Echelon The Secret Power

There are two big problems with this French-made documentary about the global intelligence network Echelon. It doesn't really say anything new and tells its story in the most banal and predictable manner possible.

You don't have to be a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist to predict that the temporary UK/US intelligence sharing arrangements, developed during WWII to combat the Nazi menace, would take on a more permanent institutionalised nature, aligning themselves with the vicissitudes of international geopolitics, to find new opportunities whenever threats to their continued funding arose.

Though shot in widescreen, the feel of the piece is otherwise televisual. It's like a bad Panorama or Dispatches programme with every cliche of the high tech/espionage genre present and correct, from faux surveillance camera shots to glitch edits to flashy computer-generated visuals.

The main point of interest for the UK viewer lies in seeing a different perspective on the Anglophone club that is Echelon, with its post-Cold War makeover increasingly geared towards the promotion of US trade, as against its competitors from the European Union and elsewhere.

While perhaps 50 countries now have their own mini-Echelons, none can possibly hope to compete with the US alone. An EU-wide Echelon might be able to, but for this to happen all the member states would have to agree. And with French and German businesses competing with one another, not to mention the UK's reluctance to abandon its "special relationship" with the US, that hardly seems likely.

Perhaps, as a topic for a late night panel discussion, yes. But a film? No.