Re: [h2o-discuss] Echelon

["Robert S. Thau" <rst@ai.mit.edu>]

  I suspect that we can only speculate, although published reports 
  early in the development of this story indicated a low number of 
  intercept points spread among more countries than there were 
  intercept points, which indicates to me that no one is snooping on my 
  ISP, but likely an international message is open to review.

  Such would be the only way that the Constitutional problems with 
  snooping on conversations could be avoided.

Actually, it has been frequently alleged (going back at least to
the publication of James Bamford's book, The Puzzle Palace, many
years ago) that the NSA has a much slicker way to get around any
constitutional restraints on its activities.  While they are not
permitted to *directly* spy on domestic communications, they are
permitted to share data obtained overseas with black chambers of
other governments --- which, in return, share data which they've
obtained through their own wiretaps and the like within the U.S.

The best documented example of this sort of "cooperation" is not
on American soil; it's the Menwith Hill station, operated by the
NSA in Great Britain.  Note that while the personnel who run the
station day-to-day are Americans (who are supposed to report any
contact with British nationals!) the U.K. government has spent a
great deal of money on the facility, and is rumored to routinely
receive its intercepts.  See

  http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/mhs/

for one compendium of information relating to Menwith Hill, some
of which refers to other listening posts, including some on U.S.
territory, which are also supposedly part of the arrangement.

(Indeed, according to the current round of stories, this sharing
arrangement has been automated; the function of the "Dictionary"
computers is to identify communications matching the watch-lists
of *any* intelligence agency which is a party to ECHELON).

BTW, early published reports I've read have stated outright that
ECHELON *does* intercept Internet traffic --- see, for instance,

  http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,27293,00.html

The "critical junctions on the Internet" alluded to in the story
are presumably large NAPs such as MAE-West and MAE-East.

rst