From ECHELON to NOLEHCE: enabling a strategic conversion to a faith-based global brain

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Introduction

ECHELON is the name used to describe a highly secretive worldwide signals intelligence and analysis network that is alleged to be operated by the intelligence agencies of five English-speaking nations (otherwise known as the UKUSA Community). Its existence has been documented by a number of sources -- most notably in a report by the European Parliament (European Parliament Report on ECHELON, 2001).

It is claimed that ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes, e-mails and other data streams nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. However the European Parliament concluded that "the analysis carried out in the report has revealed that the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had assumed". However it is necessarily unproven that it is operating in the best interests of the population of the world enjoined to engage in democratic processes in response to the challenges of the future.

One of the early researchers into ECHELON, Steve Wright (The ECHELON Trail: an Illegal Vision. Surveillance and Society, 3, 2005) usefully distinguishes between its former nature and its currently supposed nature:

ECHELON is a (now out-of-date) code name given to the US National Security Agency's worldwide facility for the mass interception of electronic telecommunications including, phone, fax and email using key words and context.... Essentially, the system can work because for some of its journey, telecommunications traffic is travelling as an electronic stream that can be intercepted if the appropriate infrastructure is in place.

However, the current wisdom is that ECHELON does not exist in the way it was originally construed but is a now thought to be a collection of subsets of interception capabilities using a range of code names of which we remain ignorant. Nevertheless, for the sake of simplicity, it makes sense to continue to use the generic label 'ECHELON' whilst recognizing that new surveillance algorithms have evolved since the early researchers built their crude paradigms.

As an operation of the "shadow world", the issue explored here is the possibility of the "conversion" of ECHELON into a counterpart, with a reversal of style and intent -- and therefore to be suitably named as NOLEHCE. The lessons of history and psychodynamics point to strategic vulnerabilities within operations like ECHELON that render them vulnerable to such reversals at critical "tipping points" associated with "paradigm shifts". Just as the security services of the modern democracies have ensured implementation of measures abhorred in the totalitarian systems of the past, such a role reversal (otherwise termed enantiodromia) may be anticipated (and possibly enabled) with respect to ECHELON.

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