from http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990523/news/news3.html
also see http://macosrumors.com/echelon.html
and
http://www.newsguy.com/%7Emayday/crypto/crypto1i.html

Sunday 23 May 1999

Careful, they might hear you

By DUNCAN CAMPBELL

Australia has become the first country openly to admit that it takes part in a
global electronic surveillance system that intercepts the private and commercial
international communications of citizens and companies from its own and other
countries. The disclosure is made today in Channel 9's Sunday program by Martin
Brady, director of the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra.

Mr Brady's decision to break ranks and officially admit the existence of a
hitherto unacknowledged spying organisation called UKUSA is likely to irritate
his British and American counterparts, who have spent the past 50 years trying to
prevent their own citizens from learning anything about them or their business of
``signals intelligence'' - ``sigint'' for short.

In his letter to Channel 9 published today, Mr Brady states that the Defence
Signals Directorate (DSD) ``does cooperate with counterpart signals intelligence
organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship".

In other statements which have now been made publicly available on the Internet
(www.dsd.gov.au), he also says that DSD's purpose ``is to support Australian
Government decision-makers and the Australian Defence Force with high-quality
foreign signals intelligence products and services. DSD (provides) important
information that is not available from open sources".

Together with the giant American National Security Agency (NSA) and its Canadian,
British, and New Zealand counterparts, DSD operates a network of giant, highly
automated tracking stations that illicitly pick up commercial satellite
communications and examine every fax, telex, e-mail, phone call, or computer data
message that the satellites carry.

The five signals intelligence agencies form the UKUSA pact. They are bound
together by a secret agreement signed in 1947 or 1948. Although its precise terms
have never been revealed, the UKUSA agreement provides for sharing facilities,
staff, methods, tasks and product between the participating governments.

Now, due to a fast-growing UKUSA system called Echelon, 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.

Australia's main contribution to this system is an ultra-modern intelligence base
at Kojarena, near Geraldton in Western Australia. The station was built in the
early 1990s. At Kojarena, four satellite tracking dishes intercept Indian and
Pacific Ocean communications satellites. The exact target of each dish is
concealed by placing them inside golfball like ``radomes''.

About 80 per cent of the messages intercepted at Kojarena are sent automatically
from its Dictionary computer to the CIA or the NSA, without ever being seen or
read in Australia. Although it is under Australian command, the station - like
its controversial counterpart at Pine Gap - employs American and British staff in
key posts.

Among the ``collection requirements" that the Kojarena Dictionary is told to look
for are North Korean economic, diplomatic and military messages and data,
Japanese trade ministry plans, and Pakistani developments in nuclear weapons
technology and testing. In return, Australia can ask for information collected at
other Echelon stations to be sent to Canberra.

A second and larger, although not so technologically sophisticated DSD satellite
station, has been built at Shoal Bay, Northern Territory. At Shoal Bay, nine
satellite tracking dishes are locked into regional communications satellites,
including systems covering Indonesia and south-west Asia.

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, near Blenheim, South Island. Codenamed ``Flintlock", the
Waihopai station is half the size of Kojarena and its sister NSA base at Yakima,
Washington, which also covers Pacific rim states. Waihopai's task is to monitor
two Pacific communications satellites, and intercept all communications from and
between the South Pacific islands.

Like other Echelon stations, the Waihopai installation is protected by
electrified fences, intruder detectors and infra-red cameras. A year after
publishing his book, Hager and New Zealand TV reporter John Campbell mounted a
daring raid on Waihopai, carrying 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.

Although Australia's DSD does not use the term ``Echelon'', Government sources
have confirmed to Channel 9 that Hager's description of the system is correct,
and that the Australia's Dictionary computer at Kojarena works in the same way as
the one in New Zealand.

Until this year, the US Government has tried to ignore the row over Echelon by
refusing to admit its existence. The Australian disclosures today make this
position untenable. US intelligence writer Dr Jeff Richelson has also obtained
documents under the US Freedom of Information Act, showing that a US Navy-run
satellite receiving station at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, is an Echelon site,
and that it collects intelligence from civilian satellites.

The station, south-west of Washington, lies in a remote area of the Shenandoah
Mountains. According to the released US documents, the station's job is ``to
maintain and operate an Echelon site''. Other Echelon stations are at Sabana
Seca, Puerto Rico, Leitrim, Canada and at Morwenstow and London in Britain.

Information is also fed into the Echelon system from taps on the Internet, and by
means of monitoring pods which are placed on undersea cables. Since 1971, the US
has used specially converted nuclear submarines to attach tapping pods to deep
underwater cables around the world.

The Australian Government's decision to be open about the UKUSA pact and the
Echelon spy system has been motivated partly by the need to respond to the
growing international concern about economic intelligence gathering, and partly
by DSD's desire to reassure Australians that its domestic spying activity is
strictly limited and tightly supervised.

According to DSD director Martin Brady, ``to ensure that (our) activities do not
impinge on the privacy of Australians, DSD operates under a detailed classified
directive approved by Cabinet and known as the Rules on Sigint and Australian
Persons".

Compliance with this Cabinet directive is monitored by the inspector-general of
security and intelligence, Mr Bill Blick. He says that ``Australian citizens can
complain to my office about the actions of DSD. And if they do so then I have the
right to conduct an inquiry."

But the Cabinet has ruled that Australians' international calls, faxes or e-mails
can be monitored by NSA or DSD in specified circumstances. These include ``the
commission of a serious criminal offence; a threat to the life or safety of an
Australian; or where an Australian is acting as the agent of a foreign power". Mr
Brady says that he must be given specific approval in every case. But deliberate
interception of domestic calls in Australia should be left to the police or ASIO.

Mr Brady claims that other UKUSA nations have to follow Australia's lead, and not
record their communications unless Australia has decided that this is required.
``Both DSD and its counterparts operate internal procedures to satisfy themselves
that their national interests and policies are respected by the others," he says.

So if NSA happens to intercept a message from an Australian citizen or company
whom DSD has decided to leave alone, they are supposed to strike out the name and
insert ``Australian national'' or ``Australian corporation'' instead. Or they
must destroy the intercept.

That's the theory, but specialists differ. According to Mr Hager, junior members
of UKUSA just can't say ``no''. ``... When you're a junior ally like Australia or
New Zealand, you never refuse what they ask for.''

There are also worries about what allies might get up to with information that
Australia gives them. When Britain was trying to see through its highly
controversial deal to sell Hawk fighters and other arms to Indonesia, staff at
the Office of National Assessments feared that the British would pass DSD
intelligence on East Timor to President Soeharto in order to win the lucrative
contract.

The Australian Government does not deny that DSD and its UKUSA partners are told
to collect economic and commercial intelligence. Australia, like the US, thinks
this is especially justified if other countries or their exporters are perceived
to be behaving unfairly. Britain recognises no restraint on economic intelligence
gathering. Neither does France.

According to the former Canadian agent Mike Frost, it would be ``nave" for
Australians to think that the Americans were not exploiting stations like
Kojarena for economic intelligence purposes. ``They have been doing it for
years," he says. ``Now that the Cold War is over, the focus is towards economic
intelligence. Never ever over-exaggerate the power that these organisations have
to abuse a system such as Echelon. Don't think it can't happen in Australia. It
does.''


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