Exposing the Global Surveillance System

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Exposing the Global Surveillance System
http://www.nickyhager.info/exposing-the-global-surveillance-system/

This article publicised Nicky Hager's book Secret Power and
particularly its revelations about the Echelon surveillance system to
an international audience. The article was picked by a European
Parliament researcher and prompted a year-long European Parliament
investigation into the Echelon system (2000-2001). It received a US
journalism award.

Nicky Hager
Posted on 1 February 1997
Categories Articles, Intelligence, Major investigations

   In the late 1980's, in a decision it probably regrets, the U.S.
   prompted New Zealand to join a new and highly secret global
   intelligence system. Hager's investigation into it and his discovery of
   the Echelon dictionary has revealed one of the world's biggest, most
   closely held intelligence projects. The system allows spy agencies to
   monitor most of the world's telephone, e-mail, and telex communications.
   
   For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government
   Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US
   National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to
   spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge
   of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials.
   What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various
   intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for
   too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing
   New Zealand's intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people
   who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be
   interviewed.
   
   The activities they described made it possible to document, from the
   South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been
   kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON.
   
   Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to
   intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications
   carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of
   the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is
   designed primarily for non-military targets: governments,
   organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country.
   It potentially affects every person communicating between (and
   sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world.
   
   It is, of course, not a new idea that intelligence organizations tap
   into e-mail and other public telecommunications networks. What was new
   in the material leaked by the New Zealand intelligence staff was
   precise information on where the spying is done, how the system works,
   its capabilities and shortcomings, and many details such as the
   codenames.
   
   The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular
   individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by
   indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications
   and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from
   the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities
   has been established around the world to tap into all the major
   components of the international telecommunications networks. Some
   monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications
   networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all
   these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to
   intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet.
   
   The computers at each station in the ECHELON network automatically
   search through the millions of messages intercepted for ones containing
   pre-programmed keywords. Keywords include all the names, localities,
   subjects, and so on that might be mentioned. Every word of every
   message intercepted at each station gets automatically searched whether
   or not a specific telephone number or e-mail address is on the list.
   
   The thousands of simultaneous messages are read in "real time" as they
   pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as the computer
   finds intelligence needles in telecommunications haystacks.
   
   SOMEONE IS LISTENING: The computers in stations around the globe are
   known, within the network, as the ECHELON Dictionaries. Computers that
   can automatically search through traffic for keywords have existed
   since at least the 1970s, but the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to
   interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as
   components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together
   under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other
   three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government
   Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, the Communications
   Security Establishment (CSE) in Canada, and the Defense Signals
   Directorate (DSD) in Australia.
   
   The alliance, which grew from cooperative efforts during World War II
   to intercept radio transmissions, was formalized into the UKUSA
   agreement in 1948 and aimed primarily against the USSR. The five UKUSA
   agencies are today the largest intelligence organizations in their
   respective countries. With much of the world's business occurring by
   fax, e-mail, and phone, spying on these communications receives the
   bulk of intelligence resources. For decades before the introduction of
   the ECHELON system, the UKUSA allies did intelligence collection
   operations for each other, but each agency usually processed and
   analyzed the intercept from its own stations.
   
   Under ECHELON, a particular station's Dictionary computer contains not
   only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also has lists entered in
   for other agencies. In New Zealand's satellite interception station at
   Waihopai (in the South Island), for example, the computer has separate
   search lists for the NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE in addition to its own.
   Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the
   agencies' keywords, it automatically picks it and sends it directly to
   the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand
   screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand
   station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior
   UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were
   overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil.
   
   The first component of the ECHELON network are stations specifically
   targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats)
   used by the telephone companies of most countries. A ring of Intelsats
   is positioned around the world, stationary above the equator, each
   serving as a relay station for tens of thousands of simultaneous phone
   calls, fax, and e-mail. Five UKUSA stations have been established to
   intercept the communications carried by the Intelsats.
   
   The British GCHQ station is located at the top of high cliffs above the
   sea at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Satellite dishes beside sprawling
   operations buildings point toward Intelsats above the Atlantic, Europe,
   and, inclined almost to the horizon, the Indian Ocean. An NSA station
   at Sugar Grove, located 250 kilometers southwest of Washington, DC, in
   the mountains of West Virginia, covers Atlantic Intelsats transmitting
   down toward North and South America. Another NSA station is in
   Washington State, 200 kilometers southwest of Seattle, inside the
   Army's Yakima Firing Center. Its satellite dishes point out toward the
   Pacific Intelsats and to the east.
   
   The job of intercepting Pacific Intelsat communications that cannot be
   intercepted at Yakima went to New Zealand and Australia. Their South
   Pacific location helps to ensure global interception. New Zealand
   provides the station at Waihopai and Australia supplies the Geraldton
   station in West Australia (which targets both Pacific and Indian Ocean
   Intelsats).
   
   Each of the five stations' Dictionary computers has a codename to
   distinguish it from others in the network. The Yakima station, for
   instance, located in desert country between the Saddle Mountains and
   Rattlesnake Hills, has the COWBOY Dictionary, while the Waihopai
   station has the FLINTLOCK Dictionary. These codenames are recorded at
   the beginning of every intercepted message, before it is transmitted
   around the ECHELON network, allowing analysts to recognize at which
   station the interception occurred.
   
   New Zealand intelligence staff has been closely involved with the NSA's
   Yakima station since 1981, when NSA pushed the GCSB to contribute to a
   project targeting Japanese embassy communications. Since then, all five
   UKUSA agencies have been responsible for monitoring diplomatic cables
   from all Japanese posts within the same segments of the globe they are
   assigned for general UKUSA monitoring. Until New Zealand's integration
   into ECHELON with the opening of the Waihopai station in 1989, its
   share of the Japanese communications was intercepted at Yakima and sent
   unprocessed to the GCSB headquarters in Wellington for decryption,
   translation, and writing into UKUSA-format intelligence reports (the
   NSA provides the codebreaking programs).
   
   "COMMUNICATION" THROUGH SATELLITES: The next component of the ECHELON
   system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by
   Intelsat.In addition to the UKUSA stations targeting Intelsat
   satellites, there are another five or more stations homing in on
   Russian and other regional communications satellites. These stations
   are Menwith Hill in northern England; Shoal Bay, outside Darwin in
   northern Australia (which targets Indonesian satellites); Leitrim, just
   south of Ottawa in Canada (which appears to intercept Latin American
   satellites); Bad Aibling in Germany; and Misawa in northern Japan.
   
   A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based
   telecommunications systems is the final element of the ECHELON system.
   Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting
   large quantities of public, business, and government communications is
   a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks
   over land. Heavy cables, laid across seabeds between countries, account
   for much of the world's international communications. After they come
   out of the water and join land-based microwave networks they are very
   vulnerable to interception. The microwave networks are made up of
   chains of microwave towers relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop
   (always in line of sight) across the countryside. These networks shunt
   large quantities of communications across a country. Interception of
   them gives access to international undersea communications (once they
   surface) and to international communication trunk lines across
   continents. They are also an obvious target for large-scale
   interception of domestic communications.
   
   Because the facilities required to intercept radio and satellite
   communications use large aerials and dishes that are difficult to hide
   for too long, that network is reasonably well documented. But all that
   is required to intercept land-based communication networks is a
   building situated along the microwave route or a hidden cable running
   underground from the legitimate network into some anonymous building,
   possibly far removed. Although it sounds technically very difficult,
   microwave interception from space by United States spy satellites also
   occurs.4 The worldwide network of facilities to intercept these
   communications is largely undocumented, and because New Zealand's GCSB
   does not participate in this type of interception, my inside sources
   could not help either.
   
   NO ONE IS SAFE FROM A MICROWAVE: A 1994 expos of the Canadian UKUSA
   agency, Spyworld, co-authored by one of its former staff, Mike Frost,
   gave the first insights into how a lot of foreign microwave
   interception is done (see p. 18). It described UKUSA "embassy
   collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors
   are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in
   diplomatic bags and used to monitor various communications in foreign
   capitals.
   
   Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city,
   embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic
   privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country.
   *6 The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill
   gaps in the American and British embassy collection operations, which
   were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left
   the CSE in 1990. Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the
   DSD also engages in embassy collection. On the territory of UKUSA
   nations, the interception of land-based telecommunications appears to
   be done at special secret intelligence facilities. The US, UK, and
   Canada are geographically well placed to intercept the large amounts of
   the world's communications that cross their territories.
   
   The only public reference to the Dictionary system anywhere in the
   world was in relation to one of these facilities, run by the GCHQ in
   central London. In 1991, a former British GCHQ official spoke
   anonymously to Granada Television's World in Action about the agency's
   abuses of power. He told the program about an anonymous red brick
   building at 8 Palmer Street where GCHQ secretly intercepts every telex
   which passes into, out of, or through London, feeding them into
   powerful computers with a program known as "Dictionary." The operation,
   he explained, is staffed by carefully vetted British Telecom people:
   "It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal
   to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies,
   all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take
   everything. They feed it into the Dictionary." What the documentary did
   not reveal is that Dictionary is not just a British system; it is
   UKUSA-wide.
   
   Similarly, British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the US
   Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom
   microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major
   microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground
   into the station.
   
   The NSA Menwith Hill station, with 22 satellite terminals and more than
   4.9 acres of buildings, is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful in
   the UKUSA network. Located in northern England, several thousand
   kilometers from the Persian Gulf, it was awarded the NSA's "Station of
   the Year" prize for 1991 after its role in the Gulf War. Menwith Hill
   assists in the interception of microwave communications in another way
   as well, by serving as a ground station for US electronic spy
   satellites. These intercept microwave trunk lines and short range
   communications such as military radios and walkie talkies. Other ground
   stations where the satellites' information is fed into the global
   network are Pine Gap, run by the CIA near Alice Springs in central
   Australia and the Bad Aibling station in Germany. Among them, the
   various stations and operations making up the ECHELON network tap into
   all the main components of the world's telecommunications networks. All
   of them, including a separate network of stations that intercepts long
   distance radio communications, have their own Dictionary computers
   connected into ECHELON.
   
   In the early 1990s, opponents of the Menwith Hill station obtained
   large quantities of internal documents from the facility. Among the
   papers was a reference to an NSA computer system called Platform. The
   integration of all the UKUSA station computers into ECHELON probably
   occurred with the introduction of this system in the early 1980s. James
   Bamford wrote at that time about a new worldwide NSA computer network
   codenamed Platform "which will tie together 52 separate computer
   systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or `host environment,'
   for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
   Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT
   organization, GCHQ."
   
   LOOKING IN THE DICTIONARY: The Dictionary computers are connected via
   highly encrypted UKUSA communications that link back to computer data
   bases in the five agency headquarters. This is where all the
   intercepted messages selected by the Dictionaries end up. Each morning
   the specially "indoctrinated" signals intelligence analysts in
   Washington, Ottawa, Cheltenham, Canberra, and Wellington log on at
   their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system. After keying
   in their security passwords, they reach a directory that lists the
   different categories of intercept available in the data bases, each
   with a four-digit code. For instance, 1911 might be Japanese diplomatic
   cables from Latin America (handled by the Canadian CSE), 3848 might be
   political communications from and about Nigeria, and 8182 might be any
   messages about distribution of encryption technology.
   
   They select their subject category, get a "search result" showing how
   many messages have been caught in the ECHELON net on that subject, and
   then the day's work begins. Analysts scroll through screen after screen
   of intercepted faxes, e-mail messages, etc. and, whenever a message
   appears worth reporting on, they select it from the rest to work on. If
   it is not in English, it is translated and then written into the
   standard format of intelligence reports produced anywhere within the
   UKUSA network either in entirety as a "report," or as a summary or
   "gist."
   
   INFORMATION CONTROL: A highly organized system has been developed to
   control what is being searched for by each station and who can have
   access to it. This is at the heart of ECHELON operations and works as
   follows.
   
   The individual station's Dictionary computers do not simply have a long
   list of keywords to search for. And they do not send all the
   information into some huge database that participating agencies can dip
   into as they wish. It is much more controlled.
   
   The search lists are organized into the same categories, referred to by
   the four digit numbers. Each agency decides its own categories
   according to its responsibilities for producing intelligence for the
   network. For GCSB, this means South Pacific governments, Japanese
   diplomatic, Russian Antarctic activities, and so on.
   
   The agency then works out about 10 to 50 keywords for selection in each
   category. The keywords include such things as names of people, ships,
   organizations, country names, and subject names. They also include the
   known telex and fax numbers and Internet addresses of any individuals,
   businesses, organizations, and government offices that are targets.
   These are generally written as part of the message text and so are
   easily recognized by the Dictionary computers.
   
   The agencies also specify combinations of keywords to help sift out
   communications of interest. For example, they might search for
   diplomatic cables containing both the words "Santiago" and "aid," or
   cables containing the word "Santiago" but not "consul" (to avoid the
   masses of routine consular communications). It is these sets of words
   and numbers (and combinations), under a particular category, that get
   placed in the Dictionary computers. (Staff in the five agencies called
   Dictionary Managers enter and update the keyword search lists for each
   agency.)
   
   The whole system, devised by the NSA, has been adopted completely by
   the other agencies. The Dictionary computers search through all the
   incoming messages and, whenever they encounter one with any of the
   agencies' keywords, they select it. At the same time, the computer
   automatically notes technical details such as the time and place of
   interception on the piece of intercept so that analysts reading it, in
   whichever agency it is going to, know where it came from, and what it
   is. Finally, the computer writes the four-digit code (for the category
   with the keywords in that message) at the bottom of the message's text.
   This is important. It means that when all the intercepted messages end
   up together in the database at one of the agency headquarters, the
   messages on a particular subject can be located again. Later, when the
   analyst using the Dictionary system selects the four- digit code for
   the category he or she wants, the computer simply searches through all
   the messages in the database for the ones which have been tagged with
   that number.
   
   This system is very effective for controlling which agencies can get
   what from the global network because each agency only gets the
   intelligence out of the ECHELON system from its own numbers. It does
   not have any access to the raw intelligence coming out of the system to
   the other agencies. For example, although most of the GCSB's
   intelligence production is primarily to serve the UKUSA alliance, New
   Zealand does not have access to the whole ECHELON network. The access
   it does have is strictly controlled. A New Zealand intelligence officer
   explained: "The agencies can all apply for numbers on each other's
   Dictionaries. The hardest to deal with are the Americans. ... [There are]
   more hoops to jump through, unless it is in their interest, in which
   case they'll do it for you."
   
   There is only one agency which, by virtue of its size and role within
   the alliance, will have access to the full potential of the ECHELON
   system the agency that set it up. What is the system used for? Anyone
   listening to official "discussion" of intelligence could be forgiven
   for thinking that, since the end of the Cold War, the key targets of
   the massive UKUSA intelligence machine are terrorism, weapons
   proliferation, and economic intelligence. The idea that economic
   intelligence has become very important, in particular, has been
   carefully cultivated by intelligence agencies intent on preserving
   their post-Cold War budgets. It has become an article of faith in much
   discussion of intelligence. However, I have found no evidence that
   these are now the primary concerns of organizations such as NSA.
   
   QUICKER INTELLIGENCE, SAME MISSION: A different story emerges after
   examining very detailed information I have been given about the
   intelligence New Zealand collects for the UKUSA allies and detailed
   descriptions of what is in the yards-deep intelligence reports New
   Zealand receives from its four allies each week. There is quite a lot
   of intelligence collected about potential terrorists, and there is
   quite a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of
   all the countries participating in GATT negotiations. But by far, the
   main priorities of the intelligence alliance continue to be political
   and military intelligence to assist the larger allies to pursue their
   interests around the world. Anyone and anything the particular
   governments are concerned about can become a target.
   
   With capabilities so secret and so powerful, almost anything goes. For
   example, in June 1992, a group of current "highly placed intelligence
   operatives" from the British GCHQ spoke to the London Observer: "We
   feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to
   be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which
   we operate." They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three
   charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian
   Aid. As the Observer reported: "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on
   their communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source
   said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With
   telexes it is called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to Third
   World aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the
   three organizations. "It is then possible to key in a trigger word
   which enables us to home in on the telex communications whenever that
   word appears," he said. "And we can read a pre-determined number of
   characters either side of the keyword." Without actually naming it,
   this was a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary
   system works. Again, what was not revealed in the publicity was that
   this is a UKUSA-wide system. The design of ECHELON means that the
   interception of these organizations could have occurred anywhere in the
   network, at any station where the GCHQ had requested that the
   four-digit code covering Third World aid be placed.
   
   Note that these GCHQ officers mentioned that the system was being used
   for telephone calls. In New Zealand, ECHELON is used only to intercept
   written communications: fax, e-mail, and telex. The reason, according
   to intelligence staff, is that the agency does not have the staff to
   analyze large quantities of telephone conversations.
   
   Mike Frost's expos of Canadian "embassy collection" operations
   described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory, that can
   "listen" to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken.
   Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and
   accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers.
   Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from
   the masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for
   analysts back at agency headquarters. However, high volume voice
   recognition computers will be technically difficult to perfect, and my
   New Zealand-based sources could not confirm that this capability
   exists. But, if or when it is perfected, the implications would be
   immense. It would mean that the UKUSA agencies could use machines to
   search through all the international telephone calls in the world, in
   the same way that they do written messages. If this equipment exists
   for use in embassy collection, it will presumably be used in all the
   stations throughout the ECHELON network. It is yet to be confirmed how
   extensively telephone communications are being targeted by the ECHELON
   stations for the other agencies.
   
   The easiest pickings for the ECHELON system are the individuals,
   organizations, and governments that do not use encryption. In New
   Zealand's area, for example, it has proved especially useful against
   already vulnerable South Pacific nations which do not use any coding,
   even for government communications (all these communications of New
   Zealand's neighbors are supplied, unscreened, to its UKUSA allies). As
   a result of the revelations in my book, there is currently a project
   under way in the Pacific to promote and supply publicly available
   encryption software to vulnerable organizations such as democracy
   movements in countries with repressive governments. This is one
   practical way of curbing illegitimate uses of the ECHELON capabilities.
   
   One final comment. All the newspapers, commentators, and "well placed
   sources" told the public that New Zealand was cut off from US
   intelligence in the mid-1980s. That was entirely untrue. The
   intelligence supply to New Zealand did not stop, and instead, the
   decade since has been a period of increased integration of New Zealand
   into the US system. Virtually everything the equipment, manuals, ways
   of operating, jargon, codes, and so on, used in the GCSB continues to
   be imported entirely from the larger allies (in practice, usually the
   NSA). As with the Australian and Canadian agencies, most of the
   priorities continue to come from the US, too.
   
   The main thing that protects these agencies from change is their
   secrecy. On the day my book arrived in the book shops, without prior
   publicity, there was an all-day meeting of the intelligence bureaucrats
   in the prime minister's department trying to decide if they could
   prevent it from being distributed. They eventually concluded, sensibly,
   that the political costs were too high. It is understandable that they
   were so agitated.
   
   Throughout my research, I have faced official denials or governments
   refusing to comment on publicity about intelligence activities. Given
   the pervasive atmosphere of secrecy and stonewalling, it is always hard
   for the public to judge what is fact, what is speculation, and what is
   paranoia. Thus, in uncovering New Zealand's role in the NSA-led
   alliance, my aim was to provide so much detail about the operations the
   technical systems, the daily work of individual staff members, and even
   the rooms in which they work inside intelligence facilities that
   readers could feel confident that they were getting close to the truth.
   I hope the information leaked by intelligence staff in New Zealand
   about UKUSA and its systems such as ECHELON will help lead to change.
   
   
   
   This article appeared in CAQ with the following sidebar articles:
   
   NSA'S BUSINESS PLAN: GLOBAL ACCESS by Duncan Campbell
   GREENPEACE WARRIOR: WHY NO WARNING? by Nicky Hager
   NZ's PM Kept in the Dark by Nicky Hager

   CovertAction Magazine
   https://covertactionmagazine.com/

=======================================================================

Why America never cut ties with NZ
http://www.nickyhager.info/why-america-never-cut-ties-with-nz/

MICHAEL KING'S excellent Penguin History of New Zealand tells us
intelligence sharing between the United States and New Zealand ended in
1985 as part of retaliation for this country's nuclear-free policy.
Thanks to the discovery last week of a secret intelligence report
detailing events at that time, we can at last, hopefully, lay this
tired old myth to rest.

Author Nicky Hager
Posted on 22 January 2006
Categories Articles, Intelligence

   MICHAEL KING'S excellent Penguin History of New Zealand tells us
   intelligence sharing between the United States and New Zealand ended in
   1985 as part of retaliation for this country's nuclear-free policy.
   Numerous books, articles and statements by senior officials have told
   this same, incorrect, story. Thanks to the discovery last week of the
   secret intelligence report detailing events at that time, we can at
   last, hopefully, lay this tired old myth to rest.
   
   The myth of the 1985 "severed intelligence ties" is most often heard
   from people arguing that it is in New Zealand's best interests to be a
   close American ally like Australia. It is used to reinforce a picture
   of New Zealand as vulnerable and dependent, where acting independently
   is unwise and risks some kind of loss, trade, intelligence or
   otherwise. Many foreign policy and security issues are discussed within
   this framework of supposed risks and threats.
   
   The serendipitous discovery of the May 1986 report – the annual report
   of New Zealand's little-known Government Communications Security Bureau
   (GCSB) eavesdropping agency – shows us that this prime example of
   vulnerability and loss never occurred. The report describes only minor
   and temporary reductions in intelligence flows, reluctantly introduced
   by a privately cordial National Security Agency (NSA) in response to
   pressure from the US Administration.
   
   The ANZUS dispute led to three changes to the flow of signals
   intelligence (intercepted communications) to New Zealand. The first was
   that New Zealand got only one copy of each report, addressed to the
   GCSB, instead of one going to each local agency. This is no great
   problem to an intelligence service possessing a photocopier.
   
   Next, the Canadian, British and Australian agencies were asked by NSA
   to exclude all US content from material provided to New Zealand. This
   meant we got US intelligence directly but not quoted in allied
   countries' reports. The most substantial change was that all summary
   reports of signals intelligence produced by America were cancelled.
   
   This fits with the changes GCSB staff told me they saw to incoming
   intelligence in March 1985 when, they said, certain intelligence
   summaries were withheld. The spy agency still received all the
   individual US intelligence reports – thousands a week – but some weekly
   or geographic compilations of this intelligence stopped arriving. David
   Lange called this not getting the Reader's Digest version.
   
   The summaries withheld were those prepared by US military forces –
   which is not surprising since the US military, and especially US Navy,
   were most annoyed by the nuclear policy and did cut some military ties.
   
   It was a hassle for New Zealand's small intelligence agencies not to
   have these convenient summaries arriving. But, since everything still
   arrived as individual reports, the country was not deprived of
   intelligence. Overall, the "end" of US-NZ intelligence sharing amounted
   to a few per cent of intelligence reports being withheld.
   
   Why, then, did news go around the world of intelligence access being –
   in the words of defence chief Ewan Jamieson – "terminated"? The aim of
   this deception seems to have been that the US wanted other countries,
   particularly its allies, to believe New Zealand had been severely
   punished for adopting the nuclear policy and not follow the example.
   This would explain why all publicly visible military links, such as
   major exercises, were cancelled while numerous less visible military
   links continued.
   
   There were two other concrete ANZUS dispute punishments: the GCSB's
   invitation to a joint Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom,
   US Far East signals intelligence (SIGINT) planning conference in
   Washington in October 1985 was withdrawn and a ban was placed on new
   NSA-GCSB initiatives. The conferences and new initiatives soon resumed.
   The report records planning for GCSB satellite eavesdropping and the
   first training of military personnel for Tactical SIGINT missions.
   These are now New Zealand's most important NSA-GCSB collaborations.
   
   If the Americans were so annoyed at New Zealand, why didn't they cut
   the intelligence links? Most of the Tangimoana radio eavesdropping
   station's work was monitoring Soviet vessels in the Pacific for the
   Americans. The station also monitored Argentinian Navy and Egyptian
   diplomatic communications for Britain.
   
   The head office intelligence analysts specialised in translating French
   government communications intercepted by the British and translating
   Japanese diplomatic cables and communications from friendly South
   Pacific nations intercepted by the US. A quarter of the radio
   eavesdropping staff were based at "JTUM" in Melbourne, helping a
   British/Australian operation against China. Why would the US cut
   intelligence ties when our intelligence staff were helping do its work?
   
   The GCSB even spied on Greenpeace protests against French Pacific
   nuclear testing and a Greenpeace vessel's Antarctic expedition – the
   latter called a watching brief for safety purposes. The most
   questionable spying targets revealed were UN diplomatic communications.
   GCSB staff told me in the 1990s that this included regular monitoring
   of UN agencies in the Pacific for the US and Britain, including the UN
   Development Programme.
   
   We don't know what the GCSB's targets are today. But we do know our
   largest intelligence agency will still be conducting numerous
   operations on behalf of the US and British. Shortly after the September
   2001 terrorist attacks on the US, Prime Minister Helen Clark told
   parliament "New Zealand has strong international intelligence
   relationships, and we will cooperate fully through the networks we
   have". It's likely New Zealanders would not feel fully comfortable if
   they were aware of those war-on- terror targets.
   
   In 2003 a young Chinese translator in the British eavesdropping agency,
   GCHQ, blew the whistle on concerted monitoring of UN Security Council
   members before the Iraq war. She gave the media details of the NSA
   request for a "surge" of intelligence collection seeking anything the
   US could use to push these countries into voting in favour of invasion.
   
   Were our electronic spies part of this more recent UN spying, helping
   the push for war while our government refused to take part? Based on
   the scale of US and British targeting revealed in the 1986 report, the
   likely answer is yes."


The Listening - in ascolto (2006)
http://theinfounderground.com/smf/index.php?topic=12746.msg49393#msg49393