ECHELON : Big Ears And Big Secrets

Big Ears And Big Secrets

European Officials Suspect the United States is Spying on
Its Allies

Europeans suspect the 27 radomes at a U.S. listening post at
Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, U.K., are being used for more than
just matters of international security. (Federation of
American Scientists)

By David Ruppe, ABCNEWS.com

New York, July 16 - Some of America's closest European
allies suspect a massive U.S. listening post, nestled on the
quiet, windswept moors of northern England, has secretly
been spying on European governments, businesses and
citizens.

The station, located at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, and
reportedly staffed with more than 1,000 Americans, was
created nearly 40 years ago to keep tabs on the Soviet
empire.

But since the Cold War, the station has continued to
expand, reportedly adding billions of dollars worth of
sophisticated listening equipment capable of simultaneously
intercepting millions of European telephone conversations,
faxes and e-mails.

The more than two-dozen "radomes" now visible at the
site - giant golf-ball like structures containing satellite
dishes and other listening equipment - are used to download
information from U.S. spy satellites and intercept
communications relayed through commercial satellites from
Europe, North Africa and western Asia, experts say.

The site is supposed to be used to monitor matters of
international security, such as weapons proliferation, drug
trafficking and terrorism. But according to numerous
European press reports, businesses, civil liberties groups,
and some government officials believe Menwith Hill and a
sister post at Bad Aibling, Germany are also targeting them.

Suspicions of Spying

A report released by the European Parliament in 1998 further
stirred up fears of illegal eavesdropping. It concluded
Menwith Hill and a related system of sites are "designed for
primarily non-military targets: governments, organizations
and businesses in virtually every country."

"French law forbids that kind of interception," says
David Nataf, a French lawyer for an organization
representing defense, aerospace and telecommunications
companies.

Since the report, legislators have pressured the French
government to explain what it was doing to counter Menwith
Hill's capabilities, Nataf says.

Through the UKUSA alliance, the U.S., Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand monitor phone, fax, e-mail and
other communications worldwide. Communications satellite
listening posts intercept signals passing through commercial
and other satellites. U.S. SIGINT (signals intelligence)
posts collect information intercepted by spy satellites.
(ABCNEWS.com/ Magellan Geographix)

In response, he says, the French government last March
issued a decree allowing the public to use more powerful
encryption, which would hamper eavesdropping on, say, e-mail
and telephone conversations.

Germany last month also announced it would relax
encryption controls and took the unusual step of announcing
it would promote the use of powerful encryption throughout
Germany - even though both moves will likely make
eavesdropping by law enforcement more difficult.

Neither government mentioned U.S. intelligence
gathering as a reason, though each alluded to a growing
threat of espionage against national businesses and
citizens.

In Britain, the government has been asked repeatedly to
provide assurances that operations at Menwith Hill are not
breaking the law.

In March, a British member of Parliament queried his
government on whether U.S. activities at Menwith Hill fully
comply with British law, U.S. law, European Union law, and
international law.

Not really answering the question, the government
responded: "The United States Visiting Forces
authorities . . . at RAF Menwith Hill, are required to
respect the laws of this country."

Damaging European Report

Then, in April, the European Parliament released a report
specifically charging that the U.S. government used
information gained through eavesdropping during
international trade negotiations, and that U.S. companies
used it, too, to defeat European competitors in major trade
competitions.

The report, authored by British investigative journalist
Duncan Campbell, cited several news accounts of alleged
economic espionage, including a 1995 story in The
Baltimore Sun.

"Former intelligence officials and other experts say tips
based on spying . . . regularly flow from the Commerce
Department to U.S. companies to help them win contracts
overseas," the Sun reported.

The report said the Commerce Department, which is
responsible for promoting U.S. trade, has an office
specially designated to receive information from the
intelligence community.

It also charged that Internet browsers and other
software shipped to Europe by American manufacturers are
intentionally disabled so secure communications can be read
by the U.S. National Security Agency, the cornerstone
organization of U.S. electronic intelligence, without
difficulty.

Since the report's release, Sweden's foreign minister
has said his government will investigate whether Swedish
companies were harmed by American spying. Another British
MP has called on his government to stop Menwith Hill from
spying on British companies and citizens.

The NSA refused to comment on Menwith Hill.

A Global System

The two European Parliament reports and two decades of
investigative reporting have established that Menwith Hill
and Bad Aibling form part of a scheme of more than a dozen
major listening posts operated around the world by the
United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand
through a semi-secret alliance called "UKUSA."

The sites are linked by a system known as "ECHELON,"
through which the countries collect, select and deliver to
each other information intercepted from communications
worldwide.

The NSA also refuses to discuss UKUSA.

Governments Silent

Still, despite all the suspicions, no European government
has, at least publicly, protested UKUSA's suspected
eavesdropping.

Were the issue to be raised at the national level, it
would likely occur through the European Union, says Simon
Davies, UK director of the watchdog group Privacy
International.

"If the level of commercial espionage is as it has been
suggested in the European Parliament's report, then both the
[European Union's] Maastricht and the Amsterdam treaties are
being fundamentally violated by Great Britain, and possibly
Germany," he says.

But because the United States shares some intelligence
with other governments, it is not clear what country would
bring a case, says Davies. "The Catch-22 is that governments
aren't going to take action on ECHELON or any of the other
NSA programs, because they are in such collusion with the
NSA."

Other countries outside the UKUSA alliance, such as
Russia, Germany and France, also are believed to operate
their own, albeit less sophisticated, eavesdropping
facilities around the globe, and so also may be reluctant to
point fingers.

Another problem, observers say, is that the ECHELON
program has never been acknowledged by the United States or
Britain. "France can't ask for an assurance on something
that is not official," says a French government official.

Exaggerated Concerns?

By the nature of National Security Agency's technology -
which sweeps in all manner of communications from commercial
satellites, spy satellites and other means-it is inevitable
the agency will intercept messages European companies and
citizens consider confidential, experts say.

But some are not convinced the agency is extracting,
analyzing and sharing with U.S. companies such information
to any significant degree, if at all.

"The concerns of the European community are a bit overblown,"
says James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, the
definitive book on the NSA.

"The [NSA is] not worried about some company in
Brussels. They're worried about the things you see on the
front page of The Washington Post and The New York Times,
terrorism, Kosovo."

Steve Aftergood, director of the project on government
secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in
Washington, agrees. "I don't know that to be the case,
namely, that industrial espionage is a policy of the U.S.
intelligence community."

The United States does collect "various kinds of
photographic, signals, political and other intelligence,"
Aftergood says, but he asserts the economic intelligence
collected by U.S. spy agencies focuses more on "what is
going on in markets, emerging markets, where resources are
being identified and discovered."

However, Duncan Campbell, the author of the European
Parliament's April report, doesn't believe any of that for a
minute. "Everybody does this. It's a surprise to me that
anybody thinks it's a surprise," he says.

"Yes, [U.S. spying] includes market trends but it doesn't
stop there. If you are going to determine economic trends
in a fast moving economic situation other than reading The
Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, how are
you going to do it? By spying on contractual
negotiations as they happen." - David Ruppe