ECHELON surveillance network

ECHELON was a network of ground stations run by the signals intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the alliance known as the Five Eyes. Starting around 1971, as commercial communications satellites spread, dish antennas at sites such as Menwith Hill in England, Yakima in Washington State and Waihopai in New Zealand captured satellite traffic, and computers searched it for keywords on lists supplied by each partner. The partners were bound by the UKUSA Agreement of 1946, which grew out of British and American codebreaking cooperation in World War II.⁴⁵⁶

British journalist Duncan Campbell first named the system in a 1988 article, and New Zealand researcher Nicky Hager detailed it in his 1996 book Secret Power. Governments refused to confirm it. In 2001 a temporary committee of the European Parliament concluded that a global interception system existed and urged Europeans to encrypt their communications, though it found no proof for claims of widespread commercial spying on European companies. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 later confirmed the ECHELON name and much of its structure.¹²⁴⁶