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                Date: 2000-05-13
                 
                 
                Willkomen bei ECHELON
                
                 
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      Irland ist neues Mitglied in der unsichtbaren Loge ECHELON.  
Die gesetzlich dazu eigentlich nicht ermächtigten Lausch-  
und Spionage/brüder müssen sich weltweit offenbar  
zusammen tun, um der rasch wachsenden  
Weltkommunikation ihre Überwachungssysteme nach- bzw.  
voraus zu bauen. 
 
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Below is the text of an article that appeared in an Irish news  
magazine, "The Phoenix", dated May 5th 2000, claiming that  
Ireland has become part of the ECHELON organisation.  
 
Phoenix magazine has an excellent reputation in Ireland for  
investigative journalism, usually uncovering and reporting  
political stories long before their mainstream counterparts. I 
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The Phoenix, May 5, 2000, Vol. 18 No. 9, Pgs 20-21  
 
Goldhawk - HUSHHUSH!  
 
PADDIES JOIN GLOBAL SPY NETWORK  
 
THE ABOLITION of Ireland's neutral status has been  
accelerated by a secret agreement with the American and  
British governments - without even a nod in the direction of  
the Oireachtas or the Irish public - to join a state-of-the-art,  
global telecommunications spying apparatus. This is revealed  
in a special European comission report on the Anglo- 
American integrated, world-wide network of electronic  
initelligence collection platforms (120 satellites and ground  
stations) code-named ECHELON. It produces military,  
political and economic intelligence by intercepting  
telecommunications and clandestinely plundering computer  
files. 
 
In June, Ireland will become part of a secret alliance, joining Canada, Australia and New Zealand to help America's NSA (National Security Agency) and Britain's GCHQ (Government Communications HQ) communications spy syste 
ms to snatch computer secrets from all over the world.  
 
Spy bosses in Washington and London sucked Ireland into ECHELON with fascinating ingenuity. First approaches came from the FBI in 1993 to Garda HQ and the Department of Justice to join a mysterious body called ILETS (Inte 
rnational Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar). So closely involved has Ireland become with ILETS that in 1997 Dublin Castle was chosen as the venue for a meeting of ILETS and ECHELON experts. Information about ILE 
TS is not made available on "security" grounds. So secret are the arrangements about ILETS that the European Parliament report describes it as "a previously unknown international organisation."  
 
Ostensibly, ILETS is about co-ordinating international phone tapping by police agencies to comabt organised crime and drugs smuggling. Most people are against crime - the way they are against sin - and claiming that ECHEL 
ON is about controlling crime is a clever ploy. But ECHELON is not a police surveillance system - it is run by the US and British intelligence services for military, political and economic reasons - as the mission stateme 
nts of both the NSA and GCHQ make clear.  
 
ECHELON uses the same basic technology as the Internet, enhanced by gigantic computers, to trawl through millions of phone calls, e-mail and faxes searching for key characteristics. It has been compared by experts in Brus 
sels with a series of giant vacumm cleaners in space which suck up communications and re-transmit them to fixed points where they are monitored by super-computers and sifted for specific intelligence.  
 
The ECHELON spies on friend and foe alike (Robert Maxwell and Tiny Rowland where among its targets). While the CIA claims it is used for monitoring the Russian Mafia or mad Muslim Osama Bin Laden and his embassy-bombing c 
hums in Afghanistan the reality is that ECHELON is about keeping America great (and Britain hanging on its coat-tails) through stealing information from economic rivals by hidden electronic and non-traceable means.  
 
ECHELON is the 21st century grandchild of a wartime radio monitoring network spawned by the secret 1941 agreement - the UK-USA Communications Intelligence Pact. During the Cold War the UK-USA Pact incorporated Canada, Aus 
tralia and New Zealand using old technology to monitor multi- 
channel telegraph systems and short wave radio. But in a  
series of technological leaps, this scattered network used for  
spying on the Soviets and their allies metamorphosed into  
ECHELON.  
 
Two things have created this super-spy web - the  
development of ultra-fast, huge-capacity computer systems  
and the now common use of microwave radio links to carry  
burgeoning telecommunications traffic throughout the world. It  
was once a "passive" system which merely monitored target  
traffic. But ECHELON now has an "active" component which  
allows NSA or GCHQ analysts to covertly "hack" into  
information on the hard disks of computers linked into any  
telecommunications system, including the Internet.  
 
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edited by Harkank 
published on: 2000-05-13 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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