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I'm almost tempted to just roll the article back to its last GA point, but some folks have tried to improve it, so I'll settle for De-listing it for now. Per WP:WIAGA 2b. this article suffers from a severe lack of WP:V at the moment from unsourced statements and a heavy dose of WP:POV or WP:OR. Burzmali 20:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Loaded words like "conspiracy theorists" do not contribute to a neutral tone in this article. The following paragraph is a particular offender:
Conspiracy theorists allege that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance might have been used to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilities spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data. There is, however, no evidence to suggest this is the case, and in fact it would be just as illegal as spying directly.
Of course it's just as illegal as spying directly. That's why it's controversial. The wording, however, suggests that this is a reasonable rationale to expect that the allegations are false. -- Arperry 19:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I think rogue FBI agents leagued with the sicilian mafia monitor my electronic communications what can a person do to attract echelons monitoring of their communications such that a variety of different government branches know their story beanangel300@yahoo.com
as an aside does emacs still have that NSA attractor command —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.41.136.51 ( talk) 00:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Much of this content is a bit tin-foil-hat so I'm going to try to cull material and focus on the verifiable material around Echelon and get rid of the garbage.
Likely to be a fairly lengthy job as much of the supporting evidence is questionable and there is quite a lot of OR and essay in the article at the moment.
ALR 17:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
That DSD, the Australian SIGINT agency, cooperates with "counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas" under the "UKUSA relationship" was confirmed by DSD Director Martin Brady in 1999 in a letter to reporter Ross Coulthart (story here; letter here and here). The term UKUSA has been leaked by people who were evidently in a position to know too many times to count, but AFAIK this is the only official confirmation of its use, presumably because the agreement is still considered classified. Still, once ought to be enough to establish that it is in fact used within the core Western SIGINT community. The fact that there is a core Western SIGINT community and that it is composed of the five agencies from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has been publicly confirmed many times. In recent years, official sources have taken to publicly referring to this community as the "Five-Eyes community". See, e.g., Canadian government testimony here and here; see also CSE Chief John Adams's 6 Feb 2007 speech. BillRobinsonCanada ( talk) 17:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
This is a frustrating article, from the point of view of people in a position to know the facts. Although there are global information collecting facilities, much of what is said about them is wrong, even the very name, and cannot be corrected by those who actually know (and are bound to secrecy). The EU report is given too much credence; it was based almost entirely on interviews with questionable sources such as Campbell. For example, a FOIA search of the NSA archives turned up only two uses of "echelon", one of them in its normal military meaning, but that was interpreted as evidence for the project codeword. It would be best for the article to use more "it is alleged" and "Duncan Campbell claimed" and less "it is".— DAGwyn ( talk) 22:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Updated:
The UKUSA intelligence community is assessed by the European Parliament to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states. It's all past context from some old EU Parliament report back in 2000 so I edited to read correctly. Also the whole EU Parliament thing is ridiculous, FAR too much weight, almost as though it is suggesting OVERSIGHT, I'll re-write. Twobells ( talk) 10:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
This is quite fumorous. Using a FOIA request of NSA to check on ECHELON. "A rose by any other name is still a rose".
24.128.186.53 (
talk)
18:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
ALR, you have been making major changes to the article. While I agree that changes are needed, you have been deleting large blocks of text with citations, and adding material, in some cases, that is unsourced. I raised two points with you above and you refused to accept them. Nevertheless, the policy on consensus states that consensus is "Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision-making." Right now that means you and me. Hopefully other editors will join us, but, for now, we must agree.
I have asked you to agree to only add material to the article that meets WP:RS and WP:V. Since these are policies, we really do not have much choice in the matter. To that, I will add a further request: Would you please not delete major blocks of text (especially sourced text) without first discussing it here?
I think that we need a plan for the overhaul of the article. Let's agree on an approach before we start on major changes. In the meantime, I am reverting the article to the version before you began to make changes. Sunray 23:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I've been trying to work out what to do with the capabilities section today, but it reeks of OR at the moment. My inclination is to get rid of the lot and redo it.
What the sources come down to is that collection is carried out in three ways:
In terms of the article I have no intention of discussing spy satellites, since overhead comprises a whole range of different capabilities.
I think it's reasonable to indicate that the investigations conclude that infrastructure taps exist. The issue of intercept of satellite bearers has a little more mileage, since the EP report considers the various ground stations with respect to the spacecraft that they're likely to be pointed at.
I don't believe that the latter paragraph about GSM intercept is appropriate to this article, I've got no sources which relate the two, in fact it's easier just to pick the traffic out of the infrastructure.
Is that clear?
ALR 21:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
if I can easy built a optical fiber taps without much knowledge, with information found on internet and with less then $1000, just imagine what echelon is capable of. "difficult" I lol'd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.214.104.143 ( talk) 10:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Having read through both Campbell's STOA report and "Inside ECHELON," I tend to agree with you. However, I note the following summary of capabilities in the STOA report:
It would seem that ECHELON must be broader than merely satellite intercepts. However, I agree with your comments on sources. Thus I think we have to be clear what is from a verifiable source and what is only covered in Campbell's (and Hager's) more general statements such as the one above. Sunray 02:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The sentence fragment containing this phrase was removed by ArnoldReinhold as conclusionary. I agree. The phrase is not contained in the EP report. I think it wise to exclude it (and will do so). Sunray 01:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added a wikify tag to the article as it seems several of the sources need to be wikified. Particularly in the "Capabilities" section, but elsewhere too. Rehevkor ( talk) 21:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the "clean-up" tag. Certainly it is wikified. The references are adequate. Likely if the article was being proposed for a GA or an FA they would need improvement. Sunray ( talk) 15:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
In cleaning up the references there is consistent mention of a STOA report. the report was not correctly cited in the first instance and it si not clear to me which one it was. At one stage in the revision history an anon editor has changed "changed EP to STOA, more accurate description of sourcr of report" and immediately before changed " replaces EP (European Parliamewnt) with STOA (name of the comitee comisioning the report)". In looking at the report this seems wrong. The EP report states on its proceduarl page
At the sitting of 5 July 2000 the European Parliament decided, pursuant to Rule 150(2) of its Rules of Procedure, to set up a Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System and laid down its mandate as outlined in Chapter 1, 1.3. With a view to fulfilling that mandate, at its constituent meeting of 9 July 2000 the Temporary Committee appointed Gerhard Schmid rapporteur.
This does not equal Scientific Technology Options Assessment whose reports are listed at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/default_en.htm . Above however someone does refer to a STOA report whose author was Cambell - I don't know which one it was or whether it was cited here - still to unravel the complexities of the rather bizarre and ad hoc approach to citations. Given the EP report is lengthy I may break up the footnotes to refer to specific pages but at this stage I am not necessarily inclined to - does anybody have any views? -- Matilda talk 23:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
GCSB Tangimoana in New Zealand may need to be added to this list Goldfinger820 ( talk) 00:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
What does the article mean by "The satellites are claimed to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters across, parked in geostationary orbits." ??!! I don't think that there are any satellites (except for the Space Station perhaps) which are anywhere near this size. I shudder to think of the size of the rocket you would need to put something that large into Geosynchronous orbit, unless perhaps it uses a fold-out type antenna and the satellite itself is not that large. Does the author perhaps mean that the ground stations have antennas which are 20 to 100 meters across, not the satellites themselves? Sbreheny ( talk) 00:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I've just read again the comments about Pine Gap, and they identify that location as a downlink for the overhead collectors, not intercept of civil satcomm in the same way that the other locations are. Is there anything which supports the assertion that Pine Gap was an Echelon site, since the two are different beasts.
ALR ( talk) 18:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
This article by Duncan Campbell is quite well sourced and has a host of background information on Echelon - it would be nice if we could incorporate more info from it into this article... ( I'll try and work on it as well if I have the time. -- Marcika ( talk) 12:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The article leaves out that Echelon was considered the playground of "conspiracy treorists" - who actually knew what they were talking about. On TV - not sure if it was 60 Minutes, PBS,... I saw a show that actually gave the location in California where the transoceanic communication cables made landfall and were intercepted in a small building by the government. I don't think the gov even bothers to pretend they don't snoop on us all - the discussions questioning some of their techniques and exact locations seems pointless. Last night PBS had a photo of Clinton and a caption with the word Echelon in it - the cat's out of the bag. When the internet was new and wiki was a baby it was so much fun to be called a nut by some CIA plants ( ahh the good old days). 159.105.80.141 ( talk) 12:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I have tried to added pragraf with fact that has been speculation about that google is an echelon funded by the cia. To get the whole picture.
85.83.42.75 ( talk) 18:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems to yours truly that the way the article reads gives far too much weight to the European Parliament and that old EU report, it is mentioned throughout the piece and is written ain such a way to suggest some sort of oversight and a legitimate mandate over the '5 eyes' sigint which obviously it doesn't.It was only even able to carry out an assessment by dint of the UK's membership of the EU. Twobells ( talk) 14:33, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
The introduction is a bit too technical for me. Please simplify. 50.103.226.135 ( talk) 06:59, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I'm almost tempted to just roll the article back to its last GA point, but some folks have tried to improve it, so I'll settle for De-listing it for now. Per WP:WIAGA 2b. this article suffers from a severe lack of WP:V at the moment from unsourced statements and a heavy dose of WP:POV or WP:OR. Burzmali 20:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Loaded words like "conspiracy theorists" do not contribute to a neutral tone in this article. The following paragraph is a particular offender:
Conspiracy theorists allege that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance might have been used to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilities spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data. There is, however, no evidence to suggest this is the case, and in fact it would be just as illegal as spying directly.
Of course it's just as illegal as spying directly. That's why it's controversial. The wording, however, suggests that this is a reasonable rationale to expect that the allegations are false. -- Arperry 19:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I think rogue FBI agents leagued with the sicilian mafia monitor my electronic communications what can a person do to attract echelons monitoring of their communications such that a variety of different government branches know their story beanangel300@yahoo.com
as an aside does emacs still have that NSA attractor command —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.41.136.51 ( talk) 00:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Much of this content is a bit tin-foil-hat so I'm going to try to cull material and focus on the verifiable material around Echelon and get rid of the garbage.
Likely to be a fairly lengthy job as much of the supporting evidence is questionable and there is quite a lot of OR and essay in the article at the moment.
ALR 17:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
That DSD, the Australian SIGINT agency, cooperates with "counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas" under the "UKUSA relationship" was confirmed by DSD Director Martin Brady in 1999 in a letter to reporter Ross Coulthart (story here; letter here and here). The term UKUSA has been leaked by people who were evidently in a position to know too many times to count, but AFAIK this is the only official confirmation of its use, presumably because the agreement is still considered classified. Still, once ought to be enough to establish that it is in fact used within the core Western SIGINT community. The fact that there is a core Western SIGINT community and that it is composed of the five agencies from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has been publicly confirmed many times. In recent years, official sources have taken to publicly referring to this community as the "Five-Eyes community". See, e.g., Canadian government testimony here and here; see also CSE Chief John Adams's 6 Feb 2007 speech. BillRobinsonCanada ( talk) 17:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
This is a frustrating article, from the point of view of people in a position to know the facts. Although there are global information collecting facilities, much of what is said about them is wrong, even the very name, and cannot be corrected by those who actually know (and are bound to secrecy). The EU report is given too much credence; it was based almost entirely on interviews with questionable sources such as Campbell. For example, a FOIA search of the NSA archives turned up only two uses of "echelon", one of them in its normal military meaning, but that was interpreted as evidence for the project codeword. It would be best for the article to use more "it is alleged" and "Duncan Campbell claimed" and less "it is".— DAGwyn ( talk) 22:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Updated:
The UKUSA intelligence community is assessed by the European Parliament to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states. It's all past context from some old EU Parliament report back in 2000 so I edited to read correctly. Also the whole EU Parliament thing is ridiculous, FAR too much weight, almost as though it is suggesting OVERSIGHT, I'll re-write. Twobells ( talk) 10:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
This is quite fumorous. Using a FOIA request of NSA to check on ECHELON. "A rose by any other name is still a rose".
24.128.186.53 (
talk)
18:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
ALR, you have been making major changes to the article. While I agree that changes are needed, you have been deleting large blocks of text with citations, and adding material, in some cases, that is unsourced. I raised two points with you above and you refused to accept them. Nevertheless, the policy on consensus states that consensus is "Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision-making." Right now that means you and me. Hopefully other editors will join us, but, for now, we must agree.
I have asked you to agree to only add material to the article that meets WP:RS and WP:V. Since these are policies, we really do not have much choice in the matter. To that, I will add a further request: Would you please not delete major blocks of text (especially sourced text) without first discussing it here?
I think that we need a plan for the overhaul of the article. Let's agree on an approach before we start on major changes. In the meantime, I am reverting the article to the version before you began to make changes. Sunray 23:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I've been trying to work out what to do with the capabilities section today, but it reeks of OR at the moment. My inclination is to get rid of the lot and redo it.
What the sources come down to is that collection is carried out in three ways:
In terms of the article I have no intention of discussing spy satellites, since overhead comprises a whole range of different capabilities.
I think it's reasonable to indicate that the investigations conclude that infrastructure taps exist. The issue of intercept of satellite bearers has a little more mileage, since the EP report considers the various ground stations with respect to the spacecraft that they're likely to be pointed at.
I don't believe that the latter paragraph about GSM intercept is appropriate to this article, I've got no sources which relate the two, in fact it's easier just to pick the traffic out of the infrastructure.
Is that clear?
ALR 21:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
if I can easy built a optical fiber taps without much knowledge, with information found on internet and with less then $1000, just imagine what echelon is capable of. "difficult" I lol'd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.214.104.143 ( talk) 10:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Having read through both Campbell's STOA report and "Inside ECHELON," I tend to agree with you. However, I note the following summary of capabilities in the STOA report:
It would seem that ECHELON must be broader than merely satellite intercepts. However, I agree with your comments on sources. Thus I think we have to be clear what is from a verifiable source and what is only covered in Campbell's (and Hager's) more general statements such as the one above. Sunray 02:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The sentence fragment containing this phrase was removed by ArnoldReinhold as conclusionary. I agree. The phrase is not contained in the EP report. I think it wise to exclude it (and will do so). Sunray 01:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I've added a wikify tag to the article as it seems several of the sources need to be wikified. Particularly in the "Capabilities" section, but elsewhere too. Rehevkor ( talk) 21:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the "clean-up" tag. Certainly it is wikified. The references are adequate. Likely if the article was being proposed for a GA or an FA they would need improvement. Sunray ( talk) 15:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
In cleaning up the references there is consistent mention of a STOA report. the report was not correctly cited in the first instance and it si not clear to me which one it was. At one stage in the revision history an anon editor has changed "changed EP to STOA, more accurate description of sourcr of report" and immediately before changed " replaces EP (European Parliamewnt) with STOA (name of the comitee comisioning the report)". In looking at the report this seems wrong. The EP report states on its proceduarl page
At the sitting of 5 July 2000 the European Parliament decided, pursuant to Rule 150(2) of its Rules of Procedure, to set up a Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System and laid down its mandate as outlined in Chapter 1, 1.3. With a view to fulfilling that mandate, at its constituent meeting of 9 July 2000 the Temporary Committee appointed Gerhard Schmid rapporteur.
This does not equal Scientific Technology Options Assessment whose reports are listed at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/default_en.htm . Above however someone does refer to a STOA report whose author was Cambell - I don't know which one it was or whether it was cited here - still to unravel the complexities of the rather bizarre and ad hoc approach to citations. Given the EP report is lengthy I may break up the footnotes to refer to specific pages but at this stage I am not necessarily inclined to - does anybody have any views? -- Matilda talk 23:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
GCSB Tangimoana in New Zealand may need to be added to this list Goldfinger820 ( talk) 00:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
What does the article mean by "The satellites are claimed to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters across, parked in geostationary orbits." ??!! I don't think that there are any satellites (except for the Space Station perhaps) which are anywhere near this size. I shudder to think of the size of the rocket you would need to put something that large into Geosynchronous orbit, unless perhaps it uses a fold-out type antenna and the satellite itself is not that large. Does the author perhaps mean that the ground stations have antennas which are 20 to 100 meters across, not the satellites themselves? Sbreheny ( talk) 00:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I've just read again the comments about Pine Gap, and they identify that location as a downlink for the overhead collectors, not intercept of civil satcomm in the same way that the other locations are. Is there anything which supports the assertion that Pine Gap was an Echelon site, since the two are different beasts.
ALR ( talk) 18:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
This article by Duncan Campbell is quite well sourced and has a host of background information on Echelon - it would be nice if we could incorporate more info from it into this article... ( I'll try and work on it as well if I have the time. -- Marcika ( talk) 12:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The article leaves out that Echelon was considered the playground of "conspiracy treorists" - who actually knew what they were talking about. On TV - not sure if it was 60 Minutes, PBS,... I saw a show that actually gave the location in California where the transoceanic communication cables made landfall and were intercepted in a small building by the government. I don't think the gov even bothers to pretend they don't snoop on us all - the discussions questioning some of their techniques and exact locations seems pointless. Last night PBS had a photo of Clinton and a caption with the word Echelon in it - the cat's out of the bag. When the internet was new and wiki was a baby it was so much fun to be called a nut by some CIA plants ( ahh the good old days). 159.105.80.141 ( talk) 12:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I have tried to added pragraf with fact that has been speculation about that google is an echelon funded by the cia. To get the whole picture.
85.83.42.75 ( talk) 18:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems to yours truly that the way the article reads gives far too much weight to the European Parliament and that old EU report, it is mentioned throughout the piece and is written ain such a way to suggest some sort of oversight and a legitimate mandate over the '5 eyes' sigint which obviously it doesn't.It was only even able to carry out an assessment by dint of the UK's membership of the EU. Twobells ( talk) 14:33, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
The introduction is a bit too technical for me. Please simplify. 50.103.226.135 ( talk) 06:59, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |