The Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System was a Committee of the European Parliament that was set up in 2000 to investigate the global surveillance network

ECHELON ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated by the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement:Given the 5 dialects that use ...

. The committee issued its final report in 2001.

Background

On 15 June 2000, the

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proposed setting up a temporary committee on the ECHELON interception system. The goal of the committee was to confirm the existence of ECHELON and to assess the compatibility of such a system with European law. The committee was chaired by the Portuguese politician Carlos Coelho. It began investigating the ECHELON system in late 2000.

Final report

In 2001, the committee concluded that the ECHELON surveillance system "almost certainly" existed, but it also acknowledged that beyond stepping up diplomatic pressure on the

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to abide by privacy laws, there is not much that the

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could do to evade their surveillance. In its final report, the committee noted the following two features of the ECHELON surveillance network that is described as "unusual": However, due to opposition from major political parties, the report failed to attract much public attention. Carlos Coelho, a Portuguese politician who served as the committee's chairman, remarked that "everyone has chosen to forget this report and its conclusions".

Controversy

The committee was first proposed by the

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. However, the original plan was scrapped due to opposition from major political groups in the

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. According to critics, the committee has been unable to fully investigate the ECHELON system.

Premature cancellation of delegation trip

In May 2001, as the committee was finalizing its report on ECHELON, a delegation was sent to

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to investigate the surveillance network, with planned trips to meet U.S. officials from various government bodies including the following agencies and departments: * U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) * U.S.

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(DOC) * U.S.

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

(NSA) All meetings were cancelled by the U.S. government and the committee was forced to end its trip prematurely. According to a

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correspondent, "the Americans deny the very existence of the network and, not surprisingly, cold-shouldered the EU delegation". Several EU member states such as Britain and the Netherlands declined to contribute to the report and refused to co-operate with their parliaments to investigate the ECHELON system.

References

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External links