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The NSA Spy Engine - Echelon
By Jason Leopold
01/09/06 -- "ICH"
-- A clandestine National Security Agency spy program
code-named Echelon was likely responsible for tapping into the
emails, telephone calls and facsimiles of thousands of average
American citizens over the past four years in its effort to identify
people suspected of communicating with al-Qaeda terrorists,
according to half-a-dozen current and former intelligence officials
from the NSA and FBI.
The existence of the program has been known for some time. Echelon
was developed in the 1970s primarily as an American-British
intelligence sharing system to monitor foreigners - specifically,
during the Cold War, to catch Soviet spies. But sources said the
spyware, operated by satellite, is the means by which the NSA
eavesdropped on Americans when President Bush secretly authorized
the agency to do so in 2002.
Another top-secret program code-named Tempest, also operated by
satellite, is capable of reading computer monitors, cash registers
and automatic teller machines from as far away as a half-mile and is
being used to keep a close eye on an untold number of American
citizens, the sources said, pointing to a little known declassified
document that sheds light on the program.
Echelon has been shrouded in secrecy for years. A special report
prepared by the European Parliament in the late 1990s disclosed
explosive details about the covert program when it alleged that
Echelon was being used to spy on two foreign defense contractors -
the European companies Airbus Industrie and Thomson-CSF - as well as
sifting through private emails, industrial files and cell phones of
foreigners.
The program is part of a multinational spy effort that includes
intelligence agencies in Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia,
also known as the Echelon Alliance, which is responsible for
monitoring different parts of the world.
The NSA has never publicly admitted that Echelon exists, but the
program has been identified in declassified government documents.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have long criticized the program
and have, in the past, engaged in fierce debate with the
intelligence community over Echelon because of the ease with which
it can spy on Americans without any oversight from the federal
government.
Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the CSE, the Canadian
equivalent of the National Security Agency, told the news program 60
Minutes in February 2000 how Echelon routinely eavesdrops on many
average people at any given moment and how, depending on what you
say either in an email or over the telephone, you could end up on an
NSA watch list.
"While I was at CSE, a classic example: A lady had been to a school
play the night before, and her son was in the school play and she
thought he did a -- a lousy job. Next morning, she was talking on
the telephone to her friend, and she said to her friend something
like this, 'Oh, Danny really bombed last night,' just like that,"
Frost said. "The computer spit that conversation out. The analyst
that was looking at it was not too sure about what the conversation
was referring to, so erring on the side of caution, he listed that
lady and her phone number in the database as a possible terrorist."
Ironically, during the first Bush administration, a woman named
Margaret Newsham, who worked for Lockheed Martin and was stationed
at the NSA's Menwith Hill listening post in Yorkshire, England, told
Congressional investigators that she had firsthand knowledge that
the NSA was illegally spying on American citizens.
While a Congressional committee did look into Newsham's allegations,
it never published a report. However, a British investigative
reporter named Duncan Campbell got hold of some committee documents
and discovered that Newsham was telling the truth. One of the
documents described a program called "Echelon" that would monitor
and analyze "civilian communications into the 21st century."
As of 2000, sources said, the NSA had Echelon listening posts
located in: Menwith Hill, Britain; Morwenstow, Britain; Bad Aibling,
Germany; Geraldton Station, Australia; Shoal Bay, Australia;
Waihopai, New Zealand; Leitrim, Canada; Misawa, Japan; Yakima Firing
Center, Seattle; Sugar Grove, Virginia.
A January 1, 2001, story in the magazine Popular Mechanics disclosed
details of how Echelon works.
"The electronic signals that Echelon satellites and listening posts
capture are separated into two streams, depending upon whether the
communications are sent with or without encryption," the magazine
reported. "Scrambled signals are converted into their original
language, and then, along with selected "clear" messages, are
checked by a piece of software called Dictionary. There are actually
several localized "dictionaries." The UK version, for example, is
packed with names and slang used by the Irish Republican Army.
Messages with trigger words are dispatched to their respective
agencies."
Electronic signals are captured and analyzed through a series of
supercomputers known as dictionaries, which are programmed to search
through each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases,
and sometimes individual voices. The communication is then sent to
the National Security Agency for review. Some of the more common
sample key words that the NSA flags are: terrorism, plutonium, bomb,
militia, gun, explosives, Iran, Iraq, sources said.
Because Echelon can easily spy on Americans without any oversight or
detection, and because Echelon covers such a wide spectrum of
communication, many current and former NSA officials said that it's
likely the agency used its satellites to target Americans, Mark
Levin, a former chief of staff to Edwin Meese during the Reagan
administration, wrote last month in a blog post on the National
Review Online.
"Under the ECHELON program, the NSA and certain foreign intelligence
agencies throw an extremely wide net over virtually all electronic
communications world-wide. There are no warrants. No probable cause
requirements. No FISA court. And information is intercepted that is
communicated solely between US citizens within the US, which may not
be the purpose of the program but, nonetheless, is a consequence of
the program."
Copyright: Jason Leopold - -
http://www.jasonleopold.com
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