Australia & New Zealand named in Echelon spy ring Written on Monday, May 28 @ 07:47:28 EDT Topic: General News The Australian news service SMH reports that Australia has been officially identified, with the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand as partners in a shadowy and controversial global eavesdropping network called Echelon. Commercially relevant communications intelligence was passed by the Australian Defence Signals Directorate "Targets of such activity have included Thomson-CSF, and trade negotiations with Japanese purchasers of coal and iron ore," the report noted. The report identified a high powered "Dictionary" computer at Kojarena in Western Australia and at Waihopai in New Zealand which searched for keywords in thousands of diplomatic, business and personal messages every day. Australia named in trade spy ring A report by the Members of the European Parliament, leaked to The Guardian and expected to be released next week, found overwhelming evidence that the Echelon electronic spying system had existed for at least 20 years. The report said Echelon, originally set up at the beginning of the Cold War with a military and diplomatic function, was now an integrated system of spy satellites and listening posts used "to intercept private and commercial communications and not military communications". The leaked report says individuals and businesses will be urged to encode all electronic communications to protect their emails and faxes from interception. Existence of the organisation has been referred to before and is the subject of a book on US and British intelligence links, but this is the first time Echelon has been identified officially. The European Parliament has long complained that non-English-speaking countries have been at the losing end of trade espionage and the exchange of commercial intelligence. The investigation was prompted by claims that the US had used Echelon to steal sensitive information from European competitors, including a multi-billion- dollar tender by Airbus Industrie for the supply of aircraft to Saudi Arabia. The leaked document admits, however, that it has been unable to find evidence of any systematic use of Echelon for industrial espionage. In a veiled warning to Britain, the only EU Echelon member, the document warned that any state involved in an electronic eavesdropping system spying on European citizens and companies would be in breach of the European convention on human rights and EU law. It described as "unsatisfactory and regrettable" the lack of democratic supervision of secret services in several member states. An earlier European Parliamentary report, tabled in May 1999, explained how, in Australia, commercially relevant communications intelligence was passed by the Australian Defence Signals Directorate to the Office of National Assessments, which considered whether, and if so where, to disseminate it. "Staff there may pass information to Australian companies if they believe that an overseas nation has or seeks an unfair trade advantage," the report said. "Targets of such activity have included Thomson-CSF, and trade negotiations with Japanese purchasers of coal and iron ore," the report noted. The report identified a high powered "Dictionary" computer at Kojarena in Western Australia and at Waihopai in New Zealand which searched for keywords in thousands of diplomatic, business and personal messages every day. A spokesman for the Defence Department said last night that there was a long- standing position of "no comment" on any intelligence-related matters.
