America's guiding hand revealed - the secret international organisation behind Europe's controversial plans for Internet surveillance

A core objection to paranoid rants regarding the US National Security Agency (NSA) electronic eavesdropping apparatus called ECHELON is the simple observation that spooks trying to use it are literally buried in an avalanche of white noise from which it's quite difficult to extract anything pertinent.

Echelon is the name given to the super-secret SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) collection network allegedly operated by the most secretive of all U.S. agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA). But it is not simply an American endeavor. Also taking part in the massive eavesdropping scheme through a diplomatic construct known as the UKUSA Alliance are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Together they operate a system that is reputedly capable of recording every digital transmission relayed throughout the world each day, including telephone, FAX, and e-mail messages. According to the International Herald Tribune, the system has the capacity to "record up to 2 billion telephone messages daily." What

In the late 1980