U.S. Runs Global Eavesdropping System

The system was discovered by the non-profit research group known as the National Security Archive through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The National Security Archive obtained access to the documents when they were recently declassified and made available. "It's not a new policy," an NSA official said on condition of anonymity. "They [documents] were released through the normal FOIA process."

The documents themselves reveal shocking information as far as the breadth of the world that the system covers. The first document is dated September 3, 1991, setting out the mission of the U.S. Navy's electronic surveillance center at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, in conjunction with the 544th Information Group. The second document, dated June 15, 1995, refers to the introduction of Echelon units at air force bases around the world.

"Their significance is twofold," Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow at the archive, said. "First, those are official documents that confirm the existence of Echelon. Second, they indicate the link between Echelon and the intercept of civilian satellite communications traffic."

Knowledge of the system has caused a stir around the world, with the European Parliament complaining in 1998 that the Echelon system breaches the privacy of communications outside of the United States. The fear was that the NSA used the system for industrial espionage to benefit U.S. businesses. Examples of this are in Boeing's bid against Airbus for a Saudi contract in 1994 or Thomson-CSF's bid against Raytheon in Brazil during the same year.

With the possibility of the NSA tapping into this wide variety of communications outlets, experts felt that it was highly improbable that the U.S. government agency has the time or the interest to get itself involved that deeply into the affairs of people around the world. "Echelon targets a lot of communications that are not purely governmental, for instance in trade technologies," said Richelson, adding, "but the notion that they are bothering to treat every person's e-mail, and that they have the time and the interest to do any of that is very questionable," said Richelson.

Also, other experts said that the NSA is too busy trying to track down information about Osama bin Laden, missile activities in North Korea and testing of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan to get involved in international business affairs.

In spring of 1999, congressional committees opened hearings into accusations that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans. Although the idea of stopping the NSA from eavesdropping on the conversations of Americans would be a good thing, it would not solve the problem entirely.

If Congress restrained the NSA's spying activities, it would not put an end to Americans being monitored. Other countries would do it. Britain, for example, has a system that is parallel to that of the P-415 Echelon. The agency, called the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has the ability spy on American agencies and people in the same way that the Echelon system serves the United States. What it boils down to is that the United States is just another piece in the technological chess game that governments around the world use to get ahead of each other.