Chatter: Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance Network and the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping

By Patrick Radden Keefe

How does our government eavesdrop? Whom do they eavesdrop on? And is the interception of communication an effective means of predicting and preventing future attacks? These are some of the questions at the heart of Patrick Radden Keefe’s brilliant new book, Chatter.

In the late 1990s, when Keefe was a graduate student in England, he heard stories about an eavesdropping network led by the United States that spanned the planet. The system, known as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the private phone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the world. Taking the mystery of Echelon as his point of departure, Keefe explores the nature and context of communications interception, drawing together fascinating strands of history, fresh investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result is a bold and distinctive book, part detective story, part travel-writing, part essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age.

Chatter starts out at Menwith Hill, a secret eavesdropping station covered in mysterious, gargantuan golf balls, in England’s Yorkshire moors. From there, the narrative moves quickly to another American spy station hidden in the Australian outback; from the intelligence bureaucracy in Washington to the European Parliament in Brussels; from an abandoned National Security Agency base in the mountains of North Carolina to the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

As Keefe chases down the truth of contemporary surveillance by intelligence agencies, he unearths reams of little-known information and introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable characters. We meet a former British eavesdropper who now listens in on the United States Air Force for sport; an intelligence translator who risked prison to reveal an American operation to spy on the United Nations Security Council; a former member of the Senate committee on intelligence who says that oversight is so bad, a lot of senators only sit on the committee for the travel.

Provocative, often funny, and alarming without being alarmist, Chatter is a journey through a bizarre and shadowy world with vast implications for our security as well as our privacy. It is also the debut of a major new voice in nonfiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 11, 2006
• ISBN: 9781588365330

Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as two previous critically-acclaimed books, The Snakehead, and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change on the origins of the Scorpions’ power ballad, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Boston and now lives in New York.

Reviews for Chatter

[askelmore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Best for:People interested in an historical perspective on data interception and ‘national security.’In a nutshell:Keefe explores the US systems of eavesdropping on allies and enemies alike.Worth quoting:“In times of panic, we overreact, we over-legislate. We get it wrong.”Why I chose it:I thought I’d read all of Keefe’s books then this popped up. I have thoroughly enjoyed his last two full-length investigations, so figured why not read this?Review:Reading a book about national security and intelligence that was released in 2005 is interesting, in that things like smart phones weren’t around, and so much has changed in terms of the data so many of us are willing to share. So this book is almost alike a time capsule, and while reading I mostly caught myself thinking ‘whoa, this is interesting - but what’s happening now?’Keefe looks at ECHELON, the surveillance program that the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia all participate in, looking at the information their friends (and foes) share. It’s both super secret but also not really secret at all? At times it was a bit hard to follow exactly what was being discussed, and how it related to everything else, but overall it was interesting, as it was written in light of the fact that 9-11 happened but all the fancy spying didn’t prevent it. A couple of main themes are that you can capture all the data you want, but you really do need humans to review it and make sense of it, and there aren’t nearly enough humans working in the field to do that; and is it worth giving up so much privacy if it doesn’t even lead to better security?I would love an update to this book, looking at what’s been happening for the past 15+ years since the book was published, but overall for someone like me with very limited subject knowledge, it was a pretty good read.Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:Not likely to recommend, and it’s an audio book so can’t do the rest!

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't normally read books like this, although I will admit to having skimmed through James Bamford's first couple of books about the NSA. Keefe does not profess to be any kind of expert on the intelligence business, although I suspect that, based on this book, he may now be recognized as someone who is certainly better versed on the subject than the average American citizen. What CHATTER does demonstrate is an inquring mind, solid scholarship and research skills, and an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of the matter when it comes to trying to find out exactly what the USA's NSA and Great Britain's GCHQ and their "third party" partners have been up to for the past few decades. Is it legal? Is it ethical? How effective have the partnerships been? These are all questions Keefe examines carefully. The National Security Agency gets a close look here, as it should. I'm not sure much new has been added here, considering all that Bamford has put into print in the past few decades. But the US-UK alliance and the existence (or not) of "Echelon" gets some interesting new looks here. And Keefe makes it a point to mention more than once the words of former NSA Director, Michael Hayden, who, while testifying before congressional hearings, noted that perhaps the congressmen should find out what their constituency wants the most, national security or personal privacy. Keefe agrees there should be a debate on this matter, but in the end he admits - "On the tricky issue of line drawing, this book is designed not to be the last word but the first. I'm still not certain I know where that line between security and liberty should be. Do you?" A good question, certainly. And I'm sure CHATTER will not be the last word on this subject.

[newsieq · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The discussion in my non-fiction readers' group was interesting -- and the book itself was certainly enlightening. It's about a worldwide secret spy network (begun after WWII) in which the US takes the lead role. It's amazing that a non-insider like the author can uncover so much about such a secret program.