Did Echelon Overlook Terrorist Threat?

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) engaged the so-called Echelon communications monitoring network, following on warnings of possible terrorist attacks, as long as three months ago, a German publication has reported.

Western and Middle East intelligence services received warnings more than six months ago that terrorists were planning attacks using hijacked airplanes against "prominent symbols of American and Israeli culture" in the United States and elsewhere, Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) says in its Wednesday edition, citing "information available to this newspaper."

Warnings had circulated among U.S., Israeli, and apparently also U.K. secret services, the report says. It cites sources in German security agencies. Israeli authorities also were following indications that Arab extremists planned to hijack Western planes within Europe and divert them toward Tel Aviv and other coastal cities, the reports say.

Digital Spies

Echelon is widely believed to be a satellite-based espionage network capable of monitoring worldwide communications. It is reportedly managed by the United States and shared with other English-speaking countries. An electronic intercept program, Echelon is said to scan all Internet traffic, cell phone conversations, faxes, and long-distance telephone calls. Through a filtering process, it searches electronic communication for key words that indicate evidence of terrorist activity, military threats, and international crime.

While U.S. authorities have never officially admitted to its existence, a European Parliament investigative committee has concluded that Echelon is real. It is reportedly aimed primarily at communications occurring between people in the United States and other countries.

Human-rights and free-speech groups that have been critical of the use of Echelon or other electronic monitoring systems restated their position that the technology is ineffective, since it failed to head off Tuesday's attacks. But some acknowledge that while they stand for information privacy for citizens in general, they do not oppose the use of Echelon in the fight against terrorism.

Richard Tomlinson, a former employee of the U.K. intelligence service MI6, told the FAZ that a terrorist organization large enough to pull off Tuesday's attack should have been obvious to secret services. Tomlinson spoke of an "obvious total failure" of intelligence, the paper reports.