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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 terms, UKUSA can be pronounced from "You-Q-SA" to "Oo-Coo-SA", AUSCANNZUKUS can be pronounced from "Oz-Can-Zuke-Us" to "Orse-Can-Zoo-Cuss".
:From Talk:UKUSA Agreement: "Per documents officially released by both the Government Communications Headquarters and the National Security Agency, this agreement is referred to as the UKUSA Agreement. This name is subsequently used by media sources reporting on the story, as written in new references used for the article. The NSA press release provides a pronunciation guide, indicating that "UKUSA" should not be read as two separate entities.
(National Security Agency)
" Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, also known as the Five Eyes.

Created in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, the ECHELON project became formally established in 1971.

By the end of the 20th century, the system referred to as "ECHELON" had greatly expanded.

Name

The European Parliament's Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System stated, "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". The US intelligence community uses many code names (''see'', for example, CIA cryptonym).

Former NSA employee Margaret Newsham said that she worked on the configuration and installation of software that makes up the ECHELON system while employed at Lockheed Martin, from 1974 to 1984 in Sunnyvale, California, in the United States, and in Menwith Hill, England, in the UK. At that time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA's term for the computer network itself. Lockheed called it ''P415''. The software programs were called ''SILKWORTH'' and ''SIRE''. A satellite named ''VORTEX'' intercepted communications. An image available on the internet of a fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed along with several other code names.

Britain's ''The Guardian'' newspaper summarized the capabilities of the ECHELON system as follows:

Documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the ECHELON system's collection of satellite data is also referred to as FORNSAT - an abbreviation for "Foreign Satellite Collection".

Reporting and disclosures

Public disclosures (1972–2000)

Former NSA analyst Perry Fellwock, under the pseudonym Winslow Peck, first blew the whistle on ECHELON to '' Ramparts'' in 1972, when he revealed the existence of a global network of listening posts and told of his experiences working there. He also revealed the existence of nuclear weapons in Israel in 1972, the widespread involvement of CIA and NSA personnel in drugs and human smuggling, and CIA operatives leading Nationalist Chinese (Taiwan) commandos in burning villages inside PRC borders.

In 1982, James Bamford, investigative journalist and author wrote ''The Puzzle Palace'', an in-depth look inside the workings of the NSA, then a super-secret agency, and the massive eavesdropping operation under the codename "SHAMROCK". The NSA has used many codenames, and SHAMROCK was the codename used for ECHELON prior to 1975.

In 1988, Margaret Newsham, a Lockheed employee under NSA contract, disclosed the ECHELON surveillance system to members of congress. Newsham told a member of the US Congress that the telephone calls of Strom Thurmond, a Republican US senator, were being collected by the NSA. Congressional investigators determined that "targeting of US political figures would not occur by accident, but was designed into the system from the start."

Also in 1988, an article titled "Somebody's Listening", written by investigative journalist Duncan Campbell in the ''New Statesman'', described the signals intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON". James Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.

A detailed description of ECHELON was provided by the New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager in his 1996 book '' Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network''. Two years later, Hager's book was cited by the European Parliament in a report titled "An Appraisal of the Technology of Political Control" (PE 168.184).

In March 1999, for the first time in history, the Australian government admitted that news reports about the top secret UKUSA Agreement were true. Martin Brady, the director of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD, now known as Australian Signals Directorate, or ASD) told the Australian broadcasting channel Nine Network that the DSD "does co-operate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship."

In 2000, James Woolsey, the former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, confirmed that US intelligence uses interception systems and keyword searches to monitor European businesses.

Lawmakers in the United States feared that the ECHELON system could be used to monitor US citizens. According to ''The New York Times'', the ECHELON system has been "shrouded in such secrecy that its very existence has been difficult to prove." Critics said the ECHELON system emerged from the Cold War as a "Big Brother without a cause".

European Parliament investigation (2000–2001)

The program's capabilities and political implications were investigated by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001. In July 2000, the Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System was established by the European parliament to investigate the surveillance network. It was chaired by the Portuguese politician Carlos Coelho, who was in charge of supervising investigations throughout 2000 and 2001.

In May 2001, as the committee finalised its report on the ECHELON system, a delegation travelled to Washington, D.C. to attend meetings with US officials from the following agencies and departments:
* US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
* US Department of Commerce (DOC)
* US National Security Agency (NSA)

All meetings were cancelled by the US government and the committee was forced to end its trip prematurely. According to a BBC
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