Australia, one of five countries running the controversial Echelon global surveillance network, has become the first to admit it. The Australian government has confirmed that the system spies on the international communications of it own and other countries' citizens. As part of their disclosures, Australian intelligence officials have also published details of secret government orders which restrict spying on Australian citizens.
Besides requiring European countries to start dealing seriously with the threat of economic espionage through the Echelon system, the Australian disclosures should force other nations to review whether the protections for their citizens' privacy matches up to the Australian standards - if they exist at all.
In a series of letters to Australia's Channel Nine "Sunday" programme, revealed this week, the head of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), Martin Brady, states that DSD "does co-operate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship". The contents of the letters were disclosed after the Nine Network transmitted a one hour documentary on Echelon, last Sunday.
The UKUSA agreement binds together the giant US National Security Agency with the signals intelligence organisations of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Although its precise terms have never been revealed, the UKUSA agreement provides for sharing facilities, staff, methods, tasks and product between participating governments.
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Under the Echelon system, millions of messages are automatically intercepted every hour, and checked according to criteria supplied by intelligence agencies and governments in all five UKUSA countries. The intercepted signals are passed through a computer system called the Dictionary, which checks each new message or call against thousands of "collection" requirements. The Dictionaries then send the messages into the spy agencies' equivalent of the Internet, making them accessible all over the world.
Satellite control centre in the desert
DSD runs some of the world's most famous spying bases, including Pine Gap, an isolated satellite control centre near Alice Springs in the middle of the hot central Australian desert "outback". For more than 30 years, Pine Gap has controlled the CIA's electronic listening satellites, called Rhyolite, Aquacade and Magnum.
Australians have long suspected that the CIA-run station spied on their communications. The use and control of Pine Gap by the CIA was a central issue in the overthrow of radical labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. The Australian government now claims that after years of controversy, Australians are in charge. They also say that a former "American-only" communications centre on the base has been closed down, and that Australian staff now see everything the CIA satellites do.
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Director Brady's decision to break ranks with the US and officially admit the existence of the hitherto officially unacknowledged spying organisation called UKUSA is likely to irritate his British and American counterparts, who have spent the last 50 years trying to prevent their own citizens from learning anything about them or their business of "signals intelligence" - "sigint" for short.
International and governmental concern about the UKUSA Echelon system has grown dramatically since 1996, when New Zealand writer Nicky Hager revealed intimate details of how it operated.
New Zealand runs an Echelon satellite interception site at Waihopai. A year after publishing his book, Hager and New Zealand TV reporter John Campbell mounted a daring raid on Waihopai, and sneaked inside the base, complete with a TV camera and a stepladder. From open, high windows, they then filmed into and inside its operations centre.
They were astonished to see that it operated completely automatically. Lights flashed on long racks of electronic equipment as messages were analysed and sent on. Rows of computer monitors sat unattended, as the codeword "Envoy" rotated round the screens.
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The NSA and Domestic Espionage (Part One)
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