Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 7. Mars 2004 / Time Line March 7, 2004
Version 3.503/07/2004
Canada listens to world as partner in spy system - Denmark in
Echelon
By LYNDA HURST
Toronto Star (Canada)
The high-tech Echelon system is operated by five nations known as
the UKUSA alliance: the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand.
Referred to in some circles as the "Anglo-Saxon Mafia," the
U.S.-led network has existed for 58 years, emerging out of the
Allies' successful signals-intelligence, or "sigint," operations
during World War II.
Its original primary job was to spy on the Soviet Union and win the
Cold War. Today, it is counterterrorism.
In a series of still-classified bilateral agreements - each country
has a deal with the U.S. - UKUSA members pledged to jointly acquire
and share all signals and communications intelligence. Common
procedures, targets, equipment and methods were spelled out, along
with a commitment to secrecy about the alliance's operations.
The world was split into regions: Britain got Africa and Europe
east to the Urals; Australia and New Zealand got Oceania; and the
U.S. got the Soviet Union and wherever else it wanted.
As of 1946, Canada, through the newly created Communications
Security Establishment (CSE), would home in on the northern
latitudes and polar regions. It had shown its expertise there
during the war.
"In the war, Canada had the best antennas for listening to the
Soviet Union," says John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie
Institute, an anti-global violence think tank in Toronto. "And we
had prime listening posts, such as Alert."
Canadian Forces Station Alert, on Ellesmere Island in present-day
Nunavut, is still an important ground station in the Canada's
network of "sigint" posts. It mainly intercepts satellite military
communications.
The other three are CFS Leitrim, south of Ottawa, which intercepts
diplomatic traffic in and out of Canada; CFS Masset off the coast
of B.C., and Canadian Forces Base Gander, Nfld., both of which
primarily tap into maritime transmissions.
The high-tech Echelon listening system was devised in 1971 by the
American National Security Agency (NSA), which was, and remains,
the dominant UKUSA member and contributor of technology.
Today, it is believed to operate 120 intercept stations in up to a
dozen countries; their giant antennas all point at the
communications satellites continuously circling the planet.
With the end of the Cold War, Echelon's priorities moved to
monitoring rogue states and international organized crime. Since
the 9/11 attacks, however, its emphasis is on fighting terrorism,
and all that comes under that rubric - attitudes inside the U.N.
Security Council toward the Iraq War, for example.
The intelligence gleaned is shared among the five alliance partners
and often with other participants: Germany, Norway, Denmark, and
Turkey have all signed secret "third-party" UKUSA agreements.
Though Echelon is by far the biggest monitoring network in the
world, other nations have their own satellite-based listening
systems. Russia, China, France, Israel, India and Pakistan all use
"sigint" as a major source of intelligence.
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