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Spy Online
July 2001
New report warns Europeans of danger of US Echelon
spy network
A 108-page report released to the European Parliament
has warned Europeans to be more sensitive about encryption online
in the face of the Echelon spy network.
Echelon, the existence of which has always been
denied by the US government, grew out of the Cold War existence
of organisations such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and
GCHQ in the UK. Echelon, run by the US in co-operation with Canada,
Britain, Australia and New Zealand, is believed to monitor all email
and Internet-based communications, as well as traffic carried by
the Intelsat and other satellite networks, radio broadcasts and
cable communications. Echelon trawls through every message to which
it has access, indexing these and then searching for key words,
with an estimated two million messages being searched every hour;
attempts have even been made to use speech recognition to trawl
phone calls automatically.
Concerns have arisen, however, that Echelon may
be being used to pass on European trade secrets to give US businesses
a competitive advantage. The European Parliament's vice-president,
Gerhard Schmid, said that although committee was convinced of Echelon's
existence, it had no proof that it was being used for industrial
espionage.
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'The problem,' he added in a speech to the
Parliament, 'is there are no tracks or traces of interception.'
The report concludes, however, 'that a global system for intercepting
communications exists... is no longer in doubt' and that this
system is used to tap into corporate and private telecommunications.
Representatives for the CIA and NSA refused
to meet delegates from the committee responsible for investigating
Echelon when they travelled to Washington in May. The Parliament
report, however, suggests that Euroopeans should make better
use of encryption software to protect sensitive information.
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Previous
stories
Carnivore Rising
The Real Big Brother
Privacy RIP
Policing the Web
Relevant sites
Echelon Wiretapped
National Security Agency
GCHQ
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