> 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.''