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## author : smtakula@hotmail.com
## date : 26.05.99
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from http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990523/news/news3.html
Careful, they might hear you By DUNCAN CAMPBELL
Australia has become the first
country openly to admit that it
takes part in a global electronic
surveillance system that intercepts
the private and commercial
international communications of
citizens and companies from its own
and other countries. The disclosure
is made today in Channel 9's Sunday
program by Martin Brady, director of
the Defence Signals Directorate in
Canberra.
Mr Brady's decision to break ranks
and officially admit the existence
of a hitherto unacknowledged spying
organisation called UKUSA is likely
to irritate his British and American
counterparts, who have spent the
past 50 years trying to prevent
their own citizens from learning
anything about them or their
business of ``signals intelligence''
- ``sigint'' for short.
In his letter to Channel 9 published
today, Mr Brady states that the
Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)
``does cooperate with counterpart
signals intelligence organisations
overseas under the UKUSA
relationship".
In other statements which have now
been made publicly available on the
Internet (www.dsd.gov.au), he also
says that DSD's purpose ``is to
support Australian Government
decision-makers and the Australian
Defence Force with high-quality
foreign signals intelligence
products and services. DSD
(provides) important information
that is not available from open
sources".
Together with the giant American
National Security Agency (NSA) and
its Canadian, British, and New
Zealand counterparts, DSD operates a
network of giant, highly automated
tracking stations that illicitly
pick up commercial satellite
communications and examine every
fax, telex, e-mail, phone call, or
computer data message that the
satellites carry.
The five signals intelligence
agencies form the UKUSA pact. They
are bound together by a secret
agreement signed in 1947 or 1948.
Although its precise terms have
never been revealed, the UKUSA
agreement provides for sharing
facilities, staff, methods, tasks
and product between the
participating governments.
Now, due to a fast-growing UKUSA
system called Echelon, millions of
messages are automatically
intercepted every hour, and checked
according to criteria supplied by
intelligence agencies and
governments in all five UKUSA
countries. The intercepted signals
are passed through a computer system
called the Dictionary, which checks
each new message or call against
thousands of ``collection''
requirements. The Dictionaries then
send the messages into the spy
agencies' equivalent of the
Internet, making them accessible all
over the world.
Australia's main contribution to
this system is an ultra-modern
intelligence base at Kojarena, near
Geraldton in Western Australia. The
station was built in the early
1990s. At Kojarena, four satellite
tracking dishes intercept Indian and
Pacific Ocean communications
satellites. The exact target of each
dish is concealed by placing them
inside golfball like ``radomes''.
About 80 per cent of the messages
intercepted at Kojarena are sent
automatically from its Dictionary
computer to the CIA or the NSA,
without ever being seen or read in
Australia. Although it is under
Australian command, the station -
like its controversial counterpart
at Pine Gap - employs American and
British staff in key posts.
Among the ``collection requirements"
that the Kojarena Dictionary is told
to look for are North Korean
economic, diplomatic and military
messages and data, Japanese trade
ministry plans, and Pakistani
developments in nuclear weapons
technology and testing. In return,
Australia can ask for information
collected at other Echelon stations
to be sent to Canberra.
A second and larger, although not so
technologically sophisticated DSD
satellite station, has been built at
Shoal Bay, Northern Territory. At
Shoal Bay, nine satellite tracking
dishes are locked into regional
communications satellites, including
systems covering Indonesia and
south-west Asia.
International and governmental
concern about the UKUSA Echelon
system has grown dramatically since
1996, when New Zealand writer Nicky
Hager revealed intimate details of
how it operated. New Zealand runs an
Echelon satellite interception site
at Waihopai, near Blenheim, South
Island. Codenamed ``Flintlock", the
Waihopai station is half the size of
Kojarena and its sister NSA base at
Yakima, Washington, which also
covers Pacific rim states.
Waihopai's task is to monitor two
Pacific communications satellites,
and intercept all communications
from and between the South Pacific
islands.
Like other Echelon stations, the
Waihopai installation is protected
by electrified fences, intruder
detectors and infra-red cameras. A
year after publishing his book,
Hager and New Zealand TV reporter
John Campbell mounted a daring raid
on Waihopai, carrying a TV camera
and a stepladder. >From open, high
windows, they then filmed into and
inside its operations centre.
They were astonished to see that it
operated completely automatically.
Although Australia's DSD does not
use the term ``Echelon'', Government
sources have confirmed to Channel 9
that Hager's description of the
system is correct, and that the
Australia's Dictionary computer at
Kojarena works in the same way as
the one in New Zealand.
Until this year, the US Government
has tried to ignore the row over
Echelon by refusing to admit its
existence. The Australian
disclosures today make this position
untenable. US intelligence writer Dr
Jeff Richelson has also obtained
documents under the US Freedom of
Information Act, showing that a US
Navy-run satellite receiving station
at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, is an
Echelon site, and that it collects
intelligence from civilian
satellites.
The station, south-west of
Washington, lies in a remote area of
the Shenandoah Mountains. According
to the released US documents, the
station's job is ``to maintain and
operate an Echelon site''. Other
Echelon stations are at Sabana Seca,
Puerto Rico, Leitrim, Canada and at
Morwenstow and London in Britain.
Information is also fed into the
Echelon system from taps on the
Internet, and by means of monitoring
pods which are placed on undersea
cables. Since 1971, the US has used
specially converted nuclear
submarines to attach tapping pods to
deep underwater cables around the
world.
The Australian Government's decision
to be open about the UKUSA pact and
the Echelon spy system has been
motivated partly by the need to
respond to the growing international
concern about economic intelligence
gathering, and partly by DSD's
desire to reassure Australians that
its domestic spying activity is
strictly limited and tightly
supervised.
According to DSD director Martin
Brady, ``to ensure that (our)
activities do not impinge on the
privacy of Australians, DSD operates
under a detailed classified
directive approved by Cabinet and
known as the Rules on Sigint and
Australian Persons".
Compliance with this Cabinet
directive is monitored by the
inspector-general of security and
intelligence, Mr Bill Blick. He says
that ``Australian citizens can
complain to my office about the
actions of DSD. And if they do so
then I have the right to conduct an
inquiry."
But the Cabinet has ruled that
Australians' international calls,
faxes or e-mails can be monitored by
NSA or DSD in specified
circumstances. These include ``the
commission of a serious criminal
offence; a threat to the life or
safety of an Australian; or where an
Australian is acting as the agent of
a foreign power". Mr Brady says that
he must be given specific approval
in every case. But deliberate
interception of domestic calls in
Australia should be left to the
police or ASIO.
Mr Brady claims that other UKUSA
nations have to follow Australia's
lead, and not record their
communications unless Australia has
decided that this is required.
``Both DSD and its counterparts
operate internal procedures to
satisfy themselves that their
national interests and policies are
respected by the others," he says.
So if NSA happens to intercept a
message from an Australian citizen
or company whom DSD has decided to
leave alone, they are supposed to
strike out the name and insert
``Australian national'' or
``Australian corporation'' instead.
Or they must destroy the intercept.
That's the theory, but specialists
differ. According to Mr Hager,
junior members of UKUSA just can't
say ``no''. ``... When you're a
junior ally like Australia or New
Zealand, you never refuse what they
ask for.''
There are also worries about what
allies might get up to with
information that Australia gives
them. When Britain was trying to see
through its highly controversial
deal to sell Hawk fighters and other
arms to Indonesia, staff at the
Office of National Assessments
feared that the British would pass
DSD intelligence on East Timor to
President Soeharto in order to win
the lucrative contract.
The Australian Government does not
deny that DSD and its UKUSA partners
are told to collect economic and
commercial intelligence. Australia,
like the US, thinks this is
especially justified if other
countries or their exporters are
perceived to be behaving unfairly.
Britain recognises no restraint on
economic intelligence gathering.
Neither does France.
According to the former Canadian
agent Mike Frost, it would be
``nave" for Australians to think
that the Americans were not
exploiting stations like Kojarena
for economic intelligence purposes.
``They have been doing it for
years," he says. ``Now that the Cold
War is over, the focus is towards
economic intelligence. Never ever
over-exaggerate the power that these
organisations have to abuse a system
such as Echelon. Don't think it
can't happen in Australia. It
does.''
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