Talk:ECHELON

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ECHELON was a good article, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Delisted version: September 4, 2007

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[edit] Delisting Article

I'm almost tempted to just roll the article back to its last GA point, but some folks have tried to improve it, so I'll settle for De-listing it for now. Per WP:WIAGA 2b. this article suffers from a severe lack of WP:V at the moment from unsourced statements and a heavy dose of WP:POV or WP:OR. Burzmali 20:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

Loaded words like "conspiracy theorists" do not contribute to a neutral tone in this article. The following paragraph is a particular offender:

Conspiracy theorists allege that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance might have been used to circumvent these restrictions by,
for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilities spy on people in the UK, with the
agencies exchanging data. There is, however, no evidence to suggest this is the case, and in fact it would be just as
illegal as spying directly.

Of course it's just as illegal as spying directly. That's why it's controversial. The wording, however, suggests that this is a reasonable rationale to expect that the allegations are false. --Arperry 19:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updating

Much of this content is a bit tin-foil-hat so I'm going to try to cull material and focus on the verifiable material around Echelon and get rid of the garbage.

Likely to be a fairly lengthy job as much of the supporting evidence is questionable and there is quite a lot of OR and essay in the article at the moment.

ALR 17:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

"Tin-foil-hat" LOL! I applaud your initiative and I generally like your approach thus far. One thing I would suggest, though, is that due to the nature of the enterprise (i.e., "top secret") sources are hard to come by. Some are better than others. Generally in accordance with WP:V, anything that is from a peer-reviewed journal or book, (which would include the EU report) or the mainstream media should be given the most credence. However, some of the other sources are very interesting and rely on insider information. While valuable, we will need to qualify them if they are not from peer-reviewed sources.
One thing that struck my eye was the statement "alleged to be a name" in the first sentence. The term ECHELON is now part of the modern-day vocabulary. So even if the AUSCANZUKUS Community doesn't use it, the public, and the media do. The EU report puts the case well:
... whereas the existence of a global system for intercepting communications, operating by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt; whereas it seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail...
I would suggest that until AUSCANZUKUS, or one of the governments concerned, officially issues a statement that the name is something else (a highly unlikely possibility), we simply use the name without qualification. Sunray 17:59, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I think the issue of alleged is really a question of Verifiability. Until such time as the 5E community actually publishes something then even the EU report is speculative on the name.
Given the anture of the topic there are very few reliable sources, in fact I'd even discount most MSM since a lot of that is very speculative, and even the sources used by the EU committee are questionable. The whole article really needs very heavily qualified and I'd resist going concrete on anything.
Despite that, I'm glad you're supportive of the initiative.
ALR 18:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
To put it another way: The word ECHELON is now a word known and used throughout the English-speaking world. It is used to refer to the intelligence gathering collective of the five nations. As long as we have a reliable source that says ECHELON is that system we can use that.
On another tack: I cannot find a source that links the UKUSA Community with AUSCANZUKUS, The EU report refers to the former and there are sources for the latter but I have yet to come across anything that links them. Sunray 18:59, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I would argue that the EU report says that the name is likely. Whilst I acknowledge that the common usage refers to Int activities in general, the article needs to be more specific. Much common usage of Echelon actually refers to Carnivore and it's equivalents. I would actually argue that the EU report isn't inherently reliable with respect to the name, although in all honesty I ceased involvement in the RS/ V activities in WP when the doctrinal approach, rather than source assessment approach, too precedence. I assess sources on an individual basis, as I've been trained to do. I don't just automagically assume that a source is reliable because of the stamp on the front.
AUSCANZUKUS being the parties who are signatory to the UKUSA agreement is probably based more on local knowledge, rather than anything published. The agreement is based on the post-war UKUSA agreement with the other 3 parties joining later. Although I couldn't point to anything public domain that identifies that at this time.
ALR 18:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Two proposals:
  1. Would you be amenable to changing the first sentence from: "ECHELON is alleged to be a name used..." To: ECHELON is the name commonly used..."? We could then give one or two citations from the mainstream media.
  2. Thinking further about AUSCANZUKUS, I don't see how we can use it. Most of the sources we have refer to UKUSA and ECHELON, not AUSCANZUKUS and ECHELON. I would like to establish that we only make changes to the article that are based on reliable sources. I propose to go back to the former wording (i.e., UKUSA) until we can find a source. Sunray 20:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
For the first, actually no. We don't have any reliable, open source, material which specifies the name. What we do have is a high likelihood. I'm taking a fairly purist approach to sourcing to cull the speculation and crap from the article, with that in mind we have to say that the naming is speculative.
For the second, again the sources aren't reliable. Ther is no UKUSA community, there are a number of sources which refer to an agreement, which is itself classified, originating immediately after WWII. Those sources describe the signatories to that agreement as a UKUSA community. The community is made up of five parties, and that's sourced, albeit with fairly weak sources as everything else is. In practice there are two lead nations in the community, but it is made up of five nations, not two.
ALR 20:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
An additional thought, Bamford is a reasonably accurate author on quite a lot of this material. I don't have a copy of Body of Secrets to hand, but from memory that provides a reasonable articulation of the history of the migration from a Bi-partisan community to the 5E community.
ALR 20:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Well that sounds promising. We can use Bamford if we get a copy of it. I just don't see the point in making unsourced changes to the article, and want to get an agreement with you on that. Reliable sources are defined in WP:RS and WP:V and some of the ones we have do fall into that category. I know it is difficult for an article of this nature, but we have to have standards to work by and those standards are Wiikpedia policies. Can we agree on that? Sunray 20:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
A friend has my copy of Body of Secrets, I can get hold of it in a couple of weeks.
I'm unwilling to refer to an imaginary community just because a badly written article already says it. The EU report talks repeatedly about an agreement, the UKUSA agreement, and identifies that it's the 5E community; Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States. I'm not prepared to describe a five nation community using sloppy terminology based on speculative sources. As I said above, I assess sources on their merits, not based on the publisher.
It's fairly easily established that the AUSCANZUKUS community exists, although the web page you identify above refers purely to the Maritime C4ISTAR element of that. OTOH the only source for the exitence of a UKUSA community appears to be Wikipedia.
ALR 20:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

That DSD, the Australian SIGINT agency, cooperates with "counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas" under the "UKUSA relationship" was confirmed by DSD Director Martin Brady in 1999 in a letter to reporter Ross Coulthart (story here; letter here and here). The term UKUSA has been leaked by people who were evidently in a position to know too many times to count, but AFAIK this is the only official confirmation of its use, presumably because the agreement is still considered classified. Still, once ought to be enough to establish that it is in fact used within the core Western SIGINT community. The fact that there is a core Western SIGINT community and that it is composed of the five agencies from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has been publicly confirmed many times. In recent years, official sources have taken to publicly referring to this community as the "Five-Eyes community". See, e.g., Canadian government testimony here and here; see also CSE Chief John Adams's 6 Feb 2007 speech. BillRobinsonCanada (talk) 17:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a frustrating article, from the point of view of people in a position to know the facts. Although there are global information collecting facilities, much of what is said about them is wrong, even the very name, and cannot be corrected by those who actually know (and are bound to secrecy). The EU report is given too much credence; it was based almost entirely on interviews with questionable sources such as Campbell. For example, a FOIA search of the NSA archives turned up only two uses of "echelon", one of them in its normal military meaning, but that was interpreted as evidence for the project codeword. It would be best for the article to use more "it is alleged" and "Duncan Campbell claimed" and less "it is". — DAGwyn (talk) 22:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major changes

ALR, you have been making major changes to the article. While I agree that changes are needed, you have been deleting large blocks of text with citations, and adding material, in some cases, that is unsourced. I raised two points with you above and you refused to accept them. Nevertheless, the policy on consensus states that consensus is "Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision-making." Right now that means you and me. Hopefully other editors will join us, but, for now, we must agree.

I have asked you to agree to only add material to the article that meets WP:RS and WP:V. Since these are policies, we really do not have much choice in the matter. To that, I will add a further request: Would you please not delete major blocks of text (especially sourced text) without first discussing it here?

I think that we need a plan for the overhaul of the article. Let's agree on an approach before we start on major changes. In the meantime, I am reverting the article to the version before you began to make changes. Sunray 23:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Can I suggest that you have a critial review of the available resources.
You will note that most of what I have excised is original research and speculation.
I am surprised that you consider those sources which are provided are actually appropriate, relevant or related to the assertions made.
My intention is to remove the majority of the OR and the tin-foil-hat material, cutting down to that which is sourced and reasonable.
I am surprised that you are reacting this way to my rejection of the terminology for the 5E community.
ALR 23:30, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Most of your edits are fine by me. However, I have raised several concerns, each of which you have rejected without reference to the relevant policies that I have raised. If you will begin dealing with the concerns I have raised, we can get on with fixing the article. Sunray 05:29, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Again I'm surprised and concerned that you are block reverting the work, which you say you are fine with on the basis of two elements of detail. I have come up with a form of words for the first sentence, although I feel that it is a somewhat clumsy way to deal with a fairly simple issue.
I'm not dismissing your concerns out of hand, but I don't feel you've made a substantive case, on either topic.
ALR 07:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for re-writing the lead. I think that it is much better — it certainly addresses my concern. I added a temporary link for AUSCANNZUKUS.
Your knowledge of the subject is better than mine. On the other hand, I am a good editor. So I suggest that we continue in this fashion. With me copyediting, or editing your changes. Either of us can move passages here for discussion if we have questions or concerns about them. Sunray 17:13, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Capabilities section

I've been trying to work out what to do with the capabilities section today, but it reeks of OR at the moment. My inclination is to get rid of the lot and redo it.

What the sources come down to is that collection is carried out in three ways:

  • Infrastructure taps with the co-operation of telecoms providers.
  • Intercept of satellite bearers.
  • Spy satellites - with no definition of what the hel these actually are. That said Bamford does provide a very good description of how comms intercept spacecraft are positioned, but I think conflating that with Echelon is a step further than I'm prepapred to go.

In terms of the article I have no intention of discussing spy satellites, since overhead comprises a whole range of different capabilities.

I think it's reasonable to indicate that the investigations conclude that infrastructure taps exist. The issue of intercept of satellite bearers has a little more mileage, since the EP report considers the various ground stations with respect to the spacecraft that they're likely to be pointed at.

I don't believe that the latter paragraph about GSM intercept is appropriate to this article, I've got no sources which relate the two, in fact it's easier just to pick the traffic out of the infrastructure.

Is that clear?

ALR 21:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't scrap the section, one heck of a lot of work has gone into it and it is sourced. I also think that it is a useful discussion of capabilities. We can't dismiss it as OR, since the sources are fairly good. We do, however, need to verify that STOA report. The section relies on it and the EP report most heavily. Do you have access to it?
I would suggest that the section could be re-written. As to the cellphone monitoring: I have no idea whether cellphone monitoring is within the ambit of ECHELON. But I am sure that the average reader might well wonder what the capabilities are. The paragraph merely evaluates the capabilities. The sources (GPO and New York Times) are rather good. Could we, perhaps, deal with your specific concerns? Sunray 01:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
There are a number of issues, but I'd start by saying that just because a lot of work has gone into something that doesn't mean that it's useful or appropriate. That's confusing activity with delivery, in fact I'd go as far as to say a lot of work probably indicates quite a lot of OR. Sourcing is slightly different and whilst it's sourced, I'm not convinced that the sources support what's said, or are themselves appropriate. Some of the sourcing merely supports the originators conclusions.
It'll be reasonably straightforward to develop a pithier section based on the EP report, if I track down the STOA report it may add something.
To deal with the specifics:
  • Intercept of a microwave shot is infrastructure tap, and need not have co-operaiton of the infrastructure provider.
  • Copper tap again is quite straightforward and need not have the co-operation, however use of copper in infrastructure is now extremely low.
  • Fibre tap is quite difficult.
  • Co-operative infrastructure tap is quite straightforward, involving the insertion of an additional boundary router at a nodal point to extract an image of the traffic.
  • Intercept of a satellite down-link requires one to position a ground station inside the footprint of the downlink itself, reasonably straightforward as the footprint is usually a few hundred miles in diameter. It requires a lot of ground infrastructure. The EP report uses the spread and growth of ground stations, co-incident with the launch and positioning of various communications spacecraft to assess locations.
With respect to the GSM intercept element, the sources don't appear to indicate that GSM intercept on a tactical basis is Echelon related. Whilst it might be of interest to people, that doesn't make it appropriate for this article. People can read about GSM intercept in an article on the subject, should they wish to do so.
ALR 08:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I see your concerns. One thing I was unclear of was how a intercept of a microwave shot is an infrastructure tap. Could you explain that? We may need to define "infrastructure tap" more clearly. I agree with you on the GSM intercept. The citation states that the intelligence agencies tracked terrorist through a chip rather than an intercept. There is nothing in the article to link that to ECHELON. I agree with you that that is OR. Sunray 16:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I've tracked down a fair bit of material consolidated into one page, including the STOA report. The page is at Cyber-Rights.
Unfortunately the STOA report was written by Duncan Campbell, and reading through the supporting material from that site there is a lot of re-hashing of his initial work, so we're not working with a wide range of independent sources, more a small number of sources published several times.
In terms of the capabilities I'm not finding it particularly clear, the STOA report appears to assume a knowledge of what Echelon actually is. The report talks about quite a lot of different things, but my feeling is that he's suggesting that Echelon is an over-arching capability to consolidate intercept, mainly from overhead. One of the complicating factors is that he seems to conflate collection of overhead and collection from submarine cables, but the two are not similar, overhead is real-time or near-real-time whereas the submarine cable projects were recordings recovered at several month intervals.
I think coming up with something sensible is going to take longer than I thought, since I've got to distil something useful from Campbell and avoid self-corroboration.
With respect to microwave shots, the shot itself forms part of the information infrastructure, and it's the information that one is intercepting. That can be done by dropping a tap in between the ends to take bi-directional traffic, or using range advantage and sitting off one end of the shot to take mono traffic, to the extent that large aperture geo-synch spacecraft can recover the traffic at significant distances. For tactical collection sitting in the middle is easiest, but does require access, either permissive or non-permissive.
ALR 20:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
From my reading of Campbell I think the only thing that you can really get from it is that there are two possible options for what Echelon is:
  • The satellite command and control system whereby the collection constellation is flown and the traffic downlinks are channelised and routed.
  • The command and control system whereby all near-real time collection is managed and routed. This would include the space segment already identified above and any ground side intercept capabilities such as microwave, copper or fibre tap and IP intercept.
From my reading of Campbell I'd say it's more likely to be the former. Collection then moves off into different systems, depending on its nature, to be analysed and interpreted. Anything more extensive can't be attributed back to anything reliable (bearing mind that I'm talking about source quality not WPs dogma of reliability).
I appreciate that's not going to be a particularly popular assessment of the source so I'm floating it here for discussion rather than try to fight through the inevitable white noise should I try to do anything to the article (note that is an electronic warfare usage)
ALR 14:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Having read through both Campbell's STOA report and "Inside ECHELON," I tend to agree with you. However, I note the following summary of capabilities in the STOA report:

"The conclusions drawn in the annexe are that Comint equipment currently available has the capability, as tasked, to intercept, process and analyse every modern type of high capacity communications system to which access is obtained, including the highest levels of the Internet. There are few gaps in coverage."

It would seem that ECHELON must be broader than merely satellite intercepts. However, I agree with your comments on sources. Thus I think we have to be clear what is from a verifiable source and what is only covered in Campbell's (and Hager's) more general statements such as the one above. Sunray 02:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this article is the use of the present tense. The reports it cites are from around 2000 and deal with material from the late 1990s. They may have been more or less accurate at the time, but a lot has change since then. While the existence of large signals collection efforts that target public communication is not in doubt, there are three elements of the ECHELON story that are unlikely to be true today:
  • that the code name ECHELON, compromised almost a decade ago, is still in use
  • that the listed ground stations or large radomes play a major role -- they have little use against fiber optics, which carry most communications today
  • that this network is primarily a USUKAUST effort. Intercept of local fiber networks require ground presence and in the aftermath of the WTC and Madrid bombings there is likely much wider cooperation between all western signals intelligence agencies.
This article in Wired: NSA's Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World by Ryan Singel, 10.10.07 [1] is probably a better description of the current state of signals collection. ---agr 11:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Balance of probabilities"

The sentence fragment containing this phrase was removed by ArnoldReinhold as conclusionary. I agree. The phrase is not contained in the EP report. I think it wise to exclude it (and will do so). Sunray 01:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

the EP committee reached a conclusion, we have to represent the statement as their conclusion, not as a statement of fact. This alludes to my concerns about representing a report based on second and third hand evidence as anything more than speculative. Whilt I'm prepared to find an alternative form of words I object strongly to any effort to strengthen the statement. The EP committee identified that the word was used in a number of different ways, and that one of those ways was likely to refer to a strategic sigint collection system.
ALR 08:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Sure the EP committee reached a conclusion. However you said that they arrived at that conclusion using a "balance of probabilities." That seems to be a conclusion by you. They may, or may not, have considered probabilities. For example, they may have based their conclusion on a trusted source, but believed it best to use weasel words. There are other ways they could have reached a conclusion, as well. The words "balance of probabilities" seemed to me to be reading into the EP report. Sunray 15:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Echelon locations

Most of the locations listed as candidate Echelon stations are picked at random from the nearest conspiracy theory site, and they've almost all been unsourced for 9 months or so. Plenty of time for some evidence to gestate. Several of the sites listed were Iron Horse sites, which wasn't even intercept, but direction finding, and some were old WWII Y-sites. There are very few ground stations which can be reliably attributed to either Bamford or Campbell, probably the only credible sources.

With that in mind I'm going to trim it down to the first section only, most of the third section only contain hangers for the black helicopters anyway. Even the first section is OTT as a couple of the sites listed certainly aren't related, but that's not verifiable.

ALR 14:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikify -> clean up

I've added a wikify tag to the article as it seems several of the sources need to be wikified. Particularly in the "Capabilities" section, but elsewhere too. Rehevkor (talk) 21:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Sorry - I cannot see what you are on about. If you are toalking about the use of citation templates or better citation formatting, a wikify template isn't useful - given it is only a few footnotes, why don't you just fix it. the tag is quite misleading and I will remove it. --Matilda talk 22:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
    • OK I can see sort of what you are on about, wikification isn't required by clean up is. The references are not properly cited and as per the comments above the article is not coherent although attempts have been made. I will do my best to make some improvements and add a clean up tag - I don't think a more specific tag fits the bill --Matilda talk 22:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] STOA or EP report

In cleaning up the references there is consistent mention of a STOA report. the report was not correctly cited in the first instance and it si not clear to me which one it was. At one stage in the revision history an anon editor has changed "changed EP to STOA, more accurate description of sourcr of report" and immediately before changed " replaces EP (European Parliamewnt) with STOA (name of the comitee comisioning the report)". In looking at the report this seems wrong. The EP report states on its proceduarl page

At the sitting of 5 July 2000 the European Parliament decided, pursuant to Rule 150(2) of its Rules of Procedure, to set up a Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System and laid down its mandate as outlined in Chapter 1, 1.3. With a view to fulfilling that mandate, at its constituent meeting of 9 July 2000 the Temporary Committee appointed Gerhard Schmid rapporteur.

This does not equal Scientific Technology Options Assessment whose reports are listed at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/default_en.htm . Above however someone does refer to a STOA report whose author was Cambell - I don't know which one it was or whether it was cited here - still to unravel the complexities of the rather bizarre and ad hoc approach to citations. Given the EP report is lengthy I may break up the footnotes to refer to specific pages but at this stage I am not necessarily inclined to - does anybody have any views? --Matilda talk 23:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Bravo for your work on cleaning this up! I do see a problem with the STOA report, though. It was a report that preceded the EU report. To confuse matters, it is also covered (in part) in the EU Report. Unfortunately your conversion of the STOA Report references to EU Report does not seem to work. I tried to find several of the quotes, but they are not in the EU Report. I will revert to the earlier version of our article and perhaps we could look for a viable copy of the STOA report. Unfortunately, they are rare now. The former links from the European Commission to STOA are no longer operable. Let's see what we can come up with. Sunray (talk) 19:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ground stations

GCSB Tangimoana in New Zealand may need to be added to this list Goldfinger820 (talk) 00:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fantastically large satellites

What does the article mean by "The satellites are claimed to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters across, parked in geostationary orbits." ??!! I don't think that there are any satellites (except for the Space Station perhaps) which are anywhere near this size. I shudder to think of the size of the rocket you would need to put something that large into Geosynchronous orbit, unless perhaps it uses a fold-out type antenna and the satellite itself is not that large. Does the author perhaps mean that the ground stations have antennas which are 20 to 100 meters across, not the satellites themselves?Sbreheny (talk) 00:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Such antennas are, of course folded up for launch. Here is a reference for the 100 m figure: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/sigint/vortex2.htm --02:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)