Echelon Conspiracy (also released as The Gift) is a 2009 American action thriller film directed by Greg Marcks, from a screenplay by Michael Nitsberg and Kevin Alyn Elders.

It stars Shane West, Edward Burns, Ving Rhames, Jonathan Pryce, Tamara Feldman, and Martin Sheen.

[2] Max (Shane West), a young American computer engineer, acquires a mobile phone that receives strange text messages.

To further his newfound career in gambling, Max enlists the aid of a Russian cabbie/apparent e-gadget enthusiast, Yuri (Sergey Gubanov), who outfits him with a text-to-voice earpiece to wirelessly receive his anonymous and lucrative text messages.

He then hits the €3 million jackpot on a slot machine but runs away when casino security led by John Reed (Edward Burns) attempts to detain him.

At this point, Agent Grant contacts Raymond Burke (Martin Sheen) of the US National Security Agency (NSA), apparently monitoring Max because of messages he has been receiving are from an omniscient communication surveillance computer system known as Echelon.

Burke recently lost a battle to pass a bill in Congress to allow Echelon to be upgraded by being uploaded into personal computers worldwide.

A lot of articles appear concerned about the recent attempts to secure Congressional approval to upgrade Echelon, underlined as a grave threat to personal freedoms.

[4] Joe Leydon of Variety wrote that the film "plays an awful lot like a direct-to-vid knockoff of last year's Eagle Eye" and "ups the ante with additional pilfering from WarGames".