Echelon is a big deal in the game, Deus Ex, but what exactly is it? Well, that depends on who you talk to. European nations and civil liberties groups say that Echelon is a secret network run by the United States and four of its allies that spies on everyone in the world. Two of the five nations that supposedly use Echelon say it's just a system to watch criminals and terrorists. The United States says that Echelon doesn't exist at all.
Five Ears Are Better Than One
According to the conspiracy theorists, the United States and the United Kingdom teamed up during the Cold War to spy on the Soviets. In 1947, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were brought into the deal in an agreement called UKUSA. The five nations basically agreed to work together to spy on their part of the world, which pretty much covers everything. Echelon is supposedly run by all five of its host nations, but the United States is the leader. In the 1970's, the network was boosted with satellites they called "Echelon." Since then, other systems have allegedly been added to make Echelon bigger.
Wire Tap Dancing
According to critics, the Echelon system today uses everything from wiretaps on underwater telephone lines to huge radio antennae to spy on everything. They claim that Echelon intercepts three billion communications a day, including phone calls, e-mail messages, and satellite transmissions. The Echelon system takes all the information and funnels it into supercomputers that sift through it. The bottom line is that all someone has to do is type in a word or phrase into the computers and Echelon can find everything anyone has ever said about it.
Obviously, that's a pretty handy thing to have. The only problem is that we're not supposed to have it. It's illegal. Even the FBI has to get a warrant to tap a phone in this country. If Echelon exists, then it has no government or public control at all. The U.S. and its allies can snoop on any conversation or exchange of information they want and no one even knows about it, let alone stops it.
If we just used Echelon for spying on bad guys, then it would be creepy, but not something for us outsiders to worry about. But critics of Echelon say it's not just for James Bond anymore. They claim Echelon has been used to spy on civilian groups like Amnesty International and United Way. France and Germany also claim that Echelon's been used to get dirt on their companies so U.S. corporations like Boeing can get an advantage.
Carnivorous
Is Echelon real? Well, European nations like France and Germany sure think so. They've launched investigations on how to stop Echelon and punish the governments that use it. A few years ago Australia and Britain admitted that Echelon is real, but say they only use it to track down terrorists and criminals, and never use it to spy on ordinary people. The United States is still insisting that Echelon doesn't exist at all. But they did recently go public about an Echelon-like computer system called Carnivore designed to spy on all the e-mail on the Internet, which is bad enough.
Whether Echelon is real or not, you have to admit it's pretty freaky stuff, and that Deus Ex did a great job of bringing our worst nightmares of Echelon to life.
Further reading
There are whole organizations devoted to exposing and shutting down Echelon, and one of the biggest is Echelon Watch, which has a good FAQ on the subject. If you get too paranoid, you can read a more balanced view of the Echelon controversy from a Washington Post article at Policy.Com.
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