Lid lifted on global spy network
By Sean Healy
A report by a committee of the European Union (EU) has revealed, in the greatest detail yet, how governments of the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada maintain a global surveillance network capable of spying on every single person in the world.
The centrepiece of the network is a system called Echelon, a world system of spy satellites and ground bases established in the 1970s and massively expanded since 1985.
According to Duncan Campbell, the investigative journalist who researched the EU report "Interception Capabilities 2000", Echelon encompasses 120 satellite systems in simultaneous operation and reads "billions of messages per hour".
Its job is to intercept all microwave radio signals, such as those used in satellite communications and terrestrial microwave radio relay links, which account for the bulk of international telecommunications.
Most of its bases are in the northern hemisphere: at Morwenstow, in Cornwall, England; Yakima, on the US west coast; Sugar Grove, Virginia; Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico; and Leitrim, Ontario in Canada. They concentrate on communications between the US and Europe, and the US and Asia.
There are also two Echelon bases in the southern hemisphere. One at Kojarena, Western Australia, which intercepts communications in Asia, and at Waihopai, on New Zealand's South Island, which monitors the South Pacific.
Once intercepted, the data is filtered, sorted, analysed, stored and disseminated. A computer program, called Dictionary, allows those with access to the highly secure Echelon communications network to search the stored data for key-words, places, names, dates of transmission.
According to the EU report, Echelon does not yet have the capability to filter voice transmissions for particular key-words, as has been reported. However, it can monitor any given voice transmission (say, all those from a particular telephone) and can also use "voice-scan" technology to search for transmissions by particular persons, wherever they are.
Secret agreement
The Echelon system operates under the highly secretive UKUSA agreement, which the five countries signed in 1947. Governments denied UKUSA existed until March, 1999, when a representative of the Australian government's Defence Signals Directorate admitted that it "does co-operate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship".
The UKUSA pact's ostensible target was the Soviet Union until the latter's collapse in 1991. Its focus has shifted to other states, particularly in the Middle East, and to economic espionage against other Western countries. The report also alleges that domestic political opponents have also been a target.
UKUSA's heavyweight is the US National Security Agency (NSA), based at Fort Mead, Maryland. The NSA is the world's largest intelligence organisation in personnel and resources. It is also one of the world's most secret; even its charter and official responsibilities are classified.
The report also details the ways in which these agencies intercept communications intelligence ("comint"), including those which do not use satellite or radio technology.
Since 1945, the NSA has systematically obtained access to telecommunications travelling via cable simply by approaching the offices of the major cable companies. This has included both domestic and international (particularly trans-Atlantic) cable transmissions. If a cable passes through a UKUSA member-state, it can be easily monitored.
Even submarine cables between countries which are not member-states of UKUSA can be monitored. Since 1971, US submarines have placed monitoring devices on submarine cables. The US Navy even has a submarine, USS Parche, dedicated full-time to the task.
Monitoring the internet
The report details how the UKUSA agencies monitor transmissions on the internet. Any internet transmission which passes through the US, and most do, can be intercepted.
Internet traffic can be monitored either as it enters a UKUSA country or at major internet exchanges. The report alleges that by 1995, special "sniffer" software had been installed at nine major internet exchange points.
The NSA has even colluded with information technology manufacturers to allow monitoring of information. Microsoft, Lotus, Netscape and a "leading US internet and telecommunications company" are all named as having either been contracted by the NSA to develop software for them or as having willingly modified their products sold outside the US to permit NSA access.
The report proves that the US government's desire to modify computer cryptography programs to ensure "back door" access to messages was not motivated by "law enforcement needs", as claimed. Rather, the US was afraid that strong cryptography would damage the ability of the NSA to spy on internet communications.
Commercial espionage
The section of the report which has provoked the most outrage in the EU is that which documents UKUSA's comint operations against European companies. The report lists several cases in which sensitive information about commercial deals involving European firms was handed on to US competitors.
In 1994, for example, the NSA intercepted phone calls between the French firm Thomson-CSF and the Brazilian government concerning SIVAM, a planned $1.3 billion surveillance system for the Amazon rainforest. The company was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection panel. This information was passed on to Thomson-CSF's competitor, the US-based Raytheon Corporation, which used it to ensure they were awarded the contract.
Trade negotiations are also a target for comint surveillance. The EU report claims that the US was alerted to the French government's negotiating positions in the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1993 and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference of 1997.
While European government representatives, and especially the French, were furious, the US denied any involvement. "US intelligence agencies are not tasked to engage in industrial espionage or obtain trade secrets for the benefit of any US company or companies", US State Department spokesperson James Rubin said.
"There is no evidence that companies in any of the UKUSA countries are able to task Comint collection to suit their private purposes. They do not have to. The decision as to whether [all the many forms of economic-related data which are collected] should be disseminated or exploited is not taken by Comint agencies but by national government organisation(s)", the report points out.
Spooks spooked
The spy agencies are not having it all their own way, the report notes: "In the past 15 years, the substantial technological lead in computers and information technology once enjoyed by Comint organisations has all but disappeared".
The development of strong cryptography has been one long-resisted threat to comint operations; the shift to high capacity optical fibre networks is another. Optical fibres do not give off radiation which can be read like other cables. This will mean that spy agencies will need to gain physical access to optical fibre transmissions, access which is limited to the agencies' home countries.
Some new mobile phone technology also make comint's task more difficult. For example, networks like that of Iridium work on radio signals which are very hard to eavesdrop on.
According to the report, John Millis, the head of staff of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, recently told CIA veterans: "Signals intelligence is in a crisis ... In the past, technology has been the friend of the NSA, but in the last four or five years, technology has moved from being the friend to being the enemy of Sigint.
"Encryption is here and it's going to grow very rapidly. That is bad news for Sigint ... It is going to take a huge amount of money invested in new technologies to get access and to be able to break out the information that we still need to get."
The spy agencies seem determined to do just that. But they can only do so if their plans remain hidden from public view. They cannot be happy that secrecy has become that little bit harder.
[Visit <http://www.echelonwatch.org>.