If "21st Century" terrorism is killing one person a day during weekdays contained within a few hundred square mile radius, as opposed to the old way of killing 3,000 people at a clip in one day and disrupting an entire nation's economy, governmental setup, civilians travel patterns, and miliitary alert, then I'll opt for 21st Century terrorism.
I just can't see hjow this would be middle eastern terrorists. It makes no sense, based on how terrorists have always done.
Quote:when there is no historical reason to think that terrorists commit this type of crime.
Jeezuz fucking christ, your kidding me right? They do this daily in Israel and Lebanon. Get a fucking clue. How many planes did they crash into buildings before we came to the conclusion they committed the 9/11 attacks. Heres a news flash for you bright guy, Egypt Air was an al Quiada terrorist attack. It's not well known, but they were testing the waters (no pun intended). They will do and try anything, anywhere anytime.
I pray to god that this isn't terrorists. But I'm not knee jerking, I'm looking at the facts. Go back and read this thread again, then read the news stories. Someone mentioned Son of Sam earlier. Did we deploy the military to hunt him down? No. But in one week of a domestic crime as you feel it is, we are now deploying military support, walking a fine line of the constitution and for what? Why did Montgomery County authorities on Monday immediately state that this very suspicious suspect in Baltimore was not their man without doing balistic tests on his sniper rifle? Did they know before the media got the story that a former US Marine didn't fit the profile? This is a domestic mad man? Don't shut your eyes and just blow this off as hysteria.
NYTimes Article. Don't bother if you haven't got a FREE password
Quote:One difference this time was the added touch of cruelty of shooting Ms. Franklin as her husband was a step away, unseeing and powerless to help. They were in a mundane, off-guard moment — another of the sniper's now-clear preferences — putting purchases into their red convertible, shelving to be used in a move they were planning this month from the Washington area.
Makes me think. Is the target the person, or everyday, "mundane" american life? Is the real target the way we go about our daily lives?
Quote:Someone mentioned Son of Sam earlier. Did we deploy the military to hunt him down? No.
I think this falls under the difference between spree killing and serial killing, as mentioned earlier. This is a spree. Since he moves around a lot, it falls under FBI jurisdiction. And since he's so randomly hit-and-run, the FBI isn't enough, so the military gets in on it. So, I dunno, it doesn't necessarily have to be terrorism, could just be some sick fuck like in The Jerk.
SOMEBODY REALLY HATES THESE CANS!!!
What is a terrorist and what are they attempting to do?
Quote:They will do and try anything, anywhere anytime.
This may be the start of their ground war. Iraq and friends know that we are going in and this maybe a bold first strike. Expect copycat style attacks to spread to other places in the US.
There may be a lot of sleeper cells and I believe their missions will be starting soon. One of the goals is to bring it home to Americans.
For the most part we have had very little problems in this country from outside enemies. 9/11 was different and we need to look at this differently too.
Israel has been dealing with this type shit for a loooonngggg time. Look for what works. Armed Americans is one possible solution.
They may be using different shooters with different vehicles. They could also be in the basement of the Gas Station or 7/11 store that they work for which is in the area.
Think outside the box.
CNN Crossfire is doing a good discussion right now.
The terrorism argument is an interesting one. Open source reporting shows that Al Qaeda has trained some of their jihadis in sniper tactics, and Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have frequently used snipers. The links are not apparent at this time, but an apprehension can change that quickly.
And to clarify my disdain for labeling this joker as a serial killer, this guy does not fit the accepted definition as used in Law Enforcement. I could care less what the public calls him, my problem is with people who should know better(all those retired cops who are now criminology experts), or who fail to do the proper research (the talking head's writers and producers) and decide to further obfuscate the already murky issues involved in these crime. There are specific definitions which apply to these crimes; they take into account the selection of victims, the crime scene, the killer's MO, the timeline and other psychological and physical factors involved in the crime. I admit I did not follow the links, as I am a lazy bastard, so I hope the sites on the other end will give you a better explaination. If they do not, feel free to email me and I will send you some further info, as I wrote a few papers on serial murder and link analysis techniques.
I just hope they catch this bastard - and fast.
Here is an update. The fucking liberal ACLU is against using govt help to help in this case. Maybe if he shot their wife or husband or one of their kids, they might feel differently.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday it was examining legal questions raised by the Pentagon's decision to deploy military personnel and equipment in the Washington area sniper shootings.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed an order Tuesday allowing Army RC7 and U21 surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to be used in the sniper hunt.
The all-weather aircraft -- spy planes, essentially -- are small fixed-wing airplanes packed with advanced technology, including sensors.
Troops will operate the planes and equipment and point out potential targets to local law enforcement authorities, which will request their use as needed.
The ACLU said it was examining whether the order might violate parts of the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law prohibiting the military from direct involvement in civilian law enforcement.
"We are monitoring what the Defense Department may do in terms of providing surveillance information to domestic law enforcement," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington office.
"They are asserting that they are complying with the spirit of the law in the Posse Comitatus Act, and we are analyzing that to determine whether or not they are.
"We are not prepared to say, to assert, that they are or are not," Murphy said. "We are looking at what they are saying, what they are doing and looking at how it compares to the law."
Murphy's comments were in response to a question at an ACLU news conference announcing a campaign to "defend the Constitution" against the Justice Department's search for terrorist cells and al Qaeda supporters.
The $3.5 million campaign includes $1 million in TV advertising in 10 markets. Although the ads -- sharply critical of Attorney General John Ashcroft -- will begin running before Election Day, November 5, the ACLU said the campaign is not aimed directly at specific candidates in the congressional elections.
Military sources said the participation in the sniper probe would avoid any potential conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act.
Civil libertarian groups such as the ACLU have been concerned about the Bush administration possibly casting a critical eye on the Posse Comitatus Act, particularly as the United States carries out its war against terrorists and implements its homeland defense strategy.
I always thought that when the crimes went across state borders, it became a governmental issue and was no longer a local law enforcement issue...thus then, the government calling in the military is a justified thing and the aclu can shove their campaign up their stupid asses.
When crimes are done across state lines, then federal law enforcement gets involved. For example, if I sell you drugs over the internet and mail them to you in another state, that would be cause for federal law enforcement to get involved, but federal law enforcement and the military are very seperate entitites.
Yes very separate entities, but when the federal law enforcement officials get involved, don't they have the authority to call in anyone and anyone who they feel will help them in solving the case, or taking care of the problem? Or am I just trying to use logic because calling in the military makes sense to me?
I don't know I have no problem temporarily giving up some of my freedoms and liberties if I know it will save my life. But that's just me.
Federal law enforcement has no jurisdiction over the military from my understanding. Once federal law enforcement is called in, they do take over investigations, etc. and have jurisdiction over state and local law enforcement agencies.
Federal law enforcement and the military are two seperate entities and have no juridiction over each other. The president must authorize the use of military in any domestic action. A states governor has the same authority with it's states national guard. There is strict guidelines by law that govern military use in domestic actions.
Teenweek, be careful what you ask for. Any American that says they are willing to give up some of their rights to be safe, will in fact lose those rights. The current administration constantly demonstrates it will be happy to bend the constitution to do things their way.
Sometimes I write like I am walking through quicksand...what I meant is, that I figured that the federal authorities had the ability to call in anyone they thought would help the investigation (like that guy from canada). I know they don't control the military, we all know that the military is in charge of the country...
Posse Comitatus Act
20 Stat. L., 145
June 18, 1878
CHAP. 263 - An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, and for other purposes.
SEC. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.
10 U.S.C. (United States Code) 375
Sec. 375. Restriction on direct participation by military personnel:
The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.
18 U.S.C. 1385
Sec. 1385. Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of
Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Editor's Note: The only exemption has to do with nuclear materials (18 U.S.C. 831 (e)
Honestly, I'd gladly give up certain freedoms in order to ensure my safety. I don't mean I'd give up my right to free speech, or even my right to privacy, but I do think that the government needs broader surveillance capabilities. If this surveillance is done by responsible parties and any embarrassing information that is uncovered remains secret, I see nothing wrong. In other democracies the governments have more powers over their citizens, yet their citizen's enjoy a vast amount of freedoms. As long as I'm giving up my rights in a manner that does not make me feel like I'm being taken advantage of, I really have no problem with it.
<span style='font-size:15pt;line-height:100%'>Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security.
--- Ben Franklin</span>
Privacy?
That's funny...
Quote:EXPOSING THE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
by Nicky Hager
IN THE LATE 1980S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE US PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER'S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD'S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS.
For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) 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.
SOMEONE IS LISTENING
The computers in stations around the globe are known, within the network, as the ECHELON Dictionaries. Computers that can automatically search through traffic for keywords have existed since at least the 1970s, but the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in Canada, and the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) in Australia.
The alliance, which grew from cooperative efforts during World War II to intercept radio transmissions, was formalized into the UKUSA agreement in 1948 and aimed primarily against the USSR. The five UKUSA agencies are today the largest intelligence organizations in their respective countries. With much of the world's business occurring by fax, e-mail, and phone, spying on these communications receives the bulk of intelligence resources. For decades before the introduction of the ECHELON system, the UKUSA allies did intelligence collection operations for each other, but each agency usually processed and analysed the intercept from its own stations.
Under ECHELON, a particular station's Dictionary computer contains not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also has lists entered in for other agencies. In New Zealand's satellite interception station at Waihopai (in the South Island), for example, the computer has separate search lists for the NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE in addition to its own. Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords, it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil.
The first component of the ECHELON network are stations specifically targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats) used by the telephone companies of most countries. A ring of Intelsats is positioned around the world, stationary above the equator, each serving as a relay station for tens of thousands of simultaneous phone calls, fax, and e-mail. Five UKUSA stations have been established to intercept the communications carried by the Intelsats.
The British GCHQ station is located at the top of high cliffs above the sea at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Satellite dishes beside sprawling operations buildings point toward Intelsats above the Atlantic, Europe, and, inclined almost to the horizon, the Indian Ocean. An NSA station at Sugar Grove, located 250 kilometers southwest of Washington, DC, in the mountains of West Virginia, covers Atlantic Intelsats transmitting down toward North and South America. Another NSA station is in Washington State, 200 kilometres southwest of Seattle, inside the Army's Yakima Firing Center. Its satellite dishes point out toward the Pacific Intelsats and to the east. *1
The job of intercepting Pacific Intelsat communications that cannot be intercepted at Yakima went to New Zealand and Australia. Their South Pacific location helps to ensure global interception. New Zealand provides the station at Waihopai and Australia supplies the Geraldton station in West Australia (which targets both Pacific and Indian Ocean Intelsats). *2
Each of the five stations' Dictionary computers has a codename to distinguish it from others in the network. The Yakima station, for instance, located in desert country between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, has the COWBOY Dictionary, while the Waihopai station has the FLINTLOCK Dictionary. These codenames are recorded at the beginning of every intercepted message, before it is transmitted around the ECHELON network, allowing analysts to recognize at which station the interception occurred.
New Zealand intelligence staff has been closely involved with the NSA's Yakima station since 1981, when NSA pushed the GCSB to contribute to a project targeting Japanese embassy communications. Since then, all five UKUSA agencies have been responsible for monitoring diplomatic cables from all Japanese posts within the same segments of the globe they are assigned for general UKUSA monitoring.3 Until New Zealand's integration into ECHELON with the opening of the Waihopai station in 1989, its share of the Japanese communications was intercepted at Yakima and sent unprocessed to the GCSB headquarters in Wellington for decryption, translation, and writing into UKUSA-format intelligence reports (the NSA provides the codebreaking programs).
"COMMUNICATION" THROUGH SATELLITES
The next component of the ECHELON system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by Intelsat.In addition to the UKUSA stations targeting Intelsat satellites, there are another five or more stations homing in on Russian and other regional communications satellites. These stations are Menwith Hill in northern England; Shoal Bay, outside Darwin in northern Australia (which targets Indonesian satellites); Leitrim, just south of Ottawa in Canada (which appears to intercept Latin American satellites); Bad Aibling in Germany; and Misawa in northern Japan.
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.4 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.
NO ONE IS SAFE FROM A MICROWAVE
A 1994 expos of the Canadian UKUSA agency, Spyworld, co-authored by one of its former staff, Mike Frost, gave the first insights into how a lot of foreign microwave interception is done (see p. 18). It described UKUSA "embassy collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in diplomatic bags and used to monitor various communications in foreign capitals. *5
Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country. *6 The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill gaps in the American and British embassy collection operations, which were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left the CSE in 1990. Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the DSD also engages in embassy collection. *7 On the territory of UKUSA nations, the interception of land-based telecommunications appears to be done at special secret intelligence facilities. The US, UK, and Canada are geographically well placed to intercept the large amounts of the world's communications that cross their territories.
The only public reference to the Dictionary system anywhere in the world was in relation to one of these facilities, run by the GCHQ in central London. In 1991, a former British GCHQ official spoke anonymously to Granada Television's World in Action about the agency's abuses of power. He told the program about an anonymous red brick building at 8 Palmer Street where GCHQ secretly intercepts every telex which passes into, out of, or through London, feeding them into powerful computers with a program known as "Dictionary." The operation, he explained, is staffed by carefully vetted British Telecom people: "It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies, all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take everything. They feed it into the Dictionary." *8 What the documentary did not reveal is that Dictionary is not just a British system; it is UKUSA-wide.
Similarly, British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the US Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground into the station.9
The NSA Menwith Hill station, with 22 satellite terminals and more than 4.9 acres of buildings, is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful in the UKUSA network. Located in northern England, several thousand kilometers from the Persian Gulf, it was awarded the NSA's "Station of the Year" prize for 1991 after its role in the Gulf War. Menwith Hill assists in the interception of microwave communications in another way as well, by serving as a ground station for US electronic spy satellites. These intercept microwave trunk lines and short range communications such as military radios and walkie talkies. Other ground stations where the satellites' information is fed into the global network are Pine Gap, run by the CIA near Alice Springs in central Australia and the Bad Aibling station in Germany. *10 Among them, the various stations and operations making up the ECHELON network tap into all the main components of the world's telecommunications networks. All of them, including a separate network of stations that intercepts long distance radio communications, have their own Dictionary computers connected into ECHELON.
In the early 1990s, opponents of the Menwith Hill station obtained large quantities of internal documents from the facility. Among the papers was a reference to an NSA computer system called Platform. The integration of all the UKUSA station computers into ECHELON probably occurred with the introduction of this system in the early 1980s. James Bamford wrote at that time about a new worldwide NSA computer network codenamed Platform "which will tie together 52 separate computer systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or `host environment,' for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT organization, GCHQ." *11
LOOKING IN THE DICTIONARY
The Dictionary computers are connected via highly encrypted UKUSA communications that link back to computer data bases in the five agency headquarters. This is where all the intercepted messages selected by the Dictionaries end up. Each morning the specially "indoctrinated" signals intelligence analysts in Washington, Ottawa,Cheltenham, Canberra, and Wellington log on at their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system. After keying in their security passwords, they reach a directory that lists the different categories of intercept available in the data bases, each with a four-digit code. For instance, 1911 might be Japanese diplomatic cables from Latin America (handled by the Canadian CSE), 3848 might be political communications from and about Nigeria, and 8182 might be any messages about distribution of encryption technology.
They select their subject category, get a "search result" showing how many messages have been caught in the ECHELON net on that subject, and then the day's work begins. Analysts scroll through screen after screen of intercepted faxes, e-mail messages, etc. and, whenever a message appears worth reporting on, they select it from the rest to work on. If it is not in English, it is translated and then written into the standard format of intelligence reports produced anywhere within the UKUSA network either in entirety as a "report," or as a summary or "gist."
INFORMATION CONTROL
A highly organized system has been developed to control what is being searched for by each station and who can have access to it. This is at the heart of ECHELON operations and works as follows.
The individual station's Dictionary computers do not simply have a long list of keywords to search for. And they do not send all the information into some huge database that participating agencies can dip into as they wish. It is much more controlled.
The search lists are organized into the same categories, referred to by the four digit numbers. Each agency decides its own categories according to its responsibilities for producing intelligence for the network. For GCSB, this means South Pacific governments, Japanese diplomatic, Russian Antarctic activities, and so on.
The agency then works out about 10 to 50 keywords for selection in each category. The keywords include such things as names of people, ships, organizations, country names, and subject names. They also include the known telex and fax numbers and Internet addresses of any individuals, businesses, organizations, and government offices that are targets. These are generally written as part of the message text and so are easily recognized by the Dictionary computers.
The agencies also specify combinations of keywords to help sift out communications of interest. For example, they might search for diplomatic cables containing both the words "Santiago" and "aid," or cables containing the word "Santiago" but not "consul" (to avoid the masses of routine consular communications). It is these sets of words and numbers (and combinations), under a particular category, that get placed in the Dictionary computers. (Staff in the five agencies called Dictionary Managers enter and update the keyword search lists for each agency.)
The whole system, devised by the NSA, has been adopted completely by the other agencies. The Dictionary computers search through all the incoming messages and, whenever they encounter one with any of the agencies' keywords, they select it. At the same time, the computer automatically notes technical details such as the time and place of interception on the piece of intercept so that analysts reading it, in whichever agency it is going to, know where it came from, and what it is. Finally, the computer writes the four-digit code (for the category with the keywords in that message) at the bottom of the message's text. This is important. It means that when all the intercepted messages end up together in the database at one of the agency headquarters, the messages on a particular subject can be located again. Later, when the analyst using the Dictionary system selects the four- digit code for the category he or she wants, the computer simply searches through all the messages in the database for the ones which have been tagged with that number.
This system is very effective for controlling which agencies can get what from the global network because each agency only gets the intelligence out of the ECHELON system from its own numbers. It does not have any access to the raw intelligence coming out of the system to the other agencies. For example, although most of the GCSB's intelligence production is primarily to serve the UKUSA alliance, New Zealand does not have access to the whole ECHELON network. The access it does have is strictly controlled. A New Zealand intelligence officer explained: "The agencies can all apply for numbers on each other's Dictionaries. The hardest to deal with are the Americans. ... [There are] more hoops to jump through, unless it is in their interest, in which case they'll do it for you."
There is only one agency which, by virtue of its size and role within the alliance, will have access to the full potential of the ECHELON system the agency that set it up. What is the system used for? Anyone listening to official "discussion" of intelligence could be forgiven for thinking that, since the end of the Cold War, the key targets of the massive UKUSA intelligence machine are terrorism, weapons proliferation, and economic intelligence. The idea that economic intelligence has become very important, in particular, has been carefully cultivated by intelligence agencies intent on preserving their post-Cold War budgets. It has become an article of faith in much discussion of intelligence. However, I have found no evidence that these are now the primary concerns of organizations such as NSA.
QUICKER INTELLIGENCE,SAME MISSION
A different story emerges after examining very detailed information I have been given about the intelligence New Zealand collects for the UKUSA allies and detailed descriptions of what is in the yards-deep intelligence reports New Zealand receives from its four allies each week. There is quite a lot of intelligence collected about potential terrorists, and there is quite a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in GATT negotiations. But by far, the main priorities of the intelligence alliance continue to be political and military intelligence to assist the larger allies to pursue their interests around the world. Anyone and anything the particular governments are concerned about can become a target.
With capabilities so secret and so powerful, almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group of current "highly placed intelligence operatives" from the British GCHQ spoke to the London Observer: "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." They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the Observer reported: "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes it is called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to Third World aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organizations. "It is then possible to key in a trigger word which enables us to home in on the telex communications whenever that word appears," he said. "And we can read a pre-determined number of characters either side of the keyword."12 Without actually naming it, this was a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works. Again, what was not revealed in the publicity was that this is a UKUSA-wide system. The design of ECHELON means that the interception of these organizations could have occurred anywhere in the network, at any station where the GCHQ had requested that the four-digit code covering Third World aid be placed.
There's lots more on Eschelon out there.
Those who believe in comprimising their rights need to rethink what it means to be free.