Echelon exists, the European Union (EU) Parliament was told Wednesday. Echelon, allegedly a vast information collection system capable of monitoring all the electronic communications in the world, has been talked about in security circles for several years. But no government agency . . .
Echelon exists, the European Union (EU) Parliament was told Wednesday. Echelon, allegedly a vast information collection system capable of monitoring all the electronic communications in the world, has been talked about in security circles for several years. But no government agency in the world has ever confirmed or denied its existence. An EU committee has been investigating the system for almost a year.

Just because the surveillance network exists, however, doesn't mean that government agencies can access all the information Echelon collects, Gerhard Schmid, the German Member of the European Parliament (MEP), told Parliament members in Strasbourg.

The European Parliament accepted Schmid and his team's 130-page-plus report and its 44 recommendations in a 367-159 vote. There were 34 abstentions, though these were not explained.

In his presentation, Schmid said that Echelon ­ which allegedly is a joint venture between the governments of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia and New Zealand - sucks up electronic transmissions "like a vacuum cleaner," using keyword search techniques to sift through enormous amounts of data.

The link for this article located at ComputerUser is no longer available.