If you have any use for either or both, you are welcome to repost them as you wish. Research As expected, the report highlight's the NSA's Echelon surveillance system, developed and managed in conjunction with its sister SigIntel agencies from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The report seems to briefly summarize a wealth of earlier media reports on the Echelon network, but offers no apparent evidence of an independent inquiry. The report seems to suggest that these intelligence agencies have become a law unto themselves, and operate in a context where all presumably-private communications are effectively transparent and accessible to them.
Some systems even lend themselves to a dual role as a national interceptions network.
This allows digital devices, e.g. fax to share the system with existing lines. Nor should the Parliament agree to new expensive encryption controls without a wide ranging debate within the EU on the implications of such measures. One of the inevitable problems for a nation which fosters both intelligence prowess and commercial prowess is that success in the former can undermine the legitimacy of whatever success it achieves in commerce and industry. Commercial failures will inevitably attribute their losses not to the skill or ingenuity of their international competitors, but rather to the competence and bias of the mysterious cyberspooks who, all acknowledge, probably watched the deal unfold. The MEPs wouldn't be European if they didn't consider the possibility of that sort of frustration fueling a backlash against the European Union and EU governments which appear either unable or unwilling to protect the integrity of their economic infrastructure.