"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little safety, deserve neither liberty or safety."
                                       Benjamin Franklin
  Imagine a vast automated global network scanning virtually all forms of communication from phone calls to emails to satellite transmissions.  A system so advanced that it incorporates artificial intelligence with voice recognition technology in order to distill out the communications of interest from the over 3 billion communication streams that it intercepts daily.  A system that operates in the shadows, free from government oversight or review.  Just a fantasy of despots, the plot of an X-Files episode, or perhaps a modern day image of Orwells darkest visions?  Such a system actually exists, and it's code named Echelon.

   Echelon is a global interception and relay system operated in cooperation with the United States, Britain,
Australia, Canada and New Zealand.  Echelon dates back to 1971 and operates in coordination with the UKUSA agreement of 1947.  According to various sources, Echelon is capable of processing numerous forms of transmissions throughout the world and filtering the data through artificial intelligence screens that can scan both text and voice communications, for key words that trigger further (human) review.  Echelon operates in secret, and in fact, the United States has to date refused to acknowledge it's existence, although the governments of New Zealand and Australia have admitted their involvement.  The Scientific and Technical Options Assement Program Office (STOA) of the European Parliament had issued two reports describing Echelon and it's activity, and in their first report "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control" it was suggested that Echelon primarily targeted civilians.  A more recent report "Interception Capabilities 2000"
describes Echelon capabilites in greater detail.
Echelon Watch - A project by the ACLU to spread awareness of Echelon.
Inside Echelon - An article by Duncan Campbell on the history, structure and function of the global surveillance system.
Cryptome - Impressive archive (updated daily) on documents pertaining to Echelon, as well as many other military intelligence topics.
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