From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:58:47 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Original Sources for Echelon
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19980303200229.010ba928@pop.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Duncan Campbell has posted the message below on Echelon. 
Would anyone happen to have a copy of the 1988 New Statesman
article? If not, I'll dig it out of a library. More importantly, as 
Duncan asks, does anyone know of other original info on Echelon?

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Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 23:35:59
To: ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk
From: Duncan Campbell <duncan@gn.apc.org>
Subject: Original sources regarding the ECHELON sigint network

>>The New York times has recently run a story regarding a "telecommunications
>>interception network" operating in Europe.
>>My recollection is that news broke about this some time last year, thanks
>>to revelations in New Zealand. Sorry, I don't have a good reference to
>> hand.


The original and primary source for information on ECHELON is an article I
wrote in New Statesman magazine ten years ago : NS, 12 August 1988 :
"They've got it taped".  

In 1991, a UK World in Action programme added an important new detail about
the network, namely the presence of a DICTIONARY computer (a key part of
the system) at  GCHQ's processing centre in Westminster.  

In 1993, I produced a documentary for Channel 4 - "The Hill" which related
ECHELON to the work of the Menwith Hill NSA field station near Harrogate in
Yorkshire.  

In 1996, Nicky Hager in New Zealand described in his book "Secret Power"
the presence of DICTIONARY computers at two New Zealand sigint stations,
and gave extensive details of the local programming and tasking of the
ECHELON "dictionaries".  

Apart from these sources, so far as I am aware all the reports that are
around are derivative and reprocessed.  The European Parliament STOA
committee report from the "Omega Foundation" is in this category and was in
fact submitted rather more than a year ago.  If anyone is aware of any
other *original* publication on this topic, could they post it. The arrival
in the public domain of original information in this area is a rarity, yet
is the foundation for the only things we "know" about the scale of NSA/GCHQ
surveillance and processing. 

Duncan Campbell