http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/echelon.html

The ECHELON System


     In his article Exposing the Global Surveillance Network in the #59
issue of CovertAction Quarterly
     (European mirror) Nicky Hagar writes:

     "For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the
Government
     Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US
     National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to
spy on
     countries throughout the Pacific region ... The activities they
[Hagar's sources]
     described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some
     alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret
elsewhere. Of
     these, by far the most important is ECHELON. Designed and coordinated
by NSA,
     the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex,
and
     telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications
networks. ... It potentially
     affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within)
countries anywhere in the
     world."

     The ECHELON system was exposed in detail for the first time in 1996 in
Nicky Hagar's book Secret
     Power. In Chapter 3 we read:

     "All the text messages (written communications such as telexes, faxes,
e-mail)
     intercepted at the Waihopai station are fed into these computers. This
is an
     enormous mass of material -- literally all the business, government and
personal
     messages that the station catches. The computers automatically search
through
     everything as it arrives at the station.

     "This is the work of the Dictionary program. It reads every word and
number in
     every single incoming message and picks out all the ones containing
target
     keywords and numbers. Thousands of simultaneous messages are read in
'real
     time' as they pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as
the computer finds intelligence
     needles in the telecommunications haystack."

     And the same is happening at the other satellite tracking stations run
by the NSA -- in Australia
     (Geraldton), England (Morwenstow), the U.S. (Sugar Grove and Yakima)
and other places. The
     spooks have the world covered, and consider themselves free to read
anyone's email that they wish
     to. Should this be allowed to continue?