"There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well-prepared to meet the enemy"--former US president, George Washington.

For those who for the first time heard, in this column last month, about the ECHELON spy project, welcome to another treat--the final in this series. James Arthur

Baldwin, the great African-American writer (1924-87) once said: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." So let's gird our loins today and face the threat to our privacy posed by Echelon and its many tentacles, because the more we understand the system, the better we can protect ourselves.

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According to Patrick Poole, an Echelon expert: "The backbone of the network is the massive listening and reception stations directed at the Intelsat and Inmarsat satellites that are responsible for the vast majority of phone and fax communications traffic within and between countries and continents. These satellites carry primarily civilian traffic, but they do additionally carry diplomatic and governmental communications that are of particular interest to the UKUSA parties.

"Several dozen other radio listening posts operated by the UKUSA allies dot the globe as well, located at military bases on foreign soil and remote spy posts. Another major support for the Echelon system is the US spy satellite network and its corresponding reception bases scattered about the UKUSA empire. These space-based electronic 'vacuum cleaners' pick up radio, microwave, and cell phone traffic on the ground daily. The signals are fed through the massive super-computers of the US National Security Agency (NSA) to look for certain keywords called the Echelon dictionaries."

Poole continues: "It is important to note that very few messages and phone calls are actually transcribed and recorded by the system. The vast majority are filtered out after they are read or listened to by the system. Only those messages that produce keyword 'hits' are tagged for future analysis. Each station maintains a list of keywords (the "Dictionary") designated by each of the participating intelligence agencies. A "dictionary manager" from each of the respective agencies is responsible for adding, deleting or changing the keyword search criteria for their dictionaries at each of the stations. The difficulty is that the technology has now become so elaborate that what was originally a small client list has become the whole world."

For example, within Europe and Africa, all the intercepted signals are transferred via a strategic hub in London and Menwith Hill near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and then by satellite to the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade in Maryland, USA.

From small beginnings, Menwith Hill has grown to become the largest spy station in the world today, with over 25 satellite receiving (mushroom-like) dishes and 1,400 American NSA personnel working with 350 UK Ministry of Defence/GCHQ staff on site. The station is now capable of two million intercepts per hour.

In 1997, one shocking revelation about Menwith Hill was made public when two women peace activists appealed against their convictions for trespassing at the spy station. British Telecom (BT), the UK's No. 1 communications provider, was dragged into the case. Its head of emergency planning, R.G. Morris, testified in court, and people could hardly believe what he had to say. "At least three major domestic fibre-optic telephone trunk lines--each capable of carrying 100,000 calls simultaneously--were wired through Menwith Hill. This allows the NSA to tap into the very heart of the BT network," Morris said. The court was shocked! But more was to follow. The presiding judge, Jonathan Crabtree, instead of probing and getting more from Morris, rather rebuked BT for the revelation and stopped Morris from giving any further testimony in the case "for national security reasons".

Later, Duncan Campbell, the British journalist and Echelon specialist who wrote the two seed reports that formed the basis of the European Union (EU) Echelon Report of 2001 (see NA Oct), revealed that "the secret spying alliance between Menwith Hill and BT began in 1975 with a coaxial connection to the BT microwave facility at Hunter's Stone, four miles away from Menwith Hill--a connection maintained even today".

In the EU report, Campbell disclosed: "In Britain, all international telex links and telegram circuits passing in, out or through the country, were, and are, connected to a GCHQ site in central London, known as UKC100. In 1991, a British TV programme reported on the operations of one Dictionary computer at GCHQ's London station in Palmer Street, Westminster (station UKC100). The programme quoted GCHQ employees, who spoke on the record: 'Up on the fourth floor there, [GCHQ] has hired a group of carefully vetted British Telecom people. [Quoting the ex-GCHQ official]: It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies, all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take everything. They feed it into the Dictionary'."

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Other Echelon experts have confirmed that foreign communications to and from, or passing through the UK and USA have been intercepted for more than 80 years. African countries which have always routed, and still route, their communication systems via the former colonial capitals must take note. You don't have one secret to keep down there in Africa! All your messages are being listened to and intercepted!

Even fibre-optic cables that are more difficult to tap into are now somewhat vulnerable. In 1985, according to Campbell, "cable-tapping operations were extended into the Mediterranean to intercept cables linking Europe to West Africa. The US is the only naval power known to have deployed deep-sea technology for this purpose".

When it comes to the internet, Campbell says: "Because most of the world's internet capacity lies within the US or connects to the US, many communications in 'cyberspace' pass through intermediate sites within the US. Communications from Europe to and from Asia, Oceania, Africa or South America normally travel via the US. It is thus possible (and reasonable) for messages travelling a short distance in a busy European network to travel instead, for example, via internet exchanges in California. It follows that a large proportion of international communications on the internet will by the nature of the system pass through the US and thus be readily accessible to the NSA."

To me, what is really frightening is when Campbell says in the EU report: "At the present time, internet browsers and other software used in almost every personal computer in Europe is deliberately disabled such that 'secure' communications they send can, if collected, be read without difficulty by the NSA. US manufacturers are compelled to make these arrangements under US export rules."

He continues: "The same technique was re-used in 1995, when the NSA became concerned about cryptographic security systems being built into internet and email software by Microsoft, Netscape and Lotus. The companies agreed to adapt their software to reduce the level of security provided to users outside the US. In the case of Lotus Notes, which includes a secure email system, the built-in cryptographic system uses a 64-bit encryption key. This provides a medium level of security, which might at present only be broken by the NSA in months or years."

To get around the problem, "Lotus built in an NSA 'help information' to its Notes system, as the Swedish government discovered to its embarrassment in 1997. By then, the system was in daily use for confidential mail by Swedish MPs, 15,000 tax agency staff and 400,000 to 500,000 citizens," Campbell told the EU.

"Lotus Notes," he continued, "incorporates a 'workfactor reduction field' (WRF) into all emails sent by non-US users of the system. This device reduces NSA's difficulty in reading European and other email from an almost intractable problem to a few seconds work. The WRF broadcasts 24 of the 64 bits of the key used for each communication. The WRF is encoded, using a 'public key' system which can only be read by the NSA."

When a red-faced Swedish government belatedly discovered in 1997 that it had been short-changed, Lotus admitted to Svenska Dagbladet (the Swedish newspaper that reported the case in its 18 November 1997 issue, headlined: Secret Swedish email can be read by the USA): "The difference between the American Notes version and the export version lies in degrees of encryption. We deliver 64 bit keys to all customers, but 24 bits of those in the version that we deliver outside of the US are deposited with the American government."

"Similar arrangements," Campbell told the EU, "are built into all export versions of the web browsers manufactured by Microsoft and Netscape. Each uses a standard 128 bit key. In the export version, this key is not reduced in length. Instead, 88 bits of the key are broadcast with each message; 40 bits remain secret. It follows that almost every computer in Europe has, as a built-in standard feature, an NSA workfactor reduction system to enable the NSA (alone) to break the user's code and read secure messages."

Where are you George Orwell? Big Brother is really watching us! But it is not all doom and gloom. There is a way out. The experts say high capacity fibre-optic cables, despite the attempts at deep sea tapping, still offer a good level of protection. The African Union should, therefore, find a way of resuscitating the now dormant Africa One project that involved the wiring up of the continent via fibre-optic cables.

On the personal level, encryption must be the key. If you can't encrypt, don't put sensitive messages in your emails and faxes or talk about them on the phone. Communications via satellites are the most vulnerable. It may even be necessary to resort to the old-fashioned method of passing on sensitive information--person to person, mouth to ear. Don't forget that the Echelon states also engage in economic espionage for their companies.