Hightower Lowdown

Look! Up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane . . . it's Echelon?

Echelon isn't something many Americans have heard about, but chances are it's heard about you. It's a top-secret satellite and computer system that "listens" to every phone call, e-mail, and fax sent by anyone in the world.

Now, this may sound like a James Bond movie script, but Echelon is real. Established during the Cold War to spy on the commies, it continues its worldwide surveillance and has even been expanded, despite the fact that the Cold War is long gone. Run by the secretive National Security Agency, Echelon is a joint espionage escapade of the U.S., England, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Like a virtual vacuum cleaner in the sky, this system sucks up billions of fax, phone, and e-mail messages from around the globe and funnels them into NSA's supercomputers. These computers are programmed with "Echelon dictionaries" that tag key names, phrases, and words. When the computers "hear" these targeted terms, they pull the full phone, fax, or e-mail message for further analyzing . . . or tracking.

What names, phrases, and words are targeted? NSA isn't saying. But independent analysts say that Echelon collects information on U.S. politicians and organizations, and that it's even being used by U.S. corporations to spy on their foreign competitors.