ECHELON Intelligence Budget



Until now it was not possible to find out the specific segmenting of intelligence budgets as far as the ECHELON project is concerned. Many experts agree that ECHELON specific costs are woven into the complex budgets of several intelligence units. Money comes also from the host countries and Partners in the UKUSA Agreement.

For further reading:

http://www.usbudget.com/military/

http://www.access.gpo.gov/int/int017.html

http://www.fas.org/irp/budget.html

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1995_cr/sen29sep.htm

Refocus Intelligence Priorities:

http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/mswg/msbb98/tt08int.htm

>Approximately $27.6 Billion requested for 1999. The Congress has proposed an increase over the Clinton administration request. Almost all of this effort is devoted to exploiting the disciplines that were of primary importance during the Cold War: imagery intelligence [IMINT], signals intelligence [SIGINT], and human intelligence [HUMINT]. But with the end of the Cold War new disciplines, measurements and signature intelligence [MASINT] and open source intelligence [OSINT] are of far greater relevance to contemporary and emerging security concerns and intelligence needs, ranging from counter-proliferation activities to peace-keeping operations.<

Organization Annual Budget Staff

NRO 6,2 billion $ 1.700

NSA 3,6 billion $ 21.000 (- 40.000?)

CIA 3,1 billion $ 16.000

For comparison: CSE has only a $200-300 million dollar budget.

In 1988 Duncan Campbell wrote (http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/echelon-dc.htm): >With 15,000 staff and a budget of over £500 million a year (even without the planned Zircon spy satellite), GCHQ is by far the largest part of British intelligence. Successive UK governments have placed high value on its eavesdropping capabilities, whether against Russian military signals or the easier commercial and private civilian targets. Recently published US Department of Defense 1989 budget information has confirmed that the Menwith Hill spy base will be the subject of a major $26 million expansion programme. Information given to Congress in February listed details of plans for a four-year expansion of the main operation building and other facilities at Menwith Hill. Although the testimony referred only to a "classified location", the base can be identified because of references to STEEPLEBUSH. According to this testimony, the new STEEPLEBUSH II project will cost $15 million between now and 1993. The expansion is required to avoid overcrowding and "to support expanding classified missions".<

And another view on the relation between the several intelligence units as far as budget is concerned: "Spying Budget Is Made Public By Mistake", By Tim Weiner The New York Times, November 5 1994

>By mistake, a Congressional subcommittee has published an unusually detailed breakdown of the highly classified "black budget" for United States intelligence agencies. In previously defeating a bill that would have made this information public, the White House, CIA and Pentagon argued that revealing the secret budget would cause GRAVE DAMAGE to the NATIONAL SECURITY of the United States. $3.1 billion for the CIA $10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines special-operations units $13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA <

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Acessing the Internet

The Net connections can be based on wire-line and wireless access technolgies.

Wire-line access

Wire-less access

copper wires

Satellites

coaxial cables

mobile terrestrial antennas

electric power lines

fixed terrestrial antennas

fiber-optic cables







Usually several kinds of network connections are employed at once. Generally speaking, when an E-mail message is sent it travels from the user's computer via copper wires or coaxial cables ISDN lines, etc., to an Internet Service Provider, from there, via fibre-optic cables, to the nearest Internet exchange, and on into a backbone network, tunneling across the continent und diving through submarine fibre-optic cables across the Atlantic to another Internet exchange, from there, via another backbone network and across another regional network to the Internet Service Provider of the supposed message recipient, from there via cables and wires of different bandwidth arriving at its destination, a workstation permanently connected to the Internet. Finally a sound or flashing icon informs your virtual neighbor that a new message has arrived.

Satellite communication

Although facing competition from fiber-optic cables as cost-effective solutions for broadband data transmission services, the space industry is gaining increasing importance in global communications. As computing, telephony, and audiovisual technologies converge, new wireless technologies are rapidly deployed occupying an increasing market share and accelerating the construction of high-speed networks.

Privatization of satellite communication

Until recently transnational satellite communication was provided exclusively by intergovernmental organizations as Intelsat, Intersputnik and Inmarsat.

Scheduled privatization of intergovernmental satellite consortia:

Satellite consortia

Year of foundation

Members

Scheduled date for privatization

Intelsat

1964

200 nations under the leadership of the USA

2001

Intersputnik

1971

23 nations under the leadership of Russia

?

Inmarsat

1979

158 nations (all members of the International Maritime Organization)

privatized since 1999

Eutelsat

1985

Nearly 50 European nations

2001



When Intelsat began to accumulate losses because of management failures and the increasing market share of fiber-optic cables, this organizational scheme came under attack. Lead by the USA, the Western industrialized countries successfully pressed for the privatization of all satellite consortia they are members of and for competition by private carriers.

As of February 2000, there are 2680 satellites in service. Within the next four years a few hundred will be added by the new private satellite systems. Most of these systems will be so-called Low Earth Orbit satellite systems, which are capable of providing global mobile data services on a high-speed level at low cost.

Because of such technological improvements and increasing competition, experts expect satellite-based broadband communication to be as common, cheap, and ubiquitous as satellite TV today within the next five or ten years.

Major satellite communication projects

Project name

Main investors

Expected cost

Number of satellites

Date of service start-up

Astrolink

Lockheed Martin, TRW, Telespazio, Liberty Media Group

US$ 3.6 billion

9

2003

Globalstar

13 investors including Loral Space & Communications, Qualcomm, Hyundai, Alcatel, France Telecom, China Telecom, Daimler Benz and Vodafone/Airtouch

US$ 3.26 billion

48

1998

ICO

57 investors including British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Inmarsat, TRW and Telefonica

US$ 4.5 billion

10

2001

Skybridge

9 investors including Alcatel Space, Loral Space & Communications, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sharp

US$ 6.7 billion

80

2002

Teledesic

Bill Gates, Craig McCaw, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, Abu Dhabi Investment Company

US$ 9 billion

288

2004


Source: Analysys Satellite Communications Database

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Java Applets

Java applets are small programs that can be sent along with a Web page to a user. Java applets can perform interactive animations, immediate calculations, or other simple tasks without having to send a user request back to the server. They are written in Java, a platform-independent computer language, which was invented by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Source: Whatis.com

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