Web Chatter May Crack One of Best-Kept U.S. Secrets

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The Internet abhors a vacuum.

Information about every possible topic races to fill any available space online. And if someone tries to keep something secret, the Net can fill that void with a flood of speculation, innuendo and far-flung evidence that renders either the secret or the truth irrelevant.

Consider the case of Echelon, the worst kept secret of the federal government’s secret keeping-est branch, the National Security Agency. While neither the NSA nor any U.S. government source has so much as confirmed the program’s existence, there are plenty of Web sites waiting to tell you all about it.

Is the information accurate? Who knows? But in a case where a secretive government agency stands accused of routinely violating the privacy of millions of Americans, the Net’s volatile mix of fact and fiction has proven more useful than no information at all.

Echelon is said to be an automated network designed to intercept telephone calls, faxes and e-mail messages. It’s supposed to be able to search through millions of messages a day and direct those containing certain keywords to intelligence agents in participating countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

While Echelon isn’t the sort of program that gets announced in a press release, clues of its existence have leaked out through other sources. A report prepared for the European Parliament in April included a detailed description of Echelon based on private interviews, a few public documents and the work of a New Zealand researcher who interviewed “more than 50 people concerned with intelligence.”

System jam

That same month, the director of Australia’s Defense Signals Directorate that country’s equivalent to the NSA told a reporter that the agency is cooperating with its overseas counterparts in a project designed to intercept communications.

These reports prompted media coverage that fueled even more online speculation. Some sites say the network has been used to deliver U.S. companies information about their foreign competitors. Others accuse the NSA of inappropriately collecting data on Amnesty International and other charity groups.

The resulting uproar convinced some Net users to try to cripple the mysterious network. On Oct. 21, or “Jam Echelon Day,” members of the “hacktivism” e-mail list encouraged people to overwhelm the filtering programs by sending multiple e-mail messages with presumed keywords like “bomb,” “anthrax” or “terrorist.”

There’s no telling whether the campaign had any effect. But the impact of making all this information about Echelon available on the Net is perfectly clear. Shreds of evidence that otherwise would have been left for conspiracy nuts to piece together by hand have been linked by hypertext and spun around the world until the resulting buzz caught the attention of political players.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (www.epic.org) has filed a lawsuit demanding that the NSA release documents discussing the legality of its intelligence activities. Specifically, the nonprofit public interest group wonders if Echelon has been spying on American citizens in violation of U.S. laws.

Congress has requested similar information through an amendment tacked onto the agency’s recently approved budget. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Georgia, also has secured a pledge from leaders of the House Government Reform Committee to hold hearings on Echelon next year.

Concern at ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, has posted Echelon Watch (www.echelonwatch.org), a reputable hub for online information about the supposed program. While the ACLU admits it can’t confirm much of what is said online about Echelon, ACLU Associate Director Barry Steinhart says, “we know enough to be worried.”

“We’ve gone from the day when this was ‘X-Files’ type material to the point where it is becoming increasingly difficult for the NSA to deny its existence,” Steinhart said. “At this point, they only do it halfheartedly.”

When I inquired about Echelon, the NSA public affairs office faxed me a canned “neither confirm nor deny” statement as well as a sentence insisting the agency abides by all U.S. laws. Thanks to the momentum created online, the NSA may have to be a bit more candid than that in the not too distant future.

If either Congress or the courts force the NSA to come clean about its apparent surveillance of Americans, the Net will have won a significant victory for personal privacy. Whether everything said about Echelon was true will matter less than the fact that there was a place for it to be said at all.

To contact syndicated columnist Joe Salkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill., 60611.

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