[Our Newshawk notes: This is related to the war on drugs because echelon is
the primary system used by the DEA & FBI for surveillance of drug dealers.]

LISTENING IN

The U.S.-led echelon spy network is eavesdropping on the whole world
Talk back! editor@villagevoice.com

Suppose, this past weekend, you sent an e-mail to a friend overseas.
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. 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. There's a chance the government is
listening in on that conversation, too (but only for the purposes of
"training" new eavesdroppers).

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.

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. Government, it doesn't exist.

But according to current and former intelligence officials, espionage
scholars, Australian and British investigative reporters, and a dogged New
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.

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 communiquE9s are sent 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?

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 some
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."

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 of
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 to 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.

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 known 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). Moreover, all the
signatory countries have NSA listening posts within their borders that
operate with little or no input from the local agency.

Like nature, however, journalism abhors a vacuum, and the dearth of easily
accessible data has inspired a cadre of researchers around the world to
monitor the SIGINT community as zealously as possible. It is not, says
David Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an easy
task. Getting raw data is difficult enough. Figuring out what it means even
more so, he says, thanks in part to the otherwise conservative NSA's very
liberal use of code names--many of which regularly change--for everything
from devices to operations. One that appears to have remained constant,
however, is ECHELON.

In 1988, Margaret Newsham, a contract employee from Lockheed posted at
Menwith Hill, the NSA's enormous listening post in Yorkshire, England,
filed a whistleblower suit against Lockheed, charging the company with
waste and mismanagement (the case is currently being appealed after an
initial dismissal). At the same time, Newsham told Congressional
investigators that she had knowledge of illegal eavesdropping on American
citizens by NSA personnel. While a committee began investigating, it never
released a report. Nonetheless, British investigative reporter Duncan
Campbell managed to get hold of some of the committee's findings, including
a slew of Menwith Hill operations. Among them was a project described as
the latest installment of a system code named ECHELON that would enable the
five SIGINT agencies "to monitor and analyze civilian communications into
the 21st century."

To SIGINT watchers, the concept wasn't unfamiliar. In the early '80s, while
working on his celebrated study of the NSA, The Puzzle Palace, James
Bamford discovered that the agency was developing a system called PLATFORM,
which would integrate at least 52 separate SIGINT agency computer systems
into one central network run out of Fort Meade, Maryland. Then in 1991, an
anonymous British SIGINT officer told the TV media about an ongoing
operation that intercepted civilian telexes and ran them through computers
loaded with a program called "the Dictionary"--a description that jibed
with both Bamford and Campbell's gleanings.

In 1996, however, intelligence watchdogs and scholars got an avalanche of
answers about ECHELON, upon the publication of Secret Power: New Zealand's
Role in the International Spy Network,written by Nicky Hager. A New Zealand
activist turned investigative author, Hager spent 12 years digging into the
ties between his country's SIGINT agency, the Government Communications
Security Bureau (GCSB), and the NSA. Utilizing leaked material and scores
of interviews with GCSB officers, Hager not only presented a revealing look
at the previously unknown machinations of the GCSB (even New Zealand's
Prime Minister was kept in the dark about its full scope) but also produced
a highly detailed description of ECHELON.

According to Hager's information--which leading SIGINT scholar and National
Security Archive analyst Jeffrey Richelson calls "excellent"--ECHELON
functions as a real-time intercept and processing operation geared toward
civilian communications. Its first component targets international phone
company telecommunications satellites (or Intelsats) from a series of five
ground intercept stations located at Yakima, Washington; Sugar Grove, West
Virginia; Morwenstow in Cornwall, England; Waihopai, New Zealand; and
Geraldton, Australia.

The next component targets other civilian communications satellites, from a
similar array of bases, while the final group of facilities intercept
international communications as they're relayed from undersea cables to
microwave transmitters. According to Hager's sources, each country devises
categories of intercept interest. Then a list of key words or phrases
(anything from personal, business, and organization names to e-mail
addresses to phone and fax numbers) is devised for each category. The
categories and keywords are entered by each country into its "Dictionary"
computer, which, after recognizing keywords, intercepts full transmissions,
and sends them to the terminals of analysts in each of the UKUSA countries.

To the layperson, ECHELON may sound like something out of the X-Files. But
the National Security Archives's Richelson and others maintain that not
only is this not the stuff of science fiction, but is, in some respects,
old hat. More than 20 years ago, then CIA director William Colby
matter-of-factly told congressional investigators that the NSA monitored
every overseas call made from the United States. Two years ago, British
Telecom accidentally disclosed in a court case that it had provided the
Menwith Hill station with equipment potentially allowing it access to
hundreds of thousands of European calls a day. "Let me put it this way,"
says a former NSA officer. "Consider that anyone can type a keyword into a
Net search engine and get back tens of thousands of hits in a few seconds."
A pause. "Assume that people working on the outer edges have capabilities
far in excess of what you do."

Since earlier this year, ECHELON has caused something of a panic in Europe,
following the disclosure of an official European Parliament report entitled
"In Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control." While the report did
draw needed attention to ECHELON, it--and subsequent European press
coverage--says Richelson, "built ECHELON up into some super-elaborate
system that can listen in on everyone at any time, which goes beyond what
Nicky Hager wrote." Richelson, along with other SIGINT experts, emphasizes
that, despite ECHELON's apparent considerable capabilities, it isn't
omniscient.

EPIC's David Banisar points out that despite the high volume of
communications signals relayed by satellite and microwave, a great many
fiber-optic communications--both local and domestic long distance--can't be
intercepted without a direct wiretap. And, adds Canadian ex-spook Mike
Frost, there's a real problem sorting and reading all the data; while
ECHELON can potentially intercept millions of communications, there simply
aren't enough analysts to sort through everything. "Personally, I'm not
losing any sleep over this," says Richelson, "because most of the stuff
probably sits stored and unused at [NSA headquarters in] Fort Meade."

Richelson's position is echoed by some in the intelligence business ("Sure,
there's potential for abuse," says one insider, "but who would you rather
have this--us or Saddam Hussein?"). But others don't take such a benign
view. "ECHELON has a huge potential for violating privacy and for abuses of
democracy," says Hager. "Because it's so powerful and its operations are so
secret that there are no real constraints on agencies using it against any
target the government chooses. The excessive secrecy built up in the Cold
War removes any threat of accountability."

The only time the public gets anything resembling oversight, Hager
contends, is when intelligence officials have a crisis of conscience, as
several British spooks did in 1992. In a statement to the London Observer,
the spies said they felt they could "no longer remain silent regarding that
which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the
establishment we operate"--the establishment in question being the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's version of the
NSA. The operatives said that an intercept system based on keyword
recognition (sound familiar?) was routinely targeting the communications of
Amnesty International and Christian Aid.

Adds Hager, "The use of intelligence services in these cases had nothing to
do with national security, but everything to do with keeping tabs on
critics. The British government frequently finds itself in political
conflict with Amnesty over countries it is supplying arms to or governments
with bad human rights records. ECHELON provides the government with a way
to gain advantage over Amnesty by eavesdropping on their operations."

Hager and others also argue that potential for abuse lies in the
hierarchical and reciprocal nature of the UKUSA alliance. According to data
gathered by congressional committees in the '70s, and accounts of former
SIGINT officers like Frost, UKUSA partners have, from time to time, used
each other to circumvent prohibitions on spying on their own citizens.
Frost, for example, directed Canadian eavesdropping operations against both
Americans and Britons--at the request of both countries' intelligence
services, to whom the surveillance data was subsequently passed.

And British Members of Parliament have raised concerns for years about the
lack of oversight at the NSA's Menwith Hill facility--a base on British
soil with access to British communications yet run by the NSA, which works
closely with the GCHQ. "Given that both the U.S. and Britain turn their
electronic spying systems against many other friendly and allied nations,"
says Hager, "the British would be naive not to assume it is happening to
them."

David Banisar, the electronic privacy advocate, says that apparently just
asking about ECHELON, or mentioning anything like it, is considered
unreasonable. Since earlier this year, Banisar has been trying to get
information on ECHELON from the NSA under the Freedom of Information Act.
"They're not exactly forthcoming," he says, explaining that he only
recently got a response in which he was in effect told the European
Parliament report "didn't provide enough information" for the NSA to locate
the requested information. However, Wayne Madsen, co-author with Bamford of
the most recent edition of The Puzzle Palace, was more directly discouraged
from investigating ECHELON's possibly dubious applications, as the
following story makes clear.

On April 21, 1996, Chechnyen rebel leader Dzokhar Dudayev was killed when a
Russian fighter fired two missiles into his headquarters. At the time of
the attack, Dudayev had been talking on his cellular phone to Russian
officials in Moscow about possible peace negotiations. According to
electronics experts, getting a lock on Dudayev's cell phone signal would
not have been difficult, but as Martin Streetly, editor of Jane's Radar and
Electronic Warfare Systems, noted at the time, the Russian military was so
under-equipped and poorly maintained, it was doubtful a radar intercept
plane could have honed in on the signal without help.

Speaking at a conference on Information Warfare a month later, Madsen, one
of the world's leading SIGINT and computer security experts, explained that
it was both politically and technically possible that the NSA helped the
Russians kill Dudayev. Noting the West's interest in preserving the Yeltsin
presidency and in ensuring the safety of an oil consortium's pipeline
running through Chechnya, Madsen explained which NSA satellites could have
been used to intercept Dudayev's call and directionally locate its signal.

This wasn't exactly a stunning revelation: Not only had reports recently
been released in Australia and Switzerland about police tracking suspects
by their cell phone signatures, but Reuters and Agence France-Press had
written about the Dudayev scenario as technically plausible. Still, after
his talk, Madsen was approached by an Air Force officer assigned to the
NSA, who tore into him. "Don't you realize that we have people on the
ground over there?" Madsen recalled the officer seething. "You're talking
about things that could put them in harm's way." Asks Madsen, "If this was
how Dudayev died, do you think it's unreasonable the American people know
about the technical aspects behind this kind of diplomacy?"

Nicky Hager says that the New Zealand intelligence officers who talked to
him did so out of a growing disillusionment with the importance to New
Zealand of access to ECHELON information. In some cases, they said, they
had been so busy listening in on targets of interest to other countries,
they altogether missed opportunities to gather intelligence in New
Zealand's national interest. Ross Coulthart, an investigative reporter with
Australia's Nine Network, says intelligence sources of his have reported
similar feelings. "In the UKUSA intelligence community, there appear,
roughly, to be two camps: those who believe that it's best to fall in line
behind the U.S., because the U.S. has acted as protector and funder and
gives us resources and limited participation in a system we couldn't
support ourselves, and those who think the whole thing is somewhat
overrated and sometimes contrary to national interests."

In 1995, for example, Australian intelligence officials leaked a story to
the Australian Broadcasting Company that was, at first blush, damaging to
themselves: Australian intelligence had bugged the Chinese Embassy in
Canberra. However, the Australians had no access to the actual
transmissions; they had merely planted the bugs at the behest of the NSA,
which was getting the raw feed. "Given that both Australian and American
companies were bidding for Chinese wheat contracts at the time," says
Coulthart, "it didn't seem like Australia was getting anything out of this
arrangement, so they put the story out there."

Indeed, says York University's Whittaker, "there's a really important
degree of [economic] tension that wasn't there during the Cold War. On the
other hand, most of the threats perceived as common and
borderless--terrorism, nuclear proliferation, weapons of mass destruction,
and global crime--inspire more cooperation between the UKUSA partners."
Hager thinks such cooperation is certainly merited, but what ECHELON to
some extent reflects, he believes, is the continued erosion of civil
liberties and the notion of sovereignty in the name of security. "Some
people I interviewed told me repeatedly, 'It's a good thing for us to be
part of this strong alliance,' " he says. "What it amounts to, in the end,
is an argument for being a cog in a big intelligence machine."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski