Almost all forms of transactions utilise some path of the communications network. Echelon operates across the integrated media we live in. It can listen to the radio, watch television, see our faxes, receipts, emails and hard-drives, hear our phone calls, our inquiries and our negotiations. It collects the information, analyses it, cross-references it, stores it, acts on it and forwards what might be relevant to collaborators. Echelon is concerned with more than revealing a terrorist threat or a foreign nation's military tactics.
National security includes economic security or more accurately economic advantage.
Never ever over-exaggerate the power that these organisations have to abuse a system such as Echelon. Don't think it can't happen in Australia. The same article suggests that there was concern that the British would pass Echelon intelligence about East Timor on to the Indonesians in order to win a lucrative military contract. The internet is one of the many mediums covered by Echelon and as this medium becomes more prevalent, Echelon's job also becomes less difficult. The internet, like many of the new technologies, was presented to us by the military world, a world where discipline and the verification of discipline is central to its functioning.