A report released this week describing massive US-led eavesdropping of private telephone conversations, faxes and e-mail messages around the world has prompted a wave of concern and indignation in Europe.
The report by a special European Parliament commission said the network had the potential to violate the privacy of millions of European citizens and suggested that it has been used to benefit US corporations in economic and industrial espionage.
The ground and satellite-based intercept system, which is known as Echelon, was designed primarily for use against non-military targets, such as terrorists, drugtraffickers, and money-launderers, the report said.
But the system "enables the countries using it to obtain significant economic information and, hence, to secure a leading position on the commercial markets," the report said.
The system, which is operated by the US National Security Agency in partnership with the intelligence services of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, intercepts "billions of messages per hour", said Mr Duncan Campbell, the report's principal author, in Brussels this week. "In effect, democratic states and a member of the European Union could have organised large-scale espionage operations to reinforce their economic interests to the detriment of Belgium and other European countries," the Belgian Foreign Minister, Mr Louis Michel, said .
"The Anglo-Saxon Echelon eavesdropping network constitutes a serious infringement on national security and on the freedoms of all French people," Mr Rene Galy-Dejean, a French member of parliament said .
US officials have routinely dismissed European alarm at Echelon as being unwarranted. The system, US officials say, is strictly for national security use.
Intelligence officials also dispute the economic espionage charge on practical grounds, claiming that the sheer volume of intercepts makes targeted industrial spying all but impossible.
"US intelligence agencies are not tasked to engage in industrial espionage, or obtain trade secrets for the benefit of any US company or companies," State Department spokesman, Mr James P. Rubin, said. He declined to acknowledge the existence of the Echelon programme.
