From: "Ric V. Carvalho" <gandalf@waverly.net>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 21:13:54 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: ECHELON  SYSTEM
Message-ID: <l03130303b1fe69885b35@[204.17.209.169]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Thought you all might be interested in seeing this.
-R

http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/news/33vest.shtml


Listening In

Suppose, this past weekend, you sent an e-mail to a friend overseas.=20
There's a reasonable possibility your communication was intercepted by a
global surveillance system--especially if you happened to discuss last
week's bombings in East Africa.=20

Or suppose you're stuck in traffic and in your road rage you whip out a
cell phone and angrily call your congressman's office in Washington.=20
There's a chance the government is listening in on that conversation, too
(but only for the purposes of "training" new eavesdroppers).=20

Or suppose you're on a foreign trip--vacation, business, relief work--and
you send off a fax to some folks that Washington doesn't view too keenly.
Your message could be taken down and analyzed by the very same system.=20

That system is called ECHELON and it is controlled by the U.S. National
Security Agency (NSA). In America, it is the Intelligence Network That
Dare Not Be Acknowledged. Questions about it at Defense Department
briefings are deftly deflected.  Requests for information about it under
the Freedom of Information Act linger in bureaucratic limbo.  Researchers
who mention possible uses of it in the presence of intelligence officials
are castigated. Members of Congress--theoretically, the people's
representatives who provide oversight of the intelligence
community--betray no interest in helping anyone find out anything about
it. Media outlets (save the award-winning but low-circulation Covert
Action Quarterly) ignore it.  In the official view of the U.S.=20
Government, it doesn't exist.=20

But according to current and former intelligence officials, espionage
scholars, Australian and British investigative reporters, and a dogged Ne=
w
Zealand researcher, it is all too real. Indeed, a soon-to-be finalized
European Parliament report on ECHELON has created quite a stir on the
other side of the Atlantic.  The report's revelations are so serious that
it strongly recommends an intensive investigation of NSA operations.=20

The facts drawn out by these sources reveal ECHELON as a powerful
electronic net--a net that snags from the millions of phone, fax, and
modem signals traversing the globe at any moment selected communications
of interest to a five-nation intelligence alliance.  Once intercepted
(based on the use of key words in exchanges), those communiqu=E9s are sen=
t
in real time to a central computer system run by the NSA; round-the-clock
shifts of American, British, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand
analysts pour over them in search of . . .  what?=20

Originally a Cold War tool aimed at the Soviets, ECHELON has been
redirected at civilian targetsworldwide. In fact, as the European
Parliament report noted, political advocacy groups like Amnesty
International and Greenpeace were amongst ECHELON's targets. The system's
awesome potential (and potential for abuse) has spurred some traditional
watchdogs to delve deep in search of its secrets, and even prompted some
of its minders within the intelligence community to come forward. "In som=
e
ways," says Reg Whittaker, a professor and intelligence scholar at
Canada's York University, "it's probably the most useful means of getting
at the Cold War intelligence-sharing relationship that still continues."=20

While the Central Intelligence Agency--responsible for covert operations
and human-gathered intelligence, or HUMINT--is the spy agency most people
think of, the NSA is, in many respects, the more powerful and important o=
f
the U.S.  intelligence organizations. Though its most egregious excesses
of 20 years ago are believed to have been curbed, in addition to
monitoring all foreign communications, it still has the legal authority t=
o
intercept any communication that begins or ends in the U.S., as well as
use American citizens' private communications as fodder for trainee spies.
Charged with the gathering of signals intelligence, or SIGINT--which
encompasses all electronic communications transmissions--the NSA is
larger, better funded, and infinitely more secretive than the CIA. Indeed=
,
the key document that articulates its international role has never seen
the light of day.=20

That document, known as the UKUSA Agreement, forged an alliance in 1948
among five countries--the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, and New
Zealand--to geographically divvy up SIGINT-gathering responsibilities,
with the U.S. as director and main underwriter. Like the NSA--hardly know=
n
until the Pike and Church congressional investigations of the '70s--the
other four countries' SIGINT agencies remain largely unknown and
practically free of public oversight. While other member nations conduct
their own operations, there has "never been any misunderstanding that
we're NSA subsidiaries," according to Mike Frost, an ex-officer in
Canada's SIGINT service, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).=
=20
Moreover, all the signatory countries have NSA listening posts within
their borders that operate with little or no input from the local agency.=
=20

[snip... please see URL for rest of article.]

-o-
Subscribe: mail majordomo@sekurity.org with "subscribe isn".
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply From: Simon Johnson <simon.johnson@shake.net>

Hello All,

For those that are interested in Echelon. (oops I've said the "E" word) I
would recommend the following book:

Title: Secret Power - "New Zealand's Role In The International Spy Network"
Author: Nicky Hager
Publisher: Craig Potton Publishing
ISBN: 0-908802-35-8

It was this book that made the Echelon system public knowledge.

Press Release:

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/sp_p.htm

More Information:

http://www.hamradio-online.com/1996/dec/echelon.html
http://www.saar.de/~bong/archiv/echelon.html


Hope all this helps.


Best regards,

Simon Johnson
Technical Director
Shake Communications
Experts in Internet and Information Security
http://www.shake.net
-------------------------MESSAGE SEPARATOR-----------------------------
Don't be alarmed, this is only bait for eavesdropping government computers
at NSA Inc., CIA Inc. and FBI Inc. Pirates, Privateers and Brigands that
they are!!!!
Their computers are keyed to trigger on such words and copy the suspect
communications to their system.  If enough people would do this, we could
bog their system down and thus hopefully prove to them how fruitless and
immoral this whole thing is.

Your right to privacy in personal communications does matter!  Do something
about it!

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----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
A Republic: The flock gets to vote for which wolves vote on dinner.
A Constitutional Republic:  Voting on dinner is expressly forbidden, and the
sheep are armed.
Federal Government: The means by which the sheep will be fooled into voting
for a Democracy...