ECHELON : European Union May Investigate U.S.
Global Spy Computer Network
By Daniel Verton and L. Scott Tillett
Federal Computer Week, Nov. 17, 1998
The European Union is considering launching a full-scale
investigation into whether the National Security Agency is
abusing its massive and highly advanced surveillance network
to spy on government and private groups around the world.
NSA's Cold War-vintage global spying system, code-named
Echelon, consists of a worldwide network of clandestine
listening posts capable of intercepting electronic
communications such as e-mail, telephone conversations,
faxes, satellite transmissions, microwave links and
fiber-optic communications traffic, according to a report
commissioned by the Scientific and Technological Options
Committee of the European Parliament, which is the
legislative body of the European Union. A summary of the
report, which briefly discussed Echelon, was published last
month.
"All e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely
intercepted by the [NSA], 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...[United Kingdom],"
according the report, "An Appraisal of the Technologies of
Political Control."
Menwith Hill's Silkworth computer uses voice recognition,
optical character recognition and data information engines
to process the collected electronic signals, and then it
forwards the processed messages to NSA, said Patrick S.
Poole, deputy director of the Center for Technology Policy
at the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, a
Washington, D.C.-based think tank specializing in privacy
issues. "These programs and computers transcend
state-of-the-art, [and] in many cases they are well into the
future," Poole said.
Originally, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed
to use the network to spy on the Soviet Union and communist
states during the Cold War. But Echelon's mission in later
years shifted to tracking terrorists and criminals and other
nonmilitary organizations. Eavesdropping on nonmilitary
groups has European lawmakers and privacy advocates
worldwide concerned that NSA may be abusing its powers.
NSA and U.S. telecommunications companies declined to
comment.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a
London-based civil liberties watchdog organization, said the
original report was only the first of several stages in the
investigation, and the European Parliament is planning to
fund an independent study of Echelon in the coming months.
"There's enough interest [throughout the EU] to warrant a
full-scale specific investigation [of Echelon]," Davies
said.
Despite what Davies described as "an extraordinary amount of
effort being made to silence inquiring minds," the European
Parliament and various privacy advocates also plan to form a
"conference of whistle-blowers" by March 1999 in an effort
to "force these agencies to the table and to account for
themselves," Davies said.
Eduard McVeigh, a spokesman for the European Parliament in
London, said the committee has not yet decided what action
to take in light of the report. "I get the impression they
are not likely to do anything with it until after the
European elections next June," McVeigh said. Still, several
members of parliament felt it was an urgent matter that
requires further investigation, McVeigh said.
Knowledgeable observers of the right-to-privacy debate in
the United States also said there appears to be a direct
correlation between the U.S. government's push for
public-key recovery legislation and project Echelon,
according to Poole. "There are a lot of suspicions," Poole
said.
Allen Thompson, a former CIA analyst and contributor to
studies by the Federation of American Scientists, said there
is a good chance Echelon will backfire in the form of
stronger commercial encryption products, which, "if widely
adopted, can really and truly shut down [communications
intelligence]." According to Thompson, "NSA can't in any
useful way break modern, properly operated crypto-systems,
and it has no prospect of doing so. Hence, the government's
opposition to strong encryption."
The privacy debate surrounding Echelon also has raised
concerns in the United States, Poole said. "Apart from
directing their ears toward terrorists and rogue states,
Echelon also is being used for purposes well outside its
original mission," he said. For example, Poole said, in the
1980s Echelon was used to intercept electronic
communications of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), civilian
political groups in Europe, Amnesty International and
Christian ministries.
"Our case is not that this capability [shouldn't exist], but
that the Fourth Amendment is quite explicit in terms of the
standards the government has to meet," Poole said.
An FBI spokesman confirmed that agency officials have met
with their European law enforcement counterparts to help
them sort through the issues of monitoring criminal
communications in the digital age. In the United States,
officials will apply a relatively new law, the
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA),
to the challenge of monitoring digital communications --
when wiretaps are authorized via court-ordered warrants, the
FBI spokesman said.
The FBI does not plan to share the technical specifications
of digital eavesdropping with the Europeans. Rather, the FBI
plans to share the broad functional requirements, he said.
"We all have the need...to gain access to dial-number
information and call content.... So those requirements have
been shared with our law enforcement counterparts," he said.
"The technical standard that's being developed is one that's
being developed by the industry."
Observers, however, see CALEA requirements and standards as
a potential piece of the Echelon puzzle. "This [Echelon
project] overlaps CALEA," said Barry Steinhardt, president
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is an
overarching project which is organized on a global scale
that appears to be outside any rule of law."
Nicky Hager, the New Zealand-based author of "Secret Power:
New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network" and who
has watched the development of the Echelon project, said
that without detail-level oversight by Congress, "oversight
is useless."
Members of Congress and Capitol Hill staff members familiar
with Echelon could not be reached for comment. Poole said
his organization is approaching the Echelon matter as a
privacy or constitutional issue, not as an intelligence
issue. Privacy advocates Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Bob
Barr (R-Ga.) are among those the Free Congress Foundation is
briefing, Poole said.
However, how much attention the system will get on Capitol
Hill is unclear. "If this were a story about people spying
on the U.S. rather than the U.S. spying on people, then it
would be a big story," Hager said.
"The existence of this program can no longer be dismissed as
the raving of lunatics," Steinhardt said. "That's the
problem with this issue. Up till now, it's been 'X-Files'
stuff. Now you have credible news sources and a credible
report to the EU. I don't think this can any longer be
dismissed as paranoia."