Want to know the hardware behind Echelon?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

15 October 2004

Want to know the hardware behind Echelon?

Uncle Sam using Texas' SAM.


By Chris Mellor, Techworld











You've probably heard about Echelon, the vast listening system run by 
the US, UK, Canada and Australia that scans the world's voice traffic 
looking for key words and phrases.



Aside from using the system for industrial espionage and bypassing 
international and national laws to listen in on people, it is also used 
to listen out for people like Osama bin Laden and assorted terrorists 
in the hope of preventing attacks.



All this is out in the relative open thanks to investigative 
journalists and a European Commission report into the system, concerned 
and annoyed that the Brits and Yanks has got there first.



It works like this: The calls are recorded by geo-stationary spy 
satellites and listening stations, such as the UK's Menworth Hill, 
which combine satellite-intercepted calls and trunk landline intercepts 
and forward them on to centres, such as the US' Fort Meade, where 
supercomputers work on the recordings in real time.



But what, you ask, can deal with that overwhelming mass of data that 
helps our government spy on the world? And how does it work?



Well, a Texas Memory Systems SAM product - a combined solid-state disk 
(SSD) and DSP (digital signal processor). Woody Hutsell, an executive 
VP at TMS, said: "Fifty percent of our revenue this year will come from 
DSP systems, more than last year. The systems are a combination of

xnip

<http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2430>

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