The initial funding for Echelon, and for much of the other work that these security agencies carried out, was authorised at the time of the Cold War: when the Soviet Union was perceived as a threat to the West. That threat of course diminished, and so did the need for such a system: and for such funding.
The system expanded when the new threats of organised crime and drugs were targetted. The report by Steve Wright to the European Parliament suggests that there has been a move in targetting towards greater emphasis on not simply the criminal element but peripheral groups: "tracking certain social classes and races. . . . "
However, instead of concentrating wholly on crime and criminal activity, the capacity of the system is being used to monitor anyone, or any organisation, seen as a threat. In this way, Greenpeace and Amnesty International are regularly monitored (Village Voice). As many ordinary people might wish to communicate with these organisations, their communications could be subject to analysis.
As other sources make clear, this has been compounded by the way in which certain political monitoring has also taken place. Two of Prime Minister Thatcher's cabinet members were monitored through the Echelon system--the Canadian's obliged to give Britain deniability (Channel Nine); and Margaret Trudeau, the wife of the former Canadian PM, was also a subject of Echelon surveillance.
The ending of the Cold War has caused a switch in national motivations from the capitalist/communist rivalries, to a new international economic battlefront, in which, as Alvin Toffler predicted, information is the new power. There is growing evidence that much of the surveillance now being carried out by the UKUSA group is economic in nature; and as the sharing of the data is selective (depending on the dictionary programming), some may be used against member countries.
It is the countries that are not within that alliance, however, which are at the greatest risk from this international abuse of privacy. Observers note that information from Asian companies is particularly of value to the United States as well as to the other UKUSA group members.
Thai business is therefore put at a disadvantage with some Fortune 500 companies having prior knowledge of bidding and other strategic economic information. Despite the metaphor, the Internet is not web-shaped. It has its centre in the United States, in Virginia, which is close to Washington, to the Sugar Grove monitoring station and to Fort Meade, the headquarters of the NSA. Owing to the way in which the Internet was created, Internet connections usually go via the United States rather than direct from country to country.
International email from Thailand may be transmitted by satellite (monitored in Australia) via the United States to its destination. Sometimes, it is sent through submarine cable which is also subject to Echelon monitoring. Your e-mail, whether it be a multi-million baht business deal, a political gamble, a letter to your mother, protestations of love, or a threat to blow up your grandmother, is all monitored. Perhaps it may also be analysed and read.
The only way to ensure that your messaging is secure is to encode it with a public key encryption program.
In normal text form, you have no secrets from these so-called security agencies. Anything above the industry standard 56-bit encryption is considered munitions. The NSA can crack 56-bit encryption. It is only the US which considers 56-bit encryption to be "munitions"
It is interesting to note that the same agencies responsible for Echelon, have been at the forefront of moves to prevent export, from the United States of full 128-bit encryption. President Clinton recently renewed the ban on export under State of Emergency powers.
As Theerawut Khoman told us recently in his article on encryption, this obstruction has now been struck down by the US courts, although little change has yet been seen. A copy of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) may be downloaded from a site in Norway . To get round the export embargo the code was taken out of the US in book form, the book was scannned with OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and the code was then compiled.
Another method of sending secure communications may be found at Hushmail which is secure if both parties have accounts at this site.
This last site is demonstration that whatever the bureaucrats do individuals manage to get round in the interests of privacy and free speech. If Thai business is going to be allowed fair competition in World Markets, and local users are to maintain their privacy, they must ensure that proper encryption is used when necessary.
Members of the CIA and the NSA are nothing more than bureaucrats. But they work in such a closed environment that contact with the public is at a minimum and tainted by mistrust. The mistrust, however, must be reflected by public concern that a system such as Echelon is being abused in terms of invasion of privacy and spying on business communications throughout the World.
For further information, e-mail to Graham K. Rogers.