A warez release group, made notorious for releasing Sega Dreamcast games. They have released a total of 188 Dreamcast games and will most likely not release any more due to lack of industry support for the Dreamcast, a sixth generation console. They started releasing Dreamcast games on September 4th, 2000. After Kalisto dropped out of the Dreamcast scene, Echelon begun with their first release Flag To Flag CART Racing. Since then, they have been the number one Dreamcast warez group.
After the Dreamcast essentially died, they moved on to the Playstation 2. They started releasing full PS2 DVD games on December 19, 2001. Their first release was Final Fantasy X. As of July 19, 2006 the official count of games they have put out is 223. However, if you look hard enough, you will notice that the actual count is 225. For some reason, Cabela's Dangerous Hunts and Legacy of Kain Defiance, while both recognized as being released by Echelon, are not apart of it's official count.
As like most warez groups, Echelon likes to be rather secretive. Not much is known about them other than they have an IRC channel in EFNeT, appropriately named #echelon.
One rumor about them that has been around since their creation is that they are an off branch of the warez group Kalisto (which is supposedly an off branch of Fairlight, which has also supposedly spawned Project X). While this cannot be proved (or denied), much circumstantial evidence exists that points towards this being true.
Despite being named as one of the groups caught by Operation Fastlink, a warez bust that occurred on April 21, 2004, Echelon has continued to release game ISO's.