ECHELON is the National Security Agency's global electronic surveillance system. Capable of intercepting virtually any electronic communication in the world, this system has met with harsh public criticism. There has been widespread fear that the National Security Agency and the rest of the intelligence community have used the system to keep tabs on every citizen of the world. The allegations intensified after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It is alleged that ECHELON not only monitors private citizens, but is also used to engage in corporate espionage, giving American companies an advantage over their foreign competitors. And while rumors like these have spread, the Agency itself has finally come out to claim that its systems adhere to the strictest legal standards. Much of the debate centers on whether organizations like the NSA can wield so much power and what can be done to stop them from abusing it. The National Security Agency, a subdivision of the Department of Defense, serves the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities in various ways. Its primary role is to function as a signals intelligence gathering apparatus for the United States. This means operating U.S. satellites and monitoring various foreign communications and codes. This information is then disseminated to the rest of the intelligence community to help shape foreign policy. In 1948, the governments of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a classified agreement allowing for greater cooperation in signals. Intelligence. Known as the UKUSA Agreement, this treaty would establish a system whereby the intelligence agencies of these 5 nations could work together to improve their intelligence gathering capabilities. While much of the information about this agreement remains classified, it is this system that enabled the formation of the ECHELON network. Although many details of ECHELON are unknown, its general idea is not very complicated. Patrick Poole, professor of government and economics, published one of the first and most comprehensive reports from the ECHELON network. According to him: The ECHELON system is quite simple in design: position intercept stations around the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber optic communications traffic and then process this information through the NSA's enormous computing capabilities , including advanced speech recognition and optical character recognition programs, and search for coded words or phrases (known as the ECHELON dictionary) that cause computers to mark the message for recording and transcription for future analysis.