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The Echelon System is Operated as Part of the US-UK Security Agreement.

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The Echelon system is operated as part of the US-UK Security Agreement.

Five different states were a part of the agreement which created this system; they are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United kingdom, and the United States or simply AUSCANZUKUS.

The exact political and intelligence capabilities of the system are somewhat unclear.

The European Parliament commissioned a study in 2000, publishing its findings in 2001.

A subsequent investigation led to information on the system being published in a book on the NSA by James Bradford in 2002.

From what the investigations were able to gather, the Echelon system is a signal intelligence communications gathering system.

What it does is intercept communications via phone or fax or any other kind of global communications system including public phone calls as well as any sort of satellite transmissions beamed into space.

The idea was to set up some sort of international communication intercept system by building and maintaining intercept stations at the points were fiber optic communications are more likely to change in order to monitor communication traffic worldwide..

To do this legally there had to be an agreement set up between the states in which the stations would be constructed.

Creating a worldwide surveillance system was easier in cases in the past where the majority of internet traffic was routed through the United States (which is no longer the case).

Just what capabilities this system actually has is not known.

Reportedly all the Echelon system can do is intercept satellite communication, however, there is no actual evidence to indicate that that is it or that it cannot do more.

Not knowing what the system is exactly capable of makes it easy fodder for the minds of conspiracy theorists and the paranoid.

Whether or not the world will ever remains to be seen.

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Big Brother?

Created back when the Russians and other nations in the Eastern Block were deemed to be the next security threat, the system has grown to assist in discovering terrorists plots, drug information as well as political and diplomatic data.

Since the actual reach of the system is not well known it is also suspected of being used to commit such acts as commercial theft, invasion of privacy, and economic espionage.

Partnered in the venture, New Zealand accused the United States of committing industrial espionage in the 1990s stealing designs such as the gear-less wind turbine developed by a German manufacturer.

To discourage these claims the European parliament encourages those concerned to use a form of cryptography in their messages; the U.S. takes a different approach stating that legislation prohibits the use of international communications in a commercial manner, but does not mention how they are used a general source of intelligence.

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What’s in a Name?

Perhaps most interesting about the system is the relative level of security that has been maintained for as long as it has been around.

The agreement came about during the Cold War in order to keep an eye on Russia.

Decades later, the most journalists seem to be able to come up with is verification of the name- the Echelon system.

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