With the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic spying scandal in the media spotlight, it may interest you to know how the NSA gathers a vast amount of its intelligence.
There exists an enormous multinational computer network capable of monitoring almost any telecommunications: phone calls, faxes, Internet communications and just about anything else that runs through undersea cables, bounces off satellites or is carried by radio waves. Say hello to Echelon.
Information gathered by the Echelon network and other parts of the global surveillance system is used by the US and its allies for diplomatic, military and commercial purposes. The coordinating force behind Echelon is the world’s largest employer of mathematicians: the NSA.
Echelon is the largest, but not the only worldwide monitoring network. Russia, China, and France each run their own global spy networks. Smaller European nations such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland have constructed smaller, localized networks.
Echelon emerged out of World War 2. When the Axis powers were defeated, the Allied nations turned their attention to the emergent Soviet Union. The 1947 “UKUSA Agreement” united the signals intelligence resources of the United Kingdom and the United States. Shortly thereafter, Canada, Australia and New Zealand joined the coalition. Later Germany, Norway, Denmark and Turkey would follow suit. By the height of the Cold War several thousand listening posts existed around the world. Canada’s role was to provide coverage of the northern latitudes and Polar Regions, which were of elevated importance during the era.
In the early years, the main sources of intelligence were telephone conversations, telexes (think telegrams) and radio transmissions. Originally, the system had almost no automation and a human was required at each step to determine a piece of intelligence’s importance. That meant thousands of analysts listening in on conversations and poring over telexes, comparing them with weekly NSA “watch-lists” of key people, companies, commodities and topics to filter out the important from the innocuous.
By the early ’70s, automation had begun to creep its way into the system. Printouts could be scanned for key words or phrases by computers, much in the same way a search engine works. By the ’80s, the NSA had developed a microprocessor specifically designed for this purpose and even attempted to market it commercially.
In time, the NSA would expand Echelon’s filtering capability to include target-specific contact information, voice-identification, optical character recognition (think handwriting, faxes, pictures and perhaps video) and other data. 15 years ago it was estimated that the level of automation was so high that only one in a million intercepted messages were ever seen by an analyst.
It’s been reported that the NSA is moving past key word and phrase searches to topic searches. This method filters information more like a human would than a computer. The program will be able to identify the themes and topics of communications and sort them accordingly. This also makes researching topics easier. Instead of fumbling for key words and phrases an analyst can simply search for “Iran’s nuclear program.”
It is believed that the technology required to analyze every phone conversation does not exist, but Echelon has allegedly used automated techniques to analyze phone conversations on a case-by-case basis for at least a decade.
Encryption still seems to pose a problem for Echelon. The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security acts as a conduit for the NSA to make sure tough-to-crack algorithms don’t fall into the wrong hands. That’s why during the first half of the 90s, it was illegal for Americans to export encryption software above a 40-bit strength. The restrictions, though relaxed, still exist today. Similar restrictions exist in countries that are members of the Wassenaar Arrangement, an arms control agreement of which Canada is a signatory.
Government agencies circumvent advanced encryption methods with information stealing viruses, software audio, video, and data bugs, and with software or hardware “backdoors.” Apparently all major information technology manufactures within the United States, including Microsoft, collaborate with the NSA to integrate secret access methods into their products
The Echelon intelligence community has their own secret Internet-like network and until the mid-’90s it was larger than the civilian Internet. This secret network allows field stations to communicate with the NSA’s central computer system and includes an intelligence news network, a TV conference system and email. The NSA also has another secret network interconnecting 13 US intelligence agencies to provide intelligence as quickly as possible to users who need it.
Canada’s equivalent to the NSA is the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). It is illegal for the CSE to intercept domestic communications. Prior to September 11, 2001, if a communication between a domestic and a foreign party was intercepted, the domestic party’s communications were to be destroyed or ignored. Since then, the CSE’s powers have been expanded to allow it to monitor all communications as long as one party is outside of Canada.
The American government has used Echelon to support American industry by forwarding companies intelligence on their competitors and customers. Several of the companies that received this special treatment are also companies that are involved in the development of Echelon systems – Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Loral and TRW.
Canada has its own skeletons in the closet. In 1981 the CSE supposedly used a cell phone call it intercepted to help the Canadian Wheat Board underbid the U.S. in a $2.5 billion contract with China. Later that year the CSE intercepted another communication resulting in a $50 million wheat sale to Mexico.
Wondering what one of Canada’s listening stations looks like? Try a Google Image Search for “CFS Leitrim” or simply “Leitrim”. But if you’re like me, you want a satellite photo of it. Go to maps.google.com and search for “Leitrim Minor Hockey Association”. Zoom in as far as possible, click on your first result in the left bar and turn on “hybrid” display mode. Go about a kilometer northeast along Chemin Leitrim/ Regional Route 14 and eventually you’ll see a group of buildings with white roofs. Notice the four spherical structures (two large, two small) to the north flanked by what look like satellite dishes? It just screams signals interception.
All of this makes me wonder if there might be some sort of monitoring of the postal system. Although purely speculation, it seems like an awful liability to create such a powerful surveillance system only to ignore more traditional modes of communication, especially one that is already controlled by the federal government.
Link O’ the Week: Cryptome
cryptome.org & eyeball-series.org
Tons of information on cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security and intelligence. That is, if you can figure out how to navigate the site. As always, take this sensitive information with a grain of salt.
Webcomic O’ the Week: SinFEST by Tatsuya Ishida
sinfest.net
In a word: cute.
Free Application O’ the Week: GNU Privacy Guard
gnupg.org
Has all this talk about snooping made you nervous? For the technically inclined, I suggest this open-source, multi-platform encryption program to keep your data safe. The website includes detailed guides.
