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2 US gets bigger ears in the
sky By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY
- A new US military communications base planned
for Western Australia will draw Asia more deeply
into the clandestine signals war being waged by
security agencies across the globe.
The
facility, to be built at Geraldton, 400 kilometers
north of Perth, will relay intelligence data from
a new generation of satellites to ground forces in
Asia and the Middle East, with the US-led alliance
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan likely to be the
chief recipient. It will be located alongside an
existing US-Australian
base
that intercepts mobile telephone signals and other
communications in an area stretching from the
South Pacific to Northern Europe, including all
Asian countries.
Security analysts say the
new complex, which is expected to pass on
intelligence collected from Geraldton and
elsewhere, will control the two most important of
five geostationary satellites that are being
launched by the US armed forces. Both will be
positioned directly above the Indian Ocean to
allow maximum coverage of the Middle East and the
autonomous area between Pakistan and Afghanistan
where al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be
directing their terrorist networks.
"Geraldton is as far west as you can get
on the Australian land mass. That means they can
put the satellite as far west as possible so that
the Middle East, particularly the Persian Gulf and
South Asia, will fall within its footprint," said
Dr Philip Dorling, a visiting fellow at the
Australian Defense Force Academy.
On a
broader level, the base will form another link in
the mysterious global signals-eavesdropping web
known as ECHELON that the US operates with four
allies - the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and
New Zealand - under the UKUSA Agreement for
intercepting and processing international
communications.
Established in 1947 by
Washington and London, UKUSA arose from a
conviction by World War II signals analysts, later
realized, that the emerging Cold War with
communism would be defined by access to
intelligence information - political, military and
commercial.
Researcher and writer Duncan
Campbell has revealed that by the 1980s,
independent signals intelligence networks operated
by the three former British colonies had been
added, while other countries, including Norway,
Denmark, Germany and Turkey, became "third party"
participants. The format chosen was ECHELON, an
interception technology capable of sifting through
messages from the Internet, e-mails, fax machines,
telephones, radio transmissions and communications
equipment inside embassies, as well as satellites
that could be used to monitor signals anywhere on
Earth.
Even undersea cables, now one of
the key transcontinental international
communication links, were tapped in the days of
copper wiring. The US used specially designed
submarines, the USS Halibut and USS Parche, to
wrap detection coils around the cables, but was
thwarted by the arrival of optical cables, which
do not leak radio signals. A 2001 study by the
European Union found that ECHELON provided 55,000
military and intelligence operatives with access
to data being gathered by 120 spy satellites
worldwide.
"Every minute of every day, the
system is capable of processing 3 million
electronic communications," the EU committee
reported. The technology is based on computer
software known as "Dictionary" that automatically
selects keywords or combinations of specific
names, dates, places and subject matter from a
database of terrorism, political, security and, it
is rumored, commercial targets.
Collected
information, including satellite photos and maps,
is encrypted and forwarded for processing at the
Fort Meade headquarters of the National Security
Agency between Washington and Baltimore, which is
the main US partner in the operation. At the
intelligence level, useful data are fed into a
form of intranet for use by mainstream
intelligence organizations such as the United
States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
Britain's Secret Intelligence Service.
Military units tap in via the British
Skynet communications satellites and the US
Milstar system. Even submarines have access,
through two facilities in Western Australia - the
Northwest Cape relay base and a naval
communications station near Exmouth. The Exmouth
facility sends very low-frequency radio to US and
Australian submarines and has the most powerful
transmitter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Regions of the world are carved up among
the ECHELON partners, with Britain covering Africa
and much of Europe, the US the rest of Europe and
the Americas, and Canada northern latitudes and
polar regions. Australia handles Asia and the
Pacific in conjunction with listening posts and
ground stations in Hawaii, the mainland US, Japan,
New Zealand, Guam and Korea.
Comprehensive coverage The
system is unique in that it offers - technically,
at least - a complete surveillance capability and
is the first involving comprehensive cooperation
among a range of different countries that share
the proceeds.
It is based around a
triangular grid of ground stations at Geraldton,
the British defense facility at Menwith Hill - the
world's biggest signals eavesdropper - and at
Yakima in the US state of Washington, supported by
interceptors and transmitters in Japan, South
Korea, Germany, Guam, Cyprus, Hawaii, Canada,
Puerto Rica, Denmark, Spain, Ireland and New
Zealand, as well as the US, Britain and Australia.
Satellite interceptions in Asia began in
earnest with the launch in 1971 and 1975 of the
second generation of civilian Intelsat orbiters,
which were tracked by a base established in Hong
Kong in the late 1970s that would provide a window
on the emergence of China after the Cultural
Revolution.
By the mid-1990s and the
arrival of the seventh generation of Intelsat
satellites, as well as the expanding Inmarsat
network, signals interception bases had been
established in Geraldton and Waihopai in New
Zealand, while the existing Pine Gap complex in
Australia was being upgraded. Britain's Government
Communications Headquarters transferred its Hong
Kong operations, including all of the transmitters
and most personnel, to Geraldton in 1994 ahead of
the return of the territory to China from the UK.
Geraldton became the key listening post
for civilian communications from Intelsat orbiters
over the Indian Ocean, backed by Pine Gap,
Morwenstow and Menwith Hill in Britain and
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