Written By: Draga Ivić
Was George Orwell really a visionary, or, as a talented journalist, did he already know what many do not know today? Learning from real models, Zamyatin and Huxley, he became one of the writers of a very rare genre – the dystopian novel.
Even in dividing the world in his book ”1984” he was not, at least allegorically, wrong. His last book deals with something that started in 1947. at the same time as he wrote the first fifty pages of this novel, which would turn out to be his last in his lifetime.
In March 1946. in Fulton, U.S., Churchill called for a crusade against communism, and only a year later Bernard Baruch, an adviser to the U.S. president, in the 1947 U.S. Congress. years of the Cold War.
Along the Iron Curtain are created the conditions for the formation of”Estelon". Invisible, inaudible, untouchable.
Global eavesdropping has long ceased to be a literary fiction.
What kind of Falange is it?
Egelon was originally a government secret code, the name for a program that monitored information signals (intelligence that was collected and analyzed through the SIGINT – Signal intelligence system).
This program was initiated by five security treaty states (UK/USA): Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States; also known as The”Five Eyes”.
The abbreviation, as we can see, originated according to the international designations of the two founders. It began to be worked on in the late 1960s so that the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War could be monitored continuously and from all available places.
The program officially began use in 1971. years and to this day it has expanded to cover the entire planet, forming a roof program for many more different, specialized agencies.
Egelon itself is mentioned for the first time in the internal newsletters of NASE published by Snowden. It is 1966. years established an initial program with the code name” frosting " (coating, cake cream) to collect data from communications satellites.
It had two subroutines: transitional (for intercepting Soviet satellite transmissions) and Egelon, for intercepting satellite communications for which Intelsat was founded. Although it is officially denied the existence of ”Egelon” in general, Snowden states that it has another, internal name – ”Forns”, which is an abbreviation for the Foreign Satellite Collection.
This system of surveillance depends and depends on technological development and means used in mass, public and secret communications, but also in directed, targeted information and communication procedures of specific participants and events. Messages can be sent in many ways: radio, satellite, ultra-short waves, mobile phone, fiber-optic cable, light signals, etc.
Let us recall the alphabet theory of communication: information is a one-way process (the communicator can report or notify, depends on whether it is lower or higher in status), while communication is two-way (the communicator sends a message, and the receiver receives it and returns it via the message channel).
Regardless of the type of channel (cable, letter, air, airless space), it is a cybernetic model. Therefore, it is suitable for both encoding (encrypting or compiling) and decoding (decrypting, reading) messages.
The competition between the eavesdropper and the eavesdropper has no end, and technology in this area is advancing at an unpredictable rate. Proof of this is the sequence of historical events. The advent of geostationary satellites in the 1960s opened up new possibilities for intercepting communications.
It is 1964. dozens of countries have accepted the proposal to establish the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat), which would form a planetary network of communications satellites.
Behind the declared goals such as facilitating global access to civil information of all kinds (politics, economy, sports, Meteorology, entertainment, etc.), were the possibilities of developing special networks that would serve military, i.e. intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, at different levels of secrecy.
This campaign quickly gained momentum, which is no wonder. Behind it stood states with their own resources and clearly defined goals. From military communication, through civil and economic espionage, everything quickly became an object of interest and use. By then, the impossible possibilities begin to come to the fore.
The year 1966. the first satellite was launched for this network. Since 1970. until 1971. The Government Communications Headquarters of GB (GCHQ) has started using a secret signal station in the town of Morwenstow in Cornwall, the extreme southwest point of the British Isles.
This station was tasked with intercepting messages ”traveling” across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Shortly thereafter, the US National Security Agency (NSA) built a second Surveillance Station in Yakima, near Seattle, in the far northeast of the United States, heading to the Pacific toward Asia, or the USSR.
British headquarters and the NSA began expanding the first global network ("WAN-Wide area network"). Soon Australia, Canada and New Zealand, using geostrategic position and political orientation, joined ”Estelon”.
When this activity received unprecedented proportions and abuses, the European Parliament, after the work of an authorized survey committee, in its report of 2001. he said: "If UKUSA countries can use ground stations in the most important regions of the planet, then they can intercept all data traffic going through satellites.”
What does it look like in practice?
Estelon is focused on satellite interception. The EU Special Survey Committee noted that there are separate, but similar, ”UKUSA " systems that intercept communications via submarine cables, ultra-short waves and other means of communication. Europeans were not only concerned with military, but also economic espionage, therefore a significant part of the communication process (conversations, sending data) was diverted from satellite links to optical fibers.
Already in 2006. almost all of the traffic of this type (99%) went by optical fiber. In Central Europe, the share of satellite communications decreased from 0.4% to a maximum of 5%. Now, precisely because of data protection, satellite communications are mostly used for video applications. Ground stations are no longer able to intercept most communications.
While there is a technical way to intercept information going cable or sent microwave in line of sight, this is not always possible and is feasible to a limited extent. As always, every weapon has its own weapon. Other ways are found to send information that is impossible to intercept or even decrypt.
It costs money and not everyone can afford it, but it pays off. Sun Tzu once said,”the best plans are those that the enemy finds out when they begin to come true." This is especially true of internet usage, which we have already dealt with. It is a special battlefield with its methods, measures, countermeasures, victors and vanquished.
This kind of eavesdropping, i.e. monitoring of Communications, did not go so easily in the U.S. because many NGOs, large corporations, and even celebrities raised their voices from influence, believing that it violated a number of constitutional rights regarding the inviolability of information and civil liberties.
Each state covered the area in its own way, with the furthest going being the U.S. which has passed several laws allowing the administration to intercept (and use) information under certain conditions. These include the Foreign Intelligence Act (1978), The Patriot Act, the Protect America Act (2007), and the United States Freedom Act.
The organization created by the ”taste” system is numerous and complex. Each of the five states has its own committee or headquarters that are interconnected by continuous communication. The names are different, but there are always hidden attributes that clearly show that these bodies are engaged in intelligence work, data collection and the security of their own information.
Stations for intercepting signals from different sources exist in the following states:
Brazil (operators: CIA and NSA).
Germany (operators: BND and NSA).
India (operators: CIA and NSA).
Japan (operators: US Air Force and NSA).
Thailand (operators: CIA? NSA?).
United Kingdom (operators: NSA and GCHQ-Government Communications Headquarters )
US (operator: NSA which has three stations, one of which is in Puerto Rico).
Stations under the joint control of the United States and the home state:
Australia ("ASD-Australian Signals Directorate", two stations).
New Zealand ("Government Communications Security Bureau").
The UK (NSA and GCHQ).
Cyprus (NSA and GCHQ).
Kenya (GCHQ).
Oman (GCHQ).
According to a survey by the Parliament of Europe, these are not the only centres, but they are the most active. But that's not where the ”Egelon” story ends. He's part of Big Brother's tools. Let us list only programs that are reliably known to deal with ”remote” intelligence, in addition to ”Egelon” which is a pioneer in this activity:
"XKeyscore" (monitors part of computer traffic).
"PRISM" (monitors strategic internet networks).
"Sentient "(intelligence analusis system, data analysis system)
"Carnivore ”(later named” DCS1000"; used by the FBI to analyze emails and electronic communications).
Dishfire (analytical database used by ”UKUSA”)
Dishfire (used by the DEA-Defense Intelligence Agency for data exchange).
"Tempora" (monitors telephone communications).
"Frenchelon ”(French version of”Estelon").
"Fairview" (an NSA program that through AT&T enters telephone traffic data).
"MYSTIC" (a program that separates real from fake data).
"Digital Collection System Network" ("DCSNet" - for the purposes of the FBI analyzes keywords in mobile traffic).
The "Boundless Informant" (NSA's department that visualizes necessary documents and checks metadata).
'Bullrun' (NSA and GCHQ program that deals with the decryption of data from computer networks, as well as economic indicators, but also the development of advanced cyber methods).
"Pinwale" (a program dealing with digital network intelligence and email. This is an advanced program that members of ”UKUSA” can access only with the permission of the main board because it contains the most advanced protection elements).
” Stingray phone tracker " (the earliest mobile phone tracking program; a generic term in this type of eavesdropping, used by multiple government agencies and widely used).
"RAMPART" (the program is used by the NSA to penetrate data passing through the hubs of international high-capacity optical cables).
"MTI-Mastering the Internet" (British project of mass surveillance of internet communications led by GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters).
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) is an operational over – the-horizon radar network owned by the Royal Australian Air Force, which monitors an area of 37,000 km2 on the north side of Australia. It has a range of up to 3,000 kilometers and can also monitor meteorological conditions for the needs of the commercial Navy.
This is only part of the available data!
It is not known, at least not to the general public, which systems are used by China or the Russian Federation, except for one that is reliably known: ”SORM – System for operational Investigative Activities"("Система оперативно-разыскных мероприятий" -систем за оперативно-пероприятий), a program developed by the Russian FSB in 1995. for the purpose of monitoring telephone and internet communications, so it was activated in similar state agencies of the Russian Federation.
It is quite certain that this is the same field of action with the use of its own technology. A total of 11 agencies use this way to monitor, collect, select and distribute data.
The field of electronic-satellite espionage is vast and covers practically everything from ordinary telephone conversations, the internet, cable and wireless communications, to satellite data exchange. Since there, regardless of the approximate scope of these activities, much is unknown, there remains a huge space that is skillfully used by imaginative writers and directors, so we can often watch films with a theme dominated by this type of espionage.
Among the most famous are ” enemy of the State”, ”on the hook”, ”born's identity”, ”born's ultimatum”, ”gift” (in the original ”The Egelon conspiracy”, ”spy”, ”suspects”, and certainly one of the legendary in this genre is the famous film ”The Conversation”.
The use of such comprehensive surveillance has not gone without a reaction from the public, civic organizations and individuals, so there are frequent processes around the world against some of the numerous agencies listed here.
While this is so broad a field that it requires a separate topic, especially in light of the events surrounding the spectacular role of Snowden, who is now under Russian protection, and Assange, whose process is straining relations between the UK and the US, let us give an interesting example: the Wikimedia Fund sued the NSA for endangering civil liberties, and in the case of the escort and surveillance of authors writing for that fund.
The process is still ongoing-as is surveillance of our entire planet. Today, when even young children have mobile phones (a nice step in the development of civilization, but also the possibility of giant abuses, previously unseen to such an extent), it should be reminded from time to time that he just calls himself a phone. It is, of course, a pocket transceiver, very easy to eavesdrop on, even without entering the Server Database.
Source: Weapons online
11. June 2024.
