#ECHELON

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Edward Snowden Edward Snowden (born 1983) was an NSA contractor who disclosed classified mass surveillance programs including PRISM, XKeyscore, and bulk telephone metadata collection to journalists in June 2013, fled to Russia where he received asylum, and was charged under the Espionage Act.

GCHQ GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is the UK's signals intelligence agency, based in Cheltenham, whose partnership with the NSA under the UKUSA Agreement forms the core of the Five Eyes intelligence architecture; it is referenced throughout the vault's signals intelligence, Iran-Contra, and Cold War subjects.

UKUSA Agreement The UKUSA Agreement (1946) is the signals intelligence treaty between the United States, United Kingdom, and later Australia, Canada, and New Zealand that established the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance; it is the legal and institutional backbone of ECHELON and all subsequent mass surveillance architectures documented in this vault.

Menwith Hill The NSA's largest field station, on the Yorkshire moors near Harrogate, ground station for the CHALET and VORTEX signals satellites and a node of ECHELON, where the Lockheed software manager Margaret Newsham said she listened to intercepted telephone calls in the early 1980s.
Morwenstow GCHQ's satellite interception station on the Cornish cliffs north of Bude, built in 1971 with two 30-metre dishes against the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Intelsats, the first ground station of the ECHELON system.
Pine Gap The CIA's satellite ground station in central Australia near Alice Springs, controlling the RHYOLITE, AQUACADE, MAGNUM and ORION signals satellites, and one of the four main stations of the ECHELON network.