Perched on top of the Northern Hemisphere, in the silence of the Arctic tundra, a small Canadian military outpost is listening in to communications moving across half of the world - looking for terrorists. "I have the best view of the station, but unfortunately you can't see it", said Sergeant Scott Whittingham.
The reason is not because the appropriately named Alert base, some 817 kilometres (510 miles) from the North Pole, spends five months of the year in polar darkness; access to this panoramic view of the frozen Arctic Ocean is blocked by a door stating "high security zone."
The "operations room" - the nerve-centre, or ears, of Alert - is behind this door and strictly off-limits to all but a few military personnel with top security clearance.
He explained that the station has the capability to listen in to communications across the entire Northern Hemisphere, from Afghanistan to North Korea, and Russia and China in between. In an era dominated by the threat of terrorism, "we listen more for this kind of thing." But neither Whittingham nor even base commanding officer Major Chris Dannehl knows precisely the nature of the collected information.
The seven technicians who work in the operations room are employed to monitor the equipment; signal intelligence obtained at the station is immediately transmitted for analysis to Leitrim, Canada's main "listening" base, located in a suburb of Ottawa some 4,150 kilometres (2,500 miles) south of here. In Ottawa, top brass at the Department of National Defence are tight-lipped about this little Arctic outpost which is an integral part of the combined US-Canada Norad air defence system.
"Alert plays a very important role in signals intelligence and geolocation," said Colonel David Naismith, commandant of the Canadian Forces Information Operations Group. The intelligence gathered here is used also by Canada's allies.
Alert is part of a vast international spying network, known as Echelon, which evolved from a secret pact signed in 1947 by the United States and Britain, and three Commonwealth countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
This network share intelligence gathered all over the world and continues to function despite complaints from the European Union that the United States has been using the information garnered from this network for industrial espionnage. The Arctic eavesdropping operations began in the late 1950s when the military of the United States and Canada became interested in what was, until then, only a scientific research station.
"During the Cold War Alert was one of the posts on the front lines of the defence of North America," underlined Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former member of Canada's intelligence community and now a security consultant. According to him, Alert had radars to detect a potential ballistic attack launched by the Soviet Union.
Today the fears of a communist enemy pointing its missiles to the other side of the North Pole and sending submarines under the Arctic ice no longer haunt the station. But, according to Juneau-Katsuya, if Canada decides to join the controversial nuclear missile defence (NMD) system planned by US President George W. Bush, Alert could be key.
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