

37. Puzzle Palace, p. 381.

38. Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, et. al., The Lawless
State (Penguin: New york, 1976) p. 146..

39. Seymour Hersh, "Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S.
Against Antiwar Forces," New york Times (December 22, 1974),
p. 1.

40. The Lawless State, p. 153; US Commission on CIA
Activites within the United States, Report to the President
(US Government Printing Office: Washington DC, 1975), p.
144n3.

41. 50 USC Sec. 1801, et. seq.

42. For more information on the FISC, see this author's
essay "Inside America's Secret Court: The Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court," The Privacy Papers, No. 2
(Washington D.C.: Free Congress Foundation, 1998).

43. Spyworld, pp. 234-238.

44. Ibid., p. 238.

45. Ibid., pp. 93-97.

46. Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, "Catching Americans in NSA's
Net," Baltimore Sun, December 12, 1995.

47. Keith C. Epstein and John S. Long, "Security Agency
Accused of Monitoring U.S. Calls," Cleveland Plain Dealer,
July 1, 1988, pp. 1A, 10A.

48. Pete Carey, "NSA Accused of Forbidden Phone Taps," San
Jose Mercury News, July 2, 1988, p. 1A.

49. Somebody's Listening, p. 11.

50. Catching Americans in NSA's Net.

51. Ibid.

52. John Merritt, "UK: GCHQ Spies on Charities and Companies
- Fearful Whistleblowers Tell of Massive Routine Abuse,"
Observer (London), June 18, 1992.

53. Hugh O'Shaughnessy, "Thatcher Ordered Lonrho Phone-Tap
Over Harrods Affairs," Observer (London), June 28, 1992;
cited in Secret Power, p. 54.

54. Dispatches: The Hill, op. cit.

55. Tom Bowman and Scott Shane, "Battling High-Tech
Warriors," Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1995.

56. Robert Dreyfuss, "Company Spies," Mother Jones, May/June
1994.

57. Cited in Bruce Livesey, "Trolling for Secrets: Economic
Espionage is the New Niche for Government Spies," Financial
Post (Canada), February 28, 1998.

58. U.S. Spy Agency Helped U.S. Companies Win Business
Overseas, Nikkei English News, September 21, 1998.

59. Timothy W. Maier, "Did Clinton Bug Conclave for Cash,"
Insight, September 15, 1997. The three article series is
online at:
http://www.insightmag.com/investiga/apecindex.html

60. Timothy W. Maier, "Snoops, Sex and Videotape," Insight,
September 29, 1997.

61. Matthew Fletcher, "Cook Faces Quiz on Big Brother Spy
Net," Financial Mail (England), March 1, 1998.

62. Trolling for Secrets, op. cit.

63. Spyworld, pp. 224-227.

64. Lucille Redmond, "Suddenly There Came a Tapping", The
Sunday Business Post (Ireland), March 9, 1998.

65. National Broadcasting Company, "Meet the Press"
(Washington D.C.: Merkle Press, 1975), transcript of August
17, 1975, p. 6; quoted in Puzzle Palace, p. 477.

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