[wordup] Meet Bruce McIndoe, lead architect of Echelon II

[Adam Shand]

From: http://cryptome.org/echelon2-arch.htm

21 May 2002

For earliest public reports on Echelon:

  http://cryptome.org/echelon-dc.htm

Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 20:35:27 +0200 (CEST)
From: Bo Elkjaer <bo.elkjaer at eb.dk>
To: jya at pipeline.com
Subject: Interview w. Bruce McIndoe, lead architect, Echelon II

I thought you might find this interesting. As a follow up, the issue
will be debated - once again - in the Danish parliament and one of the
Danish members of the EU parliaments temporary Echelon committee, Torben
Lund, has stated that he will discuss the new information from Bruce
McIndoe with the leader of the temporary committee, Gerhard Schmid (DE).

Bo Elkjaer, Denmark

ECHELON'S ARCHITECT

Echelon now has a big brother. Meet Bruce McIndoe, lead architect for
Echelon II, the 'most productive intelligence program' in history

By Bo Elkjaer and Kenan Seeberg

Meet Bruce McIndoe. He has information that the Danish government and
several others around the globe, continuously pretends isn't there.
McIndoe knows that Echelon is real. Because he helped to build it. "Yes,
that's right", McIndoe confirms to the Danish paper Ekstra Bladet today
Bruce McIndoe dedicated more than ten years of his life to Echelon. He
helped to finalize the original Echelon system starting in 1987. After
that, he started to design Echelon II, an enlargement of the original
system.

Bruce McIndoe left the inner circle of the enormous espionage network in
1998, a network run by the National Security Agency, the world's most
powerful intelligence agency, in cooperation with other Western
intelligence services. Ekstra Bladet tracked down Bruce McIndoe to IJet
Travel Intelligence, a private espionage agency where he is currently
second in command.

IJet Travel Intelligence is an exceedingly effective, specialized
company that employs former staff members of the NSA, CIA, KGB and South
African intelligence services.

The company's task is to furnish reports for top executives from US
business and industry that reveal everything about the destination to
which they are travelling for their multinational company. All the
information they need to make the trip as safe as possible. The company
resembles a miniature version of his previous employer, the world's most
powerful intelligence agency, the NSA.

And they are almost neighbours.

Bruce McIndoe's new company is headquartered in the state of Maryland,
near the NSA's gigantic Fort Meade headquarters.

CURIOUS SPY

We phone IJet Travel Intelligence and a secretary asks us to spell our
names. Bruce McIndoe calls back one hour later, at the very minute we
had agreed on. He starts by asking the first questions. "It appears you
have written a lot about spies, intelligence and Echelon before."

"Well, you might say that."

"You have especially written a lot about Echelon, haven't you?"

"Yes, we have, some two hundred articles."

Bruce McIndoe is more than just casually inquisitive when he calls. He
hasn't wasted any time and obviously ran a background check on the two
curious reporters from Denmark, and it all took less than an hour. Now
that he has broached the subject of top-secret Echelon himself, we
decide to get right to the point.

"You were one of the architects for Echelon II. When did you work on
that program for the NSA?"

"When I was at CSSI. We worked for the NSA most of the time that CSSI
existed. Mainly from 1987 until four years ago. At that time, my company
was bought out by a company known as the Computer Science Corporation.
Although CSSI was involved in many large-scale projects for the NSA,
Echelon was probably the biggest."

"Is Echelon II some sort of superstructure to Echelon?"

"Yes. Echelon has existed for a long time, as you know, and they needed
to update the system."

SILLY POLITICIANS

"Have you kept up with the European Echelon discussion and the report
issued by the European Parliament?"

"Yes, I have followed it quite closely, actually. At least I know that
some countries are uncertain about the entire program, and I'm familiar
with their considerations on whether they shall continue to support it.
The US government and its allies have already run into somewhat of a
challenge."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, they can't avoid the glare of publicity anymore. If I perform a
search on the word 'Echelon' right now, I can find maybe one thousand
articles dealing with Echelon, so it is a pretty well-known system by
now. And as you know, many people mildly disapprove of Echelon. So
accepting the use of it poses a challenge to many countries."

"The European Parliament is airing the possibility that the EU should
make its own Echelon system?"

"Well, there are three possible options. They can openly join Echelon
and demand more control, they can make their own system or they can
refrain from having one. But in my opinion, pretending it doesn't exist
just isn't an option. Especially not after September eleventh."

"Were you ever involved in the first Echelon system?"

"Only at the end of it. It was already operational when I entered the
picture."

"The report of the European Parliament firmly establishes that Echelon
is a global surveillance system which intercepts private and commercial
communication and that it is led by the US in concert with Great
Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as second partners. But the
Parliament is not totally sure the system is named Echelon."

Bruce McIndoe laughs dryly and somewhat indulgently about the thought of
our silly European politicians. IJet Travel Intelligence's website
proudly, and with surprising candour, mentions McIndoe's contribution to
making Echelon II. The website states that: 'Bruce was one of the lead
architects for the National Security Agency's Echelon II program,
identified as one of the most productive intelligence programs in the
agency's history.'

LISTENING IN ON EVERYTHING

"On the whole, it doesn't take long to verify the existence of Echelon
if you look at the US Defence Department's budgets. And besides, code
names are usually not classified as top secret. This practice enables
people in the right circles to refer to the program, yet without
revealing its capacity or how it operates."

"So you are the person who can document that you have made Echelon II?"

"Yes, that's for sure. I can even do so without revealing any secrets.
Echelon II is the successor, so to speak, of the original Echelon
system."

"Can you tell us whether it is used to monitor all types of
communication?"

"No system of such enormous magnitude would only be used for a single
purpose. They use it for everything they can, if they feel it's
necessary. Whenever they need to exploit its potential, they do it."

Bruce takes a little breather while he considers whether he has said too
much:

"But it doesn't mean they're a bunch of wild cowboys. There are rules,
you know, that stipulate what they are allowed to monitor, and they
definitely don't ignore the laws of any individual countries. Not
American laws either. This poses somewhat of a challenge, of course, but
after they get a court order, they can do just about anything they
please," explains McIndoe, who emphasizes that he is no expert in these
matters.

In 1998, Computer Science Corporation took over Bruce McIndoe's company
- and with that the Echelon contract with the National Security Agency.
Shortly afterwards, Bruce McIndoe co-founded the company he now works
for. A company where he makes great use of his experience from working
with the largest espionage system in the world.

AUTOMATIC TRANSLATION

"Tell us something about the company you work for now."

"Okay. In short, we have transferred everything I did for the NSA and
other services to a private company that then sells intelligence to
businesspersons. We get information on everything from local diseases,
outbreaks of malaria epidemics and local unrest to strikes, the weather
and traffic conditions. Our customers are large multinational companies
like Prudential and Texas Instruments. We also work for institutions
like the World Bank and the IMF."

"Your offices resemble a command post at the NSA's Fort Meade
headquarters?"

"Yes, exactly. Our staff are also former intelligent agents who have
either developed or run espionage operations for US intelligence
agencies or people from the UK, South Africa and Russia."

"How does the NSA feel about the fact you're applying the same
technology in the private sector?"

"A lot of the technology developed at the NSA will sooner or later find
its way into civilian life. Things like word spotting, automatic
translation, language recognition and so on. But since we don't try to
hide our work and primarily use open sources, the NSA doesn't complain."

Yet the architect for Echelon II indirectly reveals some secrets to us.
One of the ways Echelon works is by using words and voice recognition,
as well as automatic translation.