Chatter: Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance Community and the Secret World of World Eavesdropping

How does our authorities eavesdrop? Whom do they snoop on? And is the interception of communication an efficient technique of predicting and stopping future assaults? These are among the questions on the coronary heart of Patrick Radden Keefe’s sensible new ebook, Chatter.

Within the late Nineties, when Keefe was a graduate scholar in England, he heard tales about an eavesdropping community led by the US that spanned the planet. The system, referred to as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the non-public cellphone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the globe. Taking the thriller of Echelon as his level of departure, Keefe explores the character and context of communications interception, drawing collectively fascinating strands of historical past, recent investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result’s a daring and distinctive ebook, half detective story, half travel-writing, half essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age. 

Chatter begins out at Menwith Hill, a secret eavesdropping station coated in mysterious, gargantuan golf balls, in England’s Yorkshire moors. From there, the narrative strikes rapidly to a different American spy station hidden within the Australian outback; from the intelligence forms in Washington to the European Parliament in Brussels; from an deserted Nationwide Safety Company base within the mountains of North Carolina to the distant Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. 

As Keefe chases down the reality of up to date surveillance by intelligence companies, he reveals reams of little-known data and introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable characters. We meet a former British eavesdropper who now listens in on the US Air Drive for sport; an intelligence translator who risked jail to disclose an American operation to spy on the United Nations Safety Council; a former member of the Senate committee on intelligence who says that oversight is so unhealthy, loads of senators solely sit on the committee for the journey. 

Provocative, usually humorous, and alarming with out being alarmist, Chatter is a journey by a weird and shadowy world with huge implications for our safety in addition to our privateness. It’s also the debut of a serious new voice in nonfiction.