<P><B><DC=0,164,224>The Story Behind... Echelon
<P>by Chaos Mind
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<P>Echelon is a big deal in the game, Deus Ex, but what exactly is it? Well, that depends on who you talk to. European nations and civil liberties groups say that Echelon is a secret network run by the United States and four of its allies that spies on everyone in the world. Two of the five nations that supposedly use Echelon say it's just a system to watch criminals and terrorists. The United States says that Echelon doesn't exist at all.
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<P><B>Five Ears Are Better Than One
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<P>According to the conspiracy theorists, the United States and the United Kingdom teamed up during the Cold War to spy on the Soviets. In 1947, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were brought into the deal in an agreement called UKUSA. The five nations basically agreed to work together to spy on their part of the world, which pretty much covers everything. Echelon is supposedly run by all five of its host nations, but the United States is the leader. In the 1970's, the network was boosted with satellites they called "Echelon." Since then, other systems have allegedly been added to make Echelon bigger.
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<P><B>Wire Tap Dancing
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<P>According to critics, the Echelon system today uses everything from wiretaps on underwater telephone lines to huge radio antennae to spy on everything. They claim that Echelon intercepts three billion communications a day, including phone calls, e-mail messages, and satellite transmissions. The Echelon system takes all the information and funnels it into supercomputers that sift through it. The bottom line is that all someone has to do is type in a word or phrase into the computers and Echelon can find everything anyone has ever said about it.