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There are 50 different meanings of Echelon.
 
Iran
13 products, approx. 188 pages
Kabkan (Iran - US) - closed in 1979 Morocco
1 product, approx. 166 pages
Morocco summary and related information. Morocco
6 products, approx. 91 pages
Sidi Yahia central Morocco - closed 1976 Privacy
11 products, approx. 49 pages
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differs between cultures and individuals, but shares basic... Puerto Rico
5 products, approx. 39 pages
Sabana Seca (Puerto Rico - US) COINTELPRO
1 product, approx. 11 pages
COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed... Counterintelligence Field Activity
1 product, approx. 5 pages
Counterintelligence Field Activity is a US Department of Defense (DoD) agency that has legal authority to spy on Americans. Baltimore Sun
2 products, approx. 3 pages
According to its web site the US NSA is "a high technology organization, ... on the frontiers of communications and data processing." In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported that the NSA was at risk of electrical overload, because of insufficient internal electrical infrastructure at Fort Meade to support the amount of computer equipment being installed.[18] While there are occasional stories speculating on the types of computers involved,[19] Jonathan Meier, in his biography, has stated of his time at the NSA that: Policeware
1 product, approx. 1 pages
Policeware is software designed to police citizens by monitoring discussion and interaction of its citizens. Within the U.S., Carnivore was a first incarnation of secretly installed e-mail monitoring software installed in Internet service providers'... Frenchelon
1 product, approx. 1 pages
Frenchelon is the nickname given to French signal intelligence system in reference to its Anglo-Saxon counterpart... GCSB Waihopai
1 product, approx. 1 pages
GCSB Waihopai (New Zealand) ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA agreement; Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, known as AUSCANZUKUS. [1] The system has been reported in a number of public sources, first in a New Statesman article titled Someone's Listening in 1988. Its capabilities and political implications were later investigated by a committee of the European Parliament published in 2001. [2] In its report, the European Parliament states that the term ECHELON is used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicates that it was the name for a signals intelligence collection system. The report concludes that, on the basis of evidence presented, ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks and microwave links. The committee further concluded that "the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had assumed". [2] The ability to intercept communications depends on the medium used, be it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fiber-optic (STOA report p. 30 ff) During World War II and through the 1950s, high frequency ("short wave") radio was widely used for military and diplomatic communication ( The Codebreakers, Ch. 10, 11), and could be intercepted at great distances (STOA report p. 33). The rise of geostationary communications satellites in the 1960s presented new possibilities for intercepting international communications. The STOA report states (p. 34) "If UKUSA states operate listening stations in the relevant regions of the earth, in principle they can intercept all telephone, fax and data traffic transmitted via such satellites." Many, if not most reports on ECHELON focus on satellite interception. (e.g. [3]) The role of satellites in point-to-point voice and data communications has largely been supplanted by fiber optics. As of 2006, 99 percent of the world's long-distance voice and data traffic is carried over optical-fiber cables. [4] The 2001 EP report (p. 37) states that "the proportion of international communications accounted for by satellite links has decreased substantially over the past few years in Central Europe; it lies between 0.4 and 5%." Even in less developed parts of the world, such as Latin America, communications satellites are used largely for point-to-multipoint applications, such as video. [5] The EU report concludes (p. 11) "this means that the majority of communications cannot be intercepted by earth stations, but only by tapping cables and intercepting radio signals, something which — as the investigations carried out in connection with the report have shown — is possible only to a limited extent." One approach is to place intercept equipment at locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at a relatively small number of sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site in the United States. In the past, much Internet traffic was routed through the U.S. and the UK. However this is less true at present. According to the 2001 STOA report (p. 33), "95% of intra-German Internet communications are routed via a switch in Frankfurt." Thus for a worldwide surveillance network to be comprehensive, either illegal intercept sites would be required on the territory of friendly nations or cooperation of local authorities would be needed. The STOA report points out (p. 27) "interception of private communications by foreign intelligence services is by no means confined to the US or British foreign intelligence services." U.S. intelligence maintains liaison relationships with countries all over the world. [6] Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early sixties, today ECHELON is believed to search also for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence. But some critics, including the European Union committee that commissioned the EU report, claim the system is being used also for large-scale commercial theft and invasion of privacy. While details of methods and capabilities are highly sensitive and protected by special laws (e.g. 18 USC 798), gathering signals intelligence ( SIGINT) is an acknowledged mission of the U.S. National Security Agency. As of August 2006, their web site had a FAQ page on the topic, [7] which states: In 2001, the STOA report (p. 19) recommended that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy. [8] Campbell, and a New Zealand Journalist, Nicky Hager, asserted in the 1990s that the USA was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes. [9] Examples include the gear-less wind turbine technology designed by the German firm Enercon[10] [11] and the speech technology developed by the Belgian firm Lernout & Hauspie. An article in the Baltimore Sun reported in 1995 that aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the NSA reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract. [12][13] The proposed US-only " Total Information Awareness" program relied on technology similar to that supposedly used by ECHELON, and is believed to have been intended to integrate the extensive sources it is legally permitted to survey domestically with the "taps" already supposedly compiled by ECHELON. It was canceled by the U.S. Congress in 2004. It was later discovered in 2005 that the CIA had not dismantled the program, but had simply blacklisted it as classified and funded it using CIA money allocated for such top secret operations, thereby defying Congress. It has been alleged that in 2002 the Bush Administration extended the ECHELON program to domestic surveillance. [14][15][16][17] At least one company, Narus, is publicly selling systems for mass surveillance of Internet traffic and one of its systems was apparently installed in 2003 in Room 641A, allegedly an intercept station run by AT&T on behalf of the NSA. In 1999 the Australian Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was told by Professor Desmond Ball that the Pine Gap facility was used as a ground station for a satellite based interception network. The satellites are claimed to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters across, parked in geostationary orbits. The original purpose of the network was to monitor the telemetry from 1970s Soviet weapons, air defense radar, communications satellites and ground based microwave communications. [20] The network is still operational and coordinated by US, British and Australian intelligence communities. The STOA committee stated: "It seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail." (STOA report, p. 11) The U.S. intelligence community uses many code names. See, for example, CIA cryptonym. Margaret Newsham claims that she worked on the configuration and installation of some of the software that makes up the ECHELON system while employed at Lockheed Martin, for whom she worked from 1974 to 1984 in Sunnyvale, California, USA and in Menwith Hill, England. [21] At that time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA's term for the computer network itself. Lockheed called it P415. The software programs were called SILKWORTH and SIRE. A satellite named VORTEX would intercept communications. An image available on the internet of a fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed along with several other code names. [22] 
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