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See also: 06 Jul 00 | Europe Echelon: Big brother without a cause? 03 Nov 99 | World Echelon spy network revealed 30 Mar 00 | Europe US denies stealing business secrets 29 May 01 | Europe E-mail users warned over spy network 29 May 01 | Europe Warning for UK over spy network 23 Feb 00 | World France accuses US of spying Internet links: Echelon Watch European Parliament report on Echelon Federation of American Scientists on Echelon The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Sci/Tech stories now:
Astronomy's next big thing Ancient rock points to life's The wildest estimates of its capabilities report that it origin can sift through up to 90% of all internet traffic. Mobile spam on the rise Giant telescope project gets How does it work? boost New hope for Aids vaccine Echelon is not thought to be a real-time tapping Replace your mouse with network. Instead it captures all the traffic it can and your eye then sifts through it for keywords or anything the Device could detect intelligence services deem to be "suspicious". overdose drugs Wireless internet arrives in The network can apparently capture data in several China ways. It uses terrestrial radio antennae that intercept Links to more Sci/Tech satellite transmissions, and is also thought to have its stories are at the foot of the own fleet of satellites that dip into transmissions page. between cities. It also has many sites around the world that tap into communications conducted via wires. "Sniffing" devices are thought to have been installed in key internet routing centres to catch addressing information from the packets of data passing through. Data beamed along fibre-optic networks is not thought to be safe either. The NSA has reportedly developed devices that can tap optical undersea cables. These deep water cables have replaced satellites as the main way that data travels between continents. One cable can carry tens of thousands of phone calls at once. One fibre-tap was discovered in 1982, but many others are thought to be in existence. The recently published European Parliament report on Echelon played down some of the wilder claims for the network's eavesdropping abilities and said it can
tap a "limited" proportion of net traffic, radio communications and cable transmissions. What can we do to protect ourselves? The sheer volume of data that Echelon has to sift through can help you hide. If you really want to stay anonymous use only payphones or buy a pre-pay mobile phone that doesn't require you to give an address when you buy it. Consider changing to a net service provider that you can use anonymously, and does not assign you a fixed net address. You can use encryption software to protect your email messages, but as most messages are not protected this might make it a target for the security services. It is likely that the intelligence agencies can crack open most commercially available encryption software. Even if they can't, the many holes and security bugs found in most software packages render them much easier to circumvent. Echelon could be defeated by the ubiquitous network technologies that are currently being developed. One reason that phone calls are easy to tap is because they directly link two people. However the rise of the net radically changes the way that data is packaged up and sent. Over the net, and more so with future phone networks, packets of data take a circuitous route to their destination. The proliferation of these networks will make it harder and harder for security forces to tap all of a data stream. What does it look for? Beyond the network of radio antenna, fleets of satellites and wiretaps, Echelon is thought to use a large computer network to sift through the vast pool of data it constantly collects. This computer system looks for key words, phrases, addresses and names. This helps the intelligence agencies build up a picture of the communication and contact networks of people it deems suspicious or requiring watching. Echelon was originally developed to help spies keep watch on the intelligence agencies and agents of opposing powers. With the end of the Cold War the focus has changed from espionage to surveillance of terrorists, organised crime, sensitive diplomatic negotiations such as treaty agreements and domestic political groups deemed to be a threat. Why don't we know about it? It is a secret network, and governments are very sensitive about accusations that they are increasingly spying on the largely innocent electronic communications of millions of their citizens. The US Government still refuses to admit that Echelon even exists. Knowledge about its existence has come from the Australian and New Zealand governments as well as the efforts of many civil liberty groups.
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