Like United States military infrastructure, through its international global military arm NATO, U.S. signals intelligence operations have now spread to every corner of the globe and are greedily gobbling up anything and everything that is flowing through cyber space, regardless of its origin or the rights of those being spied upon.

Two points are important to recall here, one that the Internet that we all so love and use and which has taken over the way the world does business and exchanges information was initially a U.S. global military network, and two that the expansion of the surveillance of the Internet to today’s present level and form was made possible by the “War on Terror” paradigm which has existed since 9-11 and has cowed most of the world’s population into fearful submission allowing the security services to expand their scope with almost complete and unhindered impunity.
Despite the reported efforts of the Global Network Initiative, a non-governmental organization (NGO) with the stated goals of preventing Internet censorship and protecting the Internet privacy of individuals there has been little that they have been willing and/or able to effectively do against the massive expansion and scope of spying programs being run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the United States SIGINT System (USSS).
According to open source intelligence the PRISM SIGINT Activity Designator (SIGAD) replaced the post 9-11 Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) which was operating illegally without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). However such programs, once the foundations and infrastructure are in place and if they have proven to be effective, may just be temporarily closed and re-launched using different names, locations, personnel and financial and administrative bodies and methods to hide and obfuscate their existence and true nature.
Hence programs like TSP, ECHELON, CARNIVORE may be shut down, paused and then restarted and repackaged and renamed. PRISM is the likely product of such projects and the unification of platforms across the SIGINT intelligence operations sphere. PRISM was approved by the U.S. judiciary and hence has been operating with impunity since at least 2007, controlled and operated by the Special Source Operations (SSO) unit of the United States National Security Agency (NSA).
PRISM is just the tip of the iceberg and is just a small part of the U.S. Government’s mechanism for spying on and controlling the countries and the peoples of the world. I mentioned the UKUSA group, their efforts are also worth noting, especially in light of the recent revelations made by ex-NSA/CIA systems administrator and whistleblower Edward Snowden. What about the other partner countries in the spying alliance? Are they innocent of such egregious spying? Yes they are and even worse because they pass the private information of their citizens to the United States.
In this article I am dealing with Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) as it effects the average citizen of the world, this in no way means that the programs and the methods that I am discussing are by far the only instruments they are using to dominate the globe, all allowed and tolerated in the name of security. SIGINT involves many different intelligence collection instruments and methods and with the recent advances in technology these have grown incredibly. The basic areas of SIGINT can be grouped into two broad categories: communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). As technology advances the crossovers and combinations of the two grow by the day, meaning for example information from a Skype chat would fall under both COMINT and ELINT, not a fact of vital importance but one that should be noted.
The members of the UKUSA Security Agreement: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are also referred to by a number of abbreviations, further obfuscating their nature and existence such as AUSCANNZUKUS and Five Eyes. All of these countries are members of the ECHELON spy network. Which was originally, like NATO a program set up to spy on the former USSR and the Eastern Block and has been expanded, like NATO, at an incredibly rate since the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Gone are the days when the CIA would spend years attempting to dig tunnels and splice into the telephone networks of Soviet cities. Today they are connected to absolutely everything and anything. According to a report on ECHELON it is capable of intercepting telephone calls, faxes, e-mails and other data traffic worldwide including satellite based transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic), microwave links, fiber optic communications and cell phone line of site networks.
With the revelations of the PRISM program which they say has been operating since 2007 it is now evident that the data collection capabilities include: e-mail, voice and video chats, streaming and other video, any and all photos, stored data on your hard drive, voice over IP (VoIP) conversations, file transfers, notifications of logins, etc., social networking details and a special category called “special requests”.
If we throw in satellite surveillance, CST systems, RFID chips, cell phone location and usage monitoring including interception of text messages, automobile tracking devices, credit card and purchasing information collection and GPS device related transmissions, then almost everything you do is subject to surveillance and monitoring, in a nutshell this means the spooks can now find out what you had for dinner last night, with whom and how much you paid for it, as well as every other private aspect of your lives.
United Kingdom
The U.K.’s programs are more hidden than those of the U.S. and there is less information available about them either because they are better at hiding them or they are less in number but their scope is almost equal to that of the U.S. however they are more restrained than their American “special friends”. We know that the U.K. is an active member of the ECHELON based infrastructure and now we know that they are also active in the PRISM SIGINT Activity Designator (SIGAD), or simply PRISM.
There are still calls from people like Stella Rimington for the expansion of U.K. spying so it is possible that the U.K. is lagging behind their American friends although judging by the number of CCTV cameras in London this is doubtful.
As for data collection stations the main ones for the United Kingdom are the Menwith Hill (US) facility, the Aiyos Nicolas Station in Cyprus and of course GCHQ, the U.K.’s version of the NSA. Again there is little information available on specific programs, which come under the aegis of directorates of Military Intelligence and GCHQ.
A little known fact about the U.K.’s Military Intelligence is that they have at least 20 directorates that are known about. With regards to SIGINT these might be handled by MI-1 (codes and ciphers), MI-5 and 6, MI-8 (signals and communications), MI-10 (technical), and perhaps MI-13 which like the NSA until recently doesn’t exist.
Australia
Although you may have thought Australia might be behind when it comes to the level of its secret bureaucracies and the amount of spying it does think again. Among entities in Australia that provide for governance and policy over the secret service and operations are: the NSC, the SCNS, the NCTC, the NICC, the NICMC, the NIOSC, the HIAM, the NSIPC, the NSA (not that one), the DNSA, the NSCIO, the ISD and more.
Intelligence agencies include the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Defense Intelligence Organization (DIO) and but not limited to, the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD). However it is probably the DSD that we are most interested in as they handle the analysis, collection and distribution of foreign SIGINT and are responsible for communications, information, cyber and computer security.
Their main global station is located right in the center of Australia at Pine Gap but they have stations throughout Australia.
Canada
Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in not only part of the UKUSA group but shares intelligence with the U.S., the U.K., and Australia under what is called the “Quadpartite Pact”. CSIS is the principle Canadian intelligence service and are a civilian service unlike the MIs and the NSA and CIA. However Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) is responsible for SIGINT in Canada.
CSEC has facilities at CFS Leitrim, the main SIGINT facility, and at other locations such as CFB Gander Newfoundland, CFS Masset, BC and CFS Alert, Nunavut.
CSEC relies mainly on the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand for its intelligence collection and benefits substantially from UKUSA, especially when it comes to foreign communications.
Currently Canadian programs are still largely secret although involvement with PRISM, ECHELON and other programs has been documented, to what level they provide the CIA and the NSA information on Canadians remains to be seen.
New Zealand
The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) listens to phone calls and intercepts e-mail and other communications but is not supposed to do so on citizens of New Zealand, they have been reported to be a part of ECHELON.
New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS or SIS) is responsible for foreign intelligence operations and information gathering. However it is the super secret Combined Signals Organization (CSO) that handles SIGINT, ECHELON operations and the like.
PRISM operations in New Zealand would fall under the GCSB and the CSO, but again their level of participation may be minimal and due to New Zealand’s small size they are more likely largely beneficiaries of UKUSA and PRISM operations

Source.