Wired: Report Downplays Echelon Effect

Fri, 25 May 2001 14:04:49 +0100

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Report Downplays Echelon Effect 
By Declan McCullagh <declan@wired.com>
9:00 a.m. May 24, 2001 PDT 

WASHINGTON -- A global surveillance system known as Echelon does exist and
has the ability to eavesdrop on telephone calls, faxes and e-mail messages,
a European Parliament committee has concluded. 

In a 250KB draft report <http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep.htm>, the committee
said that Echelon -- operated by English-speaking countries including the
United States, Canada and Great Britain -- is designed for intelligence
purposes but that no "substantiated" evidence exists that it has been used
to spy on European firms on behalf of American competitors. 

While impressive, Echelon is not "nearly as extensive" as news reports have
claimed, the 33-member committee
<http://www.europarl.eu.int/tempcom/default_en.htm> concluded, saying the
system continues to rely heavily on satellite and radio intercepts and can
intercept "only a very limited proportion" of the growing amount of
telecommunications traffic that flows through fiber optic and land lines. 

The report, due to be finalized and released in June or July, caps a year
of research that became more politically charged as the group's
investigation progressed. When representatives of the committee traveled to
Washington <http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,43270,00.html> this
month, National Security Agency officials refused to meet with them,
prompting the European Parliament to pass a resolution in protest
<http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,43921,00.html>. 

"The US has arguably aggravated this situation by its treatment of the EU
delegation during its visit," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists <http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html>, which received a
leaked copy (PDF at http://fas.org/irp/program/process/europarl_draft.pdf)
of the report and published it on its website this week. 

"By snubbing them, they basically said, 'You're on your own, go do what
you've got to do, we don't care very much," Aftergood said. "I don't think
that's a constructive posture for the US to have taken." 

Perhaps the most complete description of Echelon comes from Body of Secrets
(Doubleday), a recent book by James Bamford. It says that Echelon is the
name of the software package the NSA created in the 1970s to allow
participating intelligence agencies to dip into the pool of information
gathered from listening posts around the globe. 

Analysts with access to the classified network can use an AltaVista-like
search engine to forward queries through the Echelon system that contain
keywords, names, phrases or telephone numbers, Bamford says. 

Last June, the European parliament created a temporary committee to
investigate how extensive the Echelon system -- operated by the United
States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand -- was, and whether it had been
used to give American firms an advantage in international business
decisions. 

The European Parliament mandate that created the committee
<http://www.europarl.eu.int/tempcom/echelon/en/mandate.htm> asks the group
to consider whether Europeans' privacy rights are being violated, and
"whether European industry is put at risk by the global interception of
communications." 

The committee's draft report, which appears to have been written before the
abortive visit to the United States, says that any European Union country
- -- that is, Great Britain -- using Echelon for corporate espionage would
violate its treaty responsibilities. 

The NSA's general counsel, Robert Deitz, said in 1999
<http://www.politechbot.com/p-00767.html>, "I wish to make clear that the
agency does not violate the Constitution or the laws of the United States.
NSA operates under the eyes of Congress, the executive branch and the
judiciary, and an extensive oversight system regulates and limits its
activities."

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Senior Software Developer / InfoSec Consultant    Wheel: Clerkenwell
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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