“NSA
documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden confirm the
existence of ECHELON, a secret surveillance network spying on
satellite communications. Set up by the US and the UK in the 1960s,
ECHELON was the precursor of today’s global dragnet. The
revelations vindicated the work of British investigative journalist
Duncan Campbell, who first wrote about ECHELON’s existence in 1988
and continued writing about the program for the next 27 years.”
“NSA
newsletters cited by The Intercept confirm that the program was set
up in 1966, just a year after the first communication satellites were
launched into Earth orbit. The dragnet was codenamed FROSTING, and
consisted of two sub-programs. While TRANSIENT was targeting Soviet
Union’s satellite communications, Western satellite signals were to
be harvested by ECHELON. Eventually, all satellite surveillance was
merged into FORNSAT, a global program exposed by the Snowden
revelations.”
“The
first ECHELON receivers were set up at Bude, in Cornwall, for
monitoring signals sent by Intelsat satellites over the Atlantic. A
secondary site at Yakima, near Seattle in the northwestern US, became
operational in 1974 and intercepted communications over the Pacific.
Both stations were managed from the NSA headquarters, using
communications networks called STARBURST and OCEANFRONT, [...]
Despite the repeated denials of ECHELON’s existence by GCHQ and
NSA, the European Parliament launched an investigation in 1999.
Internal NSA reports contained in the Snowden Archive show NSA
officials comparing the European investigators to pigs wallowing in
dirt. The EP’s final report recommended extensive measures to curb
mass surveillance. It was passed on September 5, 2001.”
“In
June 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden decided to blow the whistle
on the agency’s mass surveillance of Americans, handing over an
archive of documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald. When the US
government revoked his passport, stranding him in Moscow’s airport,
Snowden applied for asylum in Russia, where he has lived since.”
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