So we know its history and we have some insight into what it does and how it works. But many questions remain. Who is the US spying on? Who are their partners spying on? Aside from these questions, how does one maintain one's privacy? For the US, there is the cold comfort of the Constitution, which through varied and abstract means manages to dictate that the NSA is not to compromise the privacy of a citizen. However, the technology is in place, and the abuses are barely a button away.

Encryption is a countermeasure that has been used since pre-Roman times. Julius Caesar used a basic encryption technique - switching letters in the alphabet two or three steps away. 'A' would become 'C', while 'B' would become 'D', 'D' becoming 'F', and so on. Naturally, decryption has been an art as long as encryption has. Today, huge number-crunching super-computers crack ciphers by generating their supposed accompanying plain-text and matching, in order of 'likeliest' to 'least-likely' until only a few possible results remain. It's not an economical process, and more complex encryption methods can make it a very lengthy trial. However, it's always a possibility. It's likely that encrypted messages from marked sources are analyzed and decoded, while many are ignored, as they don't trigger any key-words with their complicated ciphers, and decrypting every encrypted message intercepted would be a most ridiculous undertaking with today's computational abilities.

While many processes are encrypted by sound standards - RSA's PKCS comes to mind ('Public-Key Cryptography Standards') it is also convincingly demonstrated that the NSA has the 'key-escrow' for whatever consumer privacy technologies are legally offered. A 'key-escrow' is like a skeleton key for an encryption technology - it allows for instant decryption of all cipher messages generated by the technology, regardless of whatever unique input goes into the key generation process. (Keys are a means of maintaining control over who has access to a cipher.) In fact, it wasn't long ago that a media ruckus was generated by Germany's decision to cease using Microsoft's Windows NT platform, supposedly after discovering the mysterious 'NSA_key' in the Windows NT registry.

It is clear that the technologies exist. Their specific and peculiar forms are difficult to pin down - which is in the favour of Echelon's constituents, as the detailed knowledge of a system comes with the knowledge of how to circumvent the system. However, common sense and diligent research apparently will yield results, and this knowledge does bear fruit. What can we conclude? A few points, given some reasoning and careful assumption.

I. (Logistical)
Echelon cannot and does not intercept everything. It's not yet feasible. In fact, as the technology for more efficient intelligence comes along, it will shortly be followed by bursts of technological advancement in the commercial sector, making the monitoring scope exponentially larger. This will occur parallel to the thickening breadth of the task of gathering the raw data, as communications technologies become less and less expensive, more and more available.

II. (Technical)
If you aren't on a list, encryption technologies like PGP (to be discussed in-depth later) could allow you the grace of not being tagged by the keyword system discussed earlier, sometimes referred to as 'DICTIONARY'. They could also serve to draw attention to you, depending on how widely used they are, and exactly how difficult it is to decrypt the ciphers without key-escrow.

III. (Political)
While Echelon doesn't intercept everything, it certainly intercepts quite a bit. As a result, embassy communications, international organizations, and multi-national corporations are easy to target - you start by tapping the undersea cables carrying 99.9% of all international telephone calls. Certain nations have an edge, some more than others, one more than the rest.

IV. (Emotional)
We all run the risk of having our privacy threatened at any given time, in our e-mails, as we browse the web, as we speak on the telephone. Our society is becoming a society that is familiar with the sensation of being monitored constantly. Furthermore, they don't have to be looking for you particularly. You don't need to be a registered felon. All you have to do is trigger a keyword. This article could've triggered one or a hundred. It's disconcertingly easy to 'stumble across' purely private, non-intelligence related communications. Someone could be reading your intimate and descriptive letter to your lover... giggling and passing it about the office for laughs.

Echelon's technologies revolve around automating the sorting of vast amounts of information - gathered from telephones, satellites, facsimiles, the Internet, and just about whatever else is available. This enables a vast amount of 'space' to be covered, with a mere fraction of the manpower it normally takes to examine and classify that information. Echelon is not omniscient, but is not very far from it. And here we have before us the most information we'll likely ever have on the inner mechanisms of the beast: in obscure patent files, in well-reasoned speculation, and in opaque reports from people who have seen bits and pieces of the machinery at work.

A man called Orwell dreamt of such technology.

This system may or may not be out of control, but the most troubling facet of the issue lies in our inability to discern conclusively the state of affairs in the midst of the rumbling controversy we call Echelon.

Frances Farmer

Sources:
Security
Cryptography FAQ
On Microsoft NT's '_NSAKEY' aka 'NSA_key'
On Microsoft's Participation with the NSA

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