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The only known public reference to the ECHELON system was made in relation to
the Menwith Hill station. In July 1988, a United States newspaper, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, published a story about electronic monitoring of
phone calls of a Republican senator, Strom Thurmond. The alleged monitoring
occurred at Menwith Hill.

Margaret Newsham worked at Menwith Hill as a contract employee of Lockheed
Space and Missiles Corporation. She is said to have told congress staff that,
while at Menwith, she was able to listen through earphones to telephone calls
being monitored.

When investigators subpoenaed witnesses and sought access to plans and manuals
for the ECHELON system, they found there were no formal controls over who
could be targeted; junior staff were able to feed in target names to be
searched for by the computers without any check of their authorization to
do so.

None of this is surprising and it is likely to be insignificant compared with
official abuse of the system.

The capabilities of the ECHELON system are so great, and the secrecy
surrounding it makes it so impervious to democratic oversite, that the
temptation to use it for questionable projects seems irresistible.


In June 1992 a group of current 'highly placed intelligence operatives' from
the British GCHQ spoke to the paper Observer: 'We feel we can no longer remain
silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence
wit