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What Echelon and the NSA are Doing May Come as a Surprise.

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What Echelon and the NSA are doing may come as a surprise.

Echelon is a program run in conjunction with the governments in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom were the majority of the world’s electronic communications are monitored and filtered for intelligence purposes.

In this modern era, communications are often moving through open air as sound/ radio waves and easy to intercept.

Just about all telephone, internet, fax, and satellite communications are capable of being tapped by this program.

However, many Americans are concerned about possible civil rights violations, specifically that of the right to privacy.

While quite capable of doing so, Echelon and the NSA are legally bound to concentrate on international/ foreign related communications; nothing that is strictly domestic.

However, there are waivers that can be procured through the Attorney General or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court depending on where the subject is located (within or outside of U.S. borders).

There are certain conditions where surveillance of domestic communications is allowed such as with disaster situations like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina; many of the restrictions have been loosened or stretched to the limits by the Patriot Act.

Further criticism is laid out against the program by nations not participating claiming that it is being used for economic and political purposes.

After the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA had stated that Airbus Officials had been bribing Saudi Arabian officials in order to secure the contract that contract was lost.

If this is being done it would be in strict violation of the NSA charter as well as the presidential directive since the NSA and Echelon is designated to only gather intelligence as it pertains to national security matters.

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You Scratch my Back and I will Scratch Yours

There could very well be a loop hole in the law which would give the United States free access to U.S. domestic communications.

The NSA and Echelon are forbidden from monitoring U.S. communications, but what is to say that one of the other states involved, say the United Kingdom, is not doing it for us?

After all, as far as the British are concerned, U.S. communications would be foreign communications.

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Secret Power

In 1996, the Echelon system was exposed for the first time in the media by author Nicky Hagar in his book Secret Power.

At that time for over forty years there had been an agreement between five different nations to effectively monitor communications worldwide.

One has to wonder how this brain child of the U.S. managed to operate for so long, especially during the height of the Cold War, without becoming public knowledge.

With Echelon and the NSA able to keep this operation secret for so long there is no telling how much this program has uncovered over the years.

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