-Caveat Lector-
Echelon satellites can eavesdrop on your telephone calls,
faxes and e-mail. Tempest looks through walls to see
what is on your TV and PC.
BY JIM WILSON, Illustration by Paul DiMare
The secret is out. Two powerful intelligence gathering tools that the
United States created to eavesdrop on Soviet leaders and to track KGB
spies are now being used to monitor Americans. One system, known as
Echelon, intercepts and analyzes telephone calls, faxes and e-mail sent to
and from the United States. The other system, Tempest, can secretly read
the displays on personal computers, cash registers and automatic teller
machines, from as far as a half mile away. Although the inner workings of
both systems remain classified, fueling exaggerated claims about their
capabilities on Internet sites, credible detail has at last begun to emerge.It
comes chiefly from foreign governments that began investigating
American surveillance activities after discovering that the Echelon system
had been used to spy on their defense contractors. From those documents
it is possible to obtain the first accurate view of the threats high-tech
spying poses to our right to privacy. We think you will agree it also creates
a real and present threat to our freedom.
No Such Agency
Echelon is perhaps the best
known and least understood
spy tool. Although it is run
by the U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA), and paid for
almost entirely by American
taxpayers, it is a
multinational spying effort
that involves the United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and, to a lesser
degree, Italy and Turkey. It wasn’t until 1957, five years after NSA was
created, that the federal government would admit that it even existed.
Simply put, the agency’s job is to eavesdrop and share its notes. On a
day-to-day basis, this means intercepting radio signals, unscrambling
encrypted messages, and distributing the resulting information to a host of
espionage organizations. Its chief “customer” is the Central Intelligence
Agency.
The intelligence gathering network that captures the
electronic signals that NSA needs to do its work is
popularly called Echelon. NSA does not use this
term, and it is generally believed the word Echelon
is part of a two-word code name for the space-based
part of the system. Whatever the terminology,
Echelon, like NSA itself, is the outgrowth of a
World War II British-American intelligence sharing
agreement. During the Cold War the United States and its allies began to
eavesdrop on overseas phone calls in an effort to catch Soviet spies. This
was done by intercepting the signals from the microwave relay stations
that formed the backbone of long-distance telephone systems.
When the telecommunications satellite industry took off, NSA followed it
into space by building ground-based and orbiting listening posts, hence the
need for participation by Australia, New Zealand, Italy and Turkey. Based
on what isknown about the location of Echelon bases and satellites, it is
estimated that there is a 90 percent chance that NSA is listening when you
pick up the phone to place or answer an overseas call. In theory, but
obviously not in practice, Echelon’s supercomputers are so fast, they can
identify Saddam Hussein by the sound of his voice the moment he begins
speaking on the phone.
The power to eavesdrop on specific individuals nearly proved to be NSA’s
undoing. A commission organized by President Gerald Ford discovered
that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were unable to resist the
temptation of using NSA to amass files on more than 7000 U.S. citizens
and 1000 organizations, mostly those opposed to the Vietnam War. In
1975, Congress decided it had had enough, and created the Select
Intelligence Committee to keep watch over NSA activities.
With the Cold War over, and fearful of being embarrassed by revelations
about Echelon’s espionage excesses, high-ranking officials in Australia
and New Zealand began going public with details.
How Echelon Works
Slowly the pieces of the Echelon puzzle began to fall into place. The
operation proved to be more extensive than anyone had thought. From
foreign governments, Americans learned that NSA not only had listening
posts in West Virginia, Colorado and the state of Washington, but that its
headquarters in Fort George Meade, Md., was that state’s largest
employer. NSA won’t say how many people it currently employs, but hints
that if it were an industrial company it would be on the Fortune 500 list.
The electronic signals that Echelon satellites and listening posts capture
are separated into two streams, depending upon whether the
communications are sent with or without encryption. Scrambled signals
are converted into their original language, and then, along with selected
“clear” messages, are checked by a piece of software called Dictionary.
There are actually several localized “dictionaries.” The U.K. version, for
example, is packed with
names and slang used by
the Irish Republican
Army. Messages with
trigger words are
dispatched to their
respective agencies.
Tempest
As leaks about Echelon
began to spout like water
around the little Dutch
boy, the European
Parliament started a
high-profile
investigation. It found the
U.S. government had used
Echelon to spy on two
European companies,
Airbus Industrie and
Thomson-CSF. The U.S.
State Department, a
longtime NSA
“customer,” threw in the
towel. Last year, it
authorized Washington
lawyer and former CIA
director James Woolsey
to answer reporters’
questions about the
charges. Woolsey
acknowledged the
episodes, explaining they were aimed at discouraging bribery. A week
later, in an opinion page article in The Wall Street Journal, he at long last
identified Echelon by name.
In the past, the acknowledgement of an intelligence asset has usually meant
it had become obsolete. Security experts tell POPULAR MECHANICS that
the unanticipated growth of Internet traffic may be more than Echelon can
handle. And, NSA has in fact confirmed its computers were shut down for
three days last year.
Some believe the recent candor is because NSA is shifting to a new, more
tightly focused espionage strategy, using a ground-based technology
code-named Tempest. The underlying theory is that electronic circuits
create “compromising emanations.” Not to be confused with interference,
these are subtle but measurable changes in surrounding
systems—comparable to the dip in line voltage that occurs when the light
in your refrigerator goes on as you open the door.
NSA is said to have perfected Tempest to the point at which it can
reconstruct the images that appear on a video display or TV screen. We
have posted the declassified NSA report on Tempest at
www.popularmechanics.com//popmech/sci/0104STMIBP.html. Take care
when you read it. You never know who might be looking over your
shoulder, from a half mile away.
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