On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 18:05:06 GMT, sparkling pebbles <non@nospam.com> wrote:

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?