The U.S.-Mexico domestic spying story: does anybody remember Echelon? how about Porter Goss and Bob Barr?

i posted last night and earlier today on the story the la times broke yesterday about the u.s. helping to fund mexico's domestic spying effort...

Mexico is expanding its ability to tap telephone calls and e-mail using money from the U.S. government, a move that underlines how the country's conservative government is increasingly willing to cooperate with the United States on law enforcement.

the follow-up post today was due to not having read the times article as thoroughly as i should have and, on a re-read, i picked up on a couple of important points i had missed the first time...

information collected in either country can end up in any hands that either government should decide to put it in, whether it's inside or outside the country, governmental or private sector...

two, this is yet another way to bypass fisa and the 4th amendment and gain access to the the enormous volume of communications traffic between the united states and mexico...

but, still, the story has been nagging at me all day, and i suddenly remembered why... does anybody remember echelon (pdf)...? i've followed echelon off and on for some years and, given the current u.s. domestic spying issue, and now, with the u.s. helping fund mexico's newly-elected conservative president, felipe calderón, to get on the domestic spying bandwagon, it may be time to pay another visit to one of the scarier programs i've heard about...

i've posted several times on echelon in the past (here, here, and here)... here's a sampling...

first this from echelon watch, a site created by the aclu but no longer maintained...

Echelon is perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering organization in the world. Several credible reports suggest that this global electronic communications surveillance system presents an extreme threat to the privacy of people all over the world. According to these reports, ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic, including communications to and from North America. This vast quantity of voice and data communications are then processed through sophisticated filtering technologies.

This massive surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight. Moreover, the agencies that purportedly run ECHELON have provided few details as to the legal guidelines for the project. Because of this, there is no way of knowing if ECHELON is being used illegally to spy on private citizens.

Menwith Hill, UK

then this from the aclu, may 2001...

Previous inquiries by the European Parliament have resulted in reports detailing the existence of a surveillance system known as ECHELON, which is led by the NSA in conjunction with its counterpart agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. According to the reports, ECHELON has communications receiving stations all over the world and attempts to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications worldwide, including communications to and from North America. Computers then sort through conversations, faxes and emails searching for keywords and other triggers. Communications that include triggers chosen by the intelligence agencies are transcribed and forwarded for further investigation.

[...]

"It appears that the NSA is engaged in a surveillance system of epic proportions," Steinhardt said. "If these reports are true, ECHELON dwarfs the extensive surveillance of Americans already conducted by the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies."

and look who pops up back in 1999...

Following recent revelations in Australia and Canada on the international signals intelligence network known as ECHELON, Reps. Porter Goss and Bob Barr have requested access to National Security Agency files concerning the legality of the surveillance system. On May 13, Barr succeeded in attaching a requirement to the Intelligence Authorization Act that would require the National Security Agency, the CIA and the Justice Department to prepare a report on ECHELON for the Congress within 60 days of its enactment. The report would describe the legal standards employed by elements of the Intelligence Community in conducting signals intelligence activities, including electronic surveillance. This would include systems like ECHELON that eavesdrop on international telecommunications. As Barr explained, Congress

is concerned about the privacy rights for American citizens and whether or not there are constitutional safeguards being circumvented by the manner in which the intelligence agencies are intercepting and/or receiving international communications back from foreign nations that would otherwise be prohibited by the prohibitions and the limitations on the collection of domestic intelligence.

anyway, my point is this... IF echelon has been in existence for quite some time (and it appears as though it has), AND the uk, canada, australia, new zealand, and the u.s. are all in bed together, AND the 4th amendment does not prevent information gathered outside the country from being used inside the u.s., AND these five countries are all trading information, that confirms my suspicion that virtually every electronic transaction that any of us make on any network outside of our own personal control, is available for sniffing AND recording - if pattern analysis warrants kicking out a specific transaction to be further analyzed - and that this has been going on at least since the mid-90s...

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