Jason Leopold | The NSA Spy Engine: Echelon

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Jason Leopold | The NSA Spy Engine: Echelon

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 14:00:42 -0800

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010806A.shtml

 

The NSA Spy Engine: Echelon

By Jason Leopold

t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

 

Monday 09 January 2006

 

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. "

 

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity

crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has

spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak

investigation, and is a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

 

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