It was fairly widely known in the network engineering community in 2003&#x2F;2004 that the &quot;Echelon&quot; system collected an extensive amount of domestic data for each of the five eyes, using legal dodges where a foreign agency (like GCHQ) would siphon american&#x2F;canadian data and feed it to the NSA and CSE, and vice versa.<p>Those who knew how much the system had changed from satellite-intelligence gathering (from the era prior to transatlantic&#x2F;transpacific submarine fiber, where most phone calls and international data were satellite based), to tapping fiber at submarine cable landing stations and &quot;partnering&quot; with major telcos, were totally unsurprised.