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Echelon: your files in their hands

Rupert Goodwins AnchorDesk

Published: 30 Jun 2000 11:24 BST

Rock and roll, eh? One of the manifold things they did to encourage paranoia and general disaffection among their fans was to circulate some stickers, among which was one that said "ASSUME THIS PHONE IS TAPPED". Which was fun, but "Nah," thought the young Rupert. "You need a warrant for that sort of thing."

Twenty years later, the older Rupert knows better. He's talked to telecoms engineers, read more than enough about the mechanics and politics of the business of state surveillance, even but unlike Mr Orridge, one realises that there are things that even if done are best not talked about.

But it goes on. There is no doubt of that -- and I wouldn't have it any other way, as despite my anti-state instincts I do draw the line at letting nutters with bombs blow me up and am quite happy to let the spooks get on with stopping that happening.

The question is how much of it goes on, who's in charge and what are they doing with the information? The answer seems to be -- an enormous amount, nobody you know and whatever they like. While the UK government is bound by law not to investigate the affairs of its citizens without legal safeguards, and the same's true of most other democracies, they can investigate the affairs of each other's citizens without worry.

This realisation hit the secret services of five nations shortly after World War II, when -- despite many misgivings -- the secret intelligence services of America, the UK, Australia, Canada and NZ learned to work together and share information about their common foes. The UKUSA agreement that set this up was primarily intended to watch the Communists, but in the post-war years there were plenty of those scattered around the free world. Many of these were even citizens of the countries that were most nervous about Russian and Chinese ambitions, and they had to be watched. This is one of the best documented (well, about the only officially documented) area of post-war security service work, and the curious can find out more from the National Security Agency itself.

But then the Russians went away. What happened next?