Fifteen years ago, the Progressive Review reported that NSA was engaged in massive domestic spying, a story that most the media chose to ignore or greatly downplay. Here are two sources for this story:
Nicky Hager, Covert Action Quarterly, 1997 - For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand's intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be interviewed.
The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON.
Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world.
It is, of course, not a new idea that intelligence organizations tap into e-mail and other public telecommunications networks. What was new in the material leaked by the New Zealand intelligence staff was precise information on where the spying is done, how the system works, its capabilities and shortcomings, and many details such as the codenames.
The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet.
The computers at each station in the ECHELON network automatically search through the millions of messages intercepted for ones containing pre-programmed keywords. Keywords include all the names, localities, subjects, and so on that might be mentioned. Every word of every message intercepted at each station gets automatically searched whether or not a specific telephone number or e-mail address is on the list.
The thousands of simultaneous messages are read in "real time" as they pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as the computer finds intelligence needles in telecommunications haystacks.
... A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based telecommunications systems is the final element of the ECHELON system. Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting large quantities of public, business, and government communications is a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks over land. Heavy cables, laid across seabeds between countries, account for much of the world's international communications. After they come out of the water and join land-based microwave networks they are very vulnerable to interception. The microwave networks are made up of chains of microwave towers relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop (always in line of sight) across the countryside. These networks shunt large quantities of communications across a country. Interception of them gives access to international undersea communications (once they surface) and to international communication trunk lines across continents. They are also an obvious target for large-scale interception of domestic communications.
Because the facilities required to intercept radio and satellite communications use large aerials and dishes that are difficult to hide for too long, that network is reasonably well documented. But all that is required to intercept land-based communication networks is a building situated along the microwave route or a hidden cable running underground from the legitimate network into some anonymous building, possibly far removed. Although it sounds technically very difficult, microwave interception from space by United States spy satellites also occurs. The worldwide network of facilities to intercept these communications is largely undocumented, and because New Zealand's GCSB does not participate in this type of interception, my inside sources could not help either.
MUCH MORE
Menwith Hill
London Telegraph, 1997 - A global electronic spy network that can eavesdrop on every telephone, email and telex communication around the world will be officially acknowledged for the first time in a European Commission report to be delivered this week.
The report - Assessing the Technologies of Political Control - was commissioned last year by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. It contains details of a network of American-controlled intelligence stations on British soil and around the world, that "routinely and indiscriminately" monitor countless phone, fax and email messages.
It states: "Within Europe all email telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency transfering all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York moors in the UK."
The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive ECHELON system.
Until now, evidence of such astounding technology has been patchy and anecdotal. But the report - to be discussed on Thursday by the committee of the office of Science and Technology Assessment in Luxembourg - confirms that the citizens of Britain and other European states are subject to an intensity of surveillance far in excess of that imagined by most parliaments. Its findings are certain to excite the concern of MEPs.
"The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system (Cooking up a charter for snooping) but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country.
"The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like MEMEX to find key words".
According to the report, ECHELON uses a number of national dictionaries containing key words of interest to each country.
For more than a decade, former agents of US, British, Canadian and New Zealand national security agencies have claimed that the monitoring of electronic communications has become endemic throughout the world. Rumors have circulated that new technologies have been developed which have the capability to search most of the world's telex, fax and email networks for "key words". Phone calls, they claim, can be automatically analysed for key words.
... The report recommends a variety of measures for dealing with the increasing power of the technologies of surveillance being used at Menwith Hill and other centres. It bluntly advises: "The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network (Internet) accessible to US intelligence agencies."
The report also urges a fundamental review of the involvement of the American NSA in Europe, suggesting that their activities be either scaled down, or become more open and accountable.
The NSA, the world's biggest and most powerful signals intelligence organisation, received approval to set up a network of spy stations throughout Britain. Their role was to provide military, diplomatic and economic intelligence by intercepting communications from throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
One of its bases, Menwith Hill, was to become the biggest spy station in the world. Its ears - known as radomes - are capable of listening in to vast chunks of the communications spectrum throughout Europe and the old Soviet Union.
In its first decade the base sucked data from cables and microwave links running through a nearby Post Office tower, but the communications revolutions of the Seventies and Eighties gave the base a capability that even its architects could scarcely have been able to imagine. With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telex and voice messages. Then, with the development of the Internet, electronic mail and electronic commerce, the listening posts were able to increase their monitoring capability to eavesdrop on an unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications.
This activity has been all but ignored by the UK Parliament. When Labour MPs raised questions about the activities of the NSA, the Government invoked secrecy rules. It has been the same for 40 years.
Insight Magazine, 1997 - A presidential conference with Asian leaders was bugged by U.S. intelligence agencies, say high-level sources, and information was passed from the White House to big Democratic corporate donors. Imagine sitting in your room, shoes kicked off and your necktie loosened. It's been a long, hard day and now, sipping coffee, you're talking to a colleague who is fixing a drink at the mini-bar. At the same time, you're on the phone sharing information about the conference you've just attended. Sounds pretty typical, doesn't it? Okay, now continue to imagine that just a few floors below your hotel room there's a secret command center filled with federal law-enforcement officers, intelligence agents and military personnel watching and listening to your every move and conversation. . . . .
Such a scenario might make sense if you were a mobster or a spy or a terrorist on whom the government needs to conduct such surveillance to protect the country from crime, espionage, or acts of terror. But what if this scene -- extended to hundreds of hotel suites and meeting rooms in a major coastal city -- occurred during an international conference of world leaders hosted by the president of the United States of America? . . . . Insight has been told that this is exactly what happened in 1993 in Seattle during a five-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, conference, in which leaders of about 15 nations gathered to discuss the future of trade and security issues involving the United States and our Pacific partners. "There were bugs placed in over 300 locations," says a high-level source with detailed knowledge about the extraordinary top-secret operation run by the FBI in conjunction with intelligence personnel from the National Security Agency, or NSA, and the Office of Naval Intelligence, among many others. . . . . "Just about every single room was bugged," according to the high-level source who spoke to Insight on condition of anonymity. "Vehicles were bugged," as were telephones and conference centers. Even a charter-boat trip arranged by the president to Blake Island, a 475-acre state park in the Puget Sound, was monitored by agents with electronic-listening devices. . . . . The top-secret bugging operation was massive and well-coordinated. And the only reason it has come to light is because of concerns raised by high-level sources within federal law-enforcement and intelligence circles that the operation was compromised by politicians -- including mid- and senior-level White House aides -- either on behalf of or in support of President Clinton and major donor-friends who helped him and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, raise money. A quid pro quo? . . . . If the allegations of a massive, secret eavesdropping operation and leaks of information from that project by presidential aides prove true, then the White House will have a lot of explaining to do. So will the DNC and people involved in the reported clandestine plot who subsequently gained knowledge of suspected White House leaks but chose not to launch a national-security inquiry. . . . . The FBI was not happy with many aspects of the operation, according to the sources -- especially so when agents discovered the leaks. Complaints were brought within the bureau but, apparently, got nowhere. That is, until now. . . . . The White House and the DNC deny the charges, let alone admit that such a secret intelligence operation was conducted against the heads of government gathered for the trade conference. The NSA and the National Security Council, or NSC, won't respond to questions about such an operation or any similar operation, Insight sources in and out of government have confirmed. Neither will the FBI nor the Defense Department comment. The CIA and other intelligence agencies are mum, too. . . . . Besides the revelation of the Seattle operation, Insight's sources say that information collected by the project's "monitors" was shared with people outside of national-security circles and involved proprietary data on oil and hydroelectric deals in Asia, including Vietnam. "I was told that information was passed to attorneys working for the DNC" who were involved directly and indirectly with large business ventures overseas, says one of the sources, who adds that one of the couriers was alleged to be a mid-level White House aide. . . . . Such startling revelations about domestic intelligence-gathering and allegations of leaks for political purposes certainly will become a cause célèbre for investigators now probing campaign fund-raising abuses by the DNC and the White House. "You get me the name of a person who will talk about this to us," says one senior congressional investigator contacted by Insight, and Congress will get to the bottom of it. . . . . Insight's sources say that besides worry about the damage caused by one of the largest eavesdropping operations mounted on American soil in U.S. history -- it allegedly included video, audio and telecommunications equipment -- U.S. intelligence experts also worry about the effects potential leaks of private conversations by heads of state and top ministers may have had on business and political deals around the globe. . . . . Beyond the tawdry politicizing of this alleged operation, the very nature of such an intelligence undertaking on American soil comes as no great surprise. The surprise is in the detailed information about the clandestine operation that reached Insight. "No reputable government official would discuss it" with you, an astonished senior intelligence official said privately when asked to comment. . . . . But clandestine snooping on a grand scale is familiar stuff in the Washington area. It is a widely known secret that the NSA has a system known as ECHELON by which the government can -- and routinely does -- intercept E-mail, fax, telex and telephone communications. Designed primarily for nonmilitary targets -- including governments, businesses and individuals -- the system steals communications internationally, says John Pike, the director of cyberstrategy projects at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. . . . . "I assume that it is all being monitored with keyword scanning," Pike says. "They throw away almost all of the stuff they collect. But they have that watch list for names and they are working on voice-recognition software and that's going to be the big thing in the future."
Such technology is used jointly by NSA and its allies as a "creative" means to avoid court orders, Pike claims. . . . . In 1992, a year before the alleged bugging of the Seattle conference, a group of agents for GCHQ, the British counterpart of the NSA, blasted ECHELON. "We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate," the intelligence agents told the London Observer. The British agents claimed the NSA even helped intercept communications from Amnesty International and Christian Aid. Asked about ECHELON, the NSA says, "We have no information to provide." . . . .
Timothy Maier, Insight, 1997 - As Insight first reported last month, the Clinton administration is said by intelligence and security specialists -- who admitted being involved -- to have bugged the conclave and then provided classified secrets to the Democratic National Committee, or DNC. This in turn allegedly was used as bait to barter with potential big-buck donors for large contributions to the Democratic coffers, sources in and out of government claim. . . . . This week the story continued to develop with new twists and turns. Former officials of the National Security Council, or NSC, and high-level economic advisers tell Insight they remain deeply concerned that classified information may have been leaked for political purposes. "That would make it blackmail," says a former senior-level Bush appointee who asked not to be identified because of an ongoing business relationship with the Clinton administration. "I find the story totally credible. I wouldn't put it past this administration." . . . .
Insight also detailed in earlier reports a series of alleged criminal activities, including the procuring of boys to engage in sexual activities with diplomats; FBI agents accepting thousands of dollars of kickbacks; and, the most serious offense, the White House providing top-secret trade information to two West Coast law firms working off the books for the DNC. . . . .
The covert mission was so large that the government purchased about $250,000 in electronic surveillance equipment, including Konica cameras, from at least three private suppliers, according to classified records reviewed by Insight. American spies then collected raw economic data on Asian businesses through agents of the FBI, the Customs Service, Naval Intelligence, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the NSC, and the National Security Agency, or NSA, sources say. . . . .
The FBI is believed to have bugged more than 300 locations, with electronic audio and video surveillance devices used to monitor 10,000 to 15,000 conversations -- much of it real-time data that was bounced from satellites to the NSA. The monitoring stations usually were placed near a Secret Service perimeter or Naval Intelligence facilities. And many of the targets concerned large contracts with Vietnam, sources say. . . . .
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