Echelon Confirmed by Australians 323
Arctic Fox writes "The BBC has a story reporting that Australian intellegence confirms the existance of Echelon. " Obviously there is no "Official" confirmation, but its still pretty interesting. "They" are definitely watching.
Echelon on "Sunday" program (with links) (Score:2)
Big Brother Is Listening [ninemsn.com.au]
Echelon system: FAQ and website links [ninemsn.com.au]
The Sunday program (a Sunday-morning current affairs program that is seen on Australian television) did an hour-long feature article on Echelon back in May. It was this program that first brought Echelon to public awareness in Australia.
What I find particularly disturbing about Echelon is that it is being used more and more for purposes other than that for which it is intended. In particular, Echelon has being used by the Americans to help American firms win international commercial contracts. The article on the Sunday program mentioned this as well as the BBC article. On the Sunday program, it was said that for Australians, America might be a close military ally, but commercially America is Australia's strongest competitor.
To see the U.S. attitude on commerce, take a look at the recent tariff imposition by the U.S. government on Australian lamb into the U.S. market: 9% tariff with a quota, and lamb over the quota attracts a 40% tariff. This shows that as far as commerce is concerned, America is not an ally of Australia. (Echelon has nothing to do with the imposition of the lamb tariff.)
No wonder politicians on both sides of the Atlantic ocean are calling for an inquiry. Maybe our politicians here in Australia should be calling for one, too.
--
Re:Anybody Remember? (Score:1)
Sure, and it still happens, right? See Results from "Jam Echelon Day" [slashdot.org] on this site, for instance. Or read cypherpunks' e-mail; some people still have such a
Re:Used for private gain!? Not just us... (Score:1)
What about non-satellite communications? (Score:1)
Certainly phone calls within Europe don't go by satellite, and not all transatlantic ones do. There's even a prefix you can dial to ensure you get a cable connection - and you can tell it works because it doesn't have the characteristic satellite delay (you can work out the height required for geostationary satellites and calculate the speed-of-light delay - it's about a quarter of a second if I remember correctly).
So, do they have separate monitoring for the cables?
Re:Who cares? You should. (Score:1)
Or maybe you're just worried that when you jokingly suggest to your friend that it's too bad they bombed the World Trade Center instead of Congress you'll end up losing your job and possibly your liberty because they won't get the joke?
Therein lie the rub. When Clinton was first elected, one of the Senators from the Carolinas suggested it might be best if he didn't come to their state. If he were anyone else he would've been arrested for threatening the President.
The real danger is the lives that'll be ruined due to a federal investigation of nonsense. Go ahead and explain to your boss that the FBI guys who came to interview you (and HIM) were only kidding. See how long you keep your job. Even if nothing ever happens they'll always suspect you.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
You're right about people calling the original post a troll, though. I'll echo your sentiments: Fer Christ's sake! A guy can't have a fucking opinion here?
Heh, felt like cursing.
NSA atrocities (Score:1)
Fortunately, geeks aren't good at killing people. :)
Mega-Bandwidth (Score:1)
Petabyte: 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
Now, I am substituting descriptions from different parts of his site. He actually compares a petabyte to 3 years of satelite data... but I can't visualize that very easily.
I can visualize the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is a big place. Now, you want to stuff all that through a wire (or fiber... they had that in '89) 100 times in 30 seconds!! Incredible. I think someone had their exponents a little off.
This sounds like people I know who swear that government spy satelites can read your watch.
Oh, just one more thing, in the interests of accuracy. Just because I like base 10 instead of powers of 2, the numbers in my description may be off by, oh, say... 117,253 GIGAbytes . This minor inconvenience (errata, call it what you will) is brought to you by Microsoft, Intel, and the Windows calculator.
Its all Duncan Campbell (Score:2)
Take another look at the article, and note what is actually said and what is merely implied. The US, UK and Australian governments all monitor radio communications. No surprise there. They might, under certain circumstances, pass on this intelligence to each other. If one of them got wind of a plot to assassinate another's head of state, it would be positively unfriendly not to pass this on.
Somehow Duncan Campbell makes this into an admission of a vast conspiracy. Of course he might be right, but then again he might not.
What is really needed here is the application of the scientific principle: someone else has to go out and try to replicate Campbell's findings. I'll take more notice of this when I see someone else's name on the reports.
Incidentally, Campbell has a rather chequered history here. Last year he "revealed" that the UK ISPs and police were in "secret" talks about handing over subscribers email for fishing expeditions. The truth was considerably more prosaic: the ISPs and police were talking publicly (OK, so you had to pay £60/day to attend) about how to streamline and regularise the existing legal process under which the police can request subscriber information (e.g. snail-mail address) from the ISPs. Campbell forgot to mention that under UK law the ISPs are prohibited from passing over confidential data unless they have good reason to believe that a crime has been committed, and that email contents are dealt with under separate laws. If the ISPs hand over data to the police without good cause then they could be sued and/or prosecuted. This gives them a motive to inspect every request carefully.
So now Campbell has moved on to bigger conspiracies. But having seen his attitude towards the truth on that occasion, I am very skeptical about this one.
Paul.
Re:Disinformation (Score:2)
Very soon, people are going to get fed up of looking. Why bother? It's just another hoax, after all.
Then, you build your -real- silo within the bounds of a farm, or inside some woods. With everyone conditioned NOT to look in those places, you can be fairly confident nobody'll even question whether this could be the genuine article.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Not only do I remember... (Score:1)
An Aussie who has worked on this comments. (Score:1)
I have been on the site where this work is done, and all I can say is - Panic Not. There is an awful lot of traffic to be monitored, so the focus of the equipment is very narrow. Even with all of the gear that they have got, they still only get to monitor a very small portion of the stuff that is really interesting.
If you want to go look at the gear - it is just out of Alice Springs, on the road to Ayers Rock. The most intersting thing about the whole site is the Yanks - the Australian facilities are fairly unassuming looking affairs, but this base (Pine Gap) has lots of Yanks in camo fatigues and sunglasses toting guns, and driving around in left hand drive cars on the wrong side of the road.
The other reason not to panic (about echelon) is that around the same area (within a days drive), there are some much much more interesting things.
For example, in a certain area, you can drive off the road for some distance, right in the middle of fscking no-where and you will find a series of trapdoors in the bare dirt. Open them up , and climb down the ladder into a small cylindrical bunker about 2 meters across and 4 meters deep. The bunker is full of thick wires coming out of the ground and going to ... who knows where ? Right in the middle of this bunker is a little 68000 based computer chugging away quietly doing data aquisition. It is completely sureal being in this bunker, with nothing but hundreds of miles of dead silent red soil bush around you.
Also, about another days drive in the same area, is an even more amazing site ... absolutely nothing for miles, and then this thing hidden behind a hill with an array of massive diesel engines chugging away. Nearby is a big metal grid on the ground near what appears to be antennas - walk over this at the wrong time of day and watch the hairs stand up on your head (like a Van Der Graph generator). Extremely cool .. but I cannot tell you what it is for :)
Re: (Score:1)
Vast Oxygen Conspiracy, haha (Score:2)
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:1)
But by its definition fetuses are the subject of the action, not babies. Yes, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that a women's right to an abortion is protected by the Constituion. It is a hard choice to make, but a women's right to choose what happens to her own body is an absolute necessity for equality of the sexes.
Though it may seem a little sad, recent studies have linked the present decrease in crime in the U.S.A to safe and legal abortion. I don't think they count the anti-abortionists who shoot health care providers and volunteers in these statistics though.
Re:Radio Broadcasts (Score:1)
1. They may not collect in the US.
2. They may not collect in the country they are in.
3. They may not collect on US citizens.
The obvious caveat to all the conspiracy nuts is that they are only barred these actions in their public rules.
Re:The real argument (Score:1)
Well, maybe not overtly, but check this out: :)
http://www.bullatoms ci.org/issues/1994/nd94/nd94bulletins.html [bullatomsci.org]
http://dilbert.daily.umn. edu/daily/1995/10/03/news/spray/ [umn.edu]
Those friendly guys in our government lied to us. This is not the only case, I'm sure (and I got tired of trying to separate the wacko (my opinion) sites from the real ones in tracking down coverup info). If our government is willing to do things like this to us and lie about it, why should we believe anything they say about invading our privacy to catch terrorists, etc. Hell, for all I know they only set up this Echelon crap to get around the rules about spying on the public and they are gathering as much dirt on us as they can, just to have in case they want to mess with us. If it exists.
-beme
Pay no attention to this. (Score:1)
M-x spook (Score:1)
For example: jihad AK-47 explosion Cocaine Waco, Texas North Korea Khaddafi Kennedy
Saddam Hussein security Legion of Doom quiche Delta Force Clinton
Serbian. I'm not too sure about "quiche", but everything else seems consistent.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
Don't forget... (Score:1)
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:1)
Are you talking about Canada and Mexico, or just the U.S.?
another [mother] "owns" her baby It is about fetuses, not children. It is not about ownership of the fetus, either.
I am pro-choice because it is not up to the government to decide what a woman can and cannot do with her own body.
Um, which communists are you talking about? And what does this have to do with what you're talking about?
p.s. -- Late term abortions were extremely rare even when they were done. The technique you describe is a mis-representation of what occurs in these cases. Sensationalism may get you readers, but it won't get you thinkers.
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:1)
Chalk one up for the Thought Police (Score:1)
SA
Re:Echelon may not be as useless as we think (Score:1)
1. The government finds major criminals fast because they don't want the american public breathing down their neck. Thus, the more of a public issue it is, the more they devote to solving it.
2. They construct a plausible theory, declare it true because it fits the available evidence, ignore the 50 other possibilities that fit the available evidence as well, stop looking for more evidence, and declare the case solved.
I'd be willing to bet a whole years pay that the vast majority of quickly solved major crimes and terrorist actions are the result of either one or both of these issues at work, or stupidity on the part of the criminal/terrorist, rather than any Echelon system.
Power demonstrated is power lost.... (Score:1)
--------------
The NSA works for the NSA, they don't give 2 shits about you. Unless you're in their way.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
Total Control? As opposed to the limited control the US Government has now? By definition, the government is in total control. If they weren't, they wouldn't be governing.
As for fear of the Y2K bug being a government plot, there would have to have been a LOT of people in on this plot, and none of them have broken yet! Amazing! Remember, never attribute to malice what can be explained with stupidity. Y2K is the result of incredible managerial short-sightedness, nothing more.
Is Eschelon a Bad Thing? Yeah, because governments are made of people, and it's inevitable that someone is going to abuse the system. Right now, that's far more likely (probability approaching 1, if the contract story mentioned by the BBC report is true) than the US government going Fascist. It's the same problem with Key Escrow for encryption: who guards the guardians. The Romans knew this 2000 years ago.
Now put back on your aluminum hat so that Eschelon can't read your brain waves.
-jon
Anybody Remember? (Score:3)
Another thing people would do is "rot-13" their messages. Rot-13 just means that you rotate each letter 13 characters. I think this would still be useful for keeping AOL Newbies out your hair.
Now, I don't think that the NSA was actually monitoring any of this, but if Echelon is in fact the case you could probably have some fun/get in a whole lot of trouble by calling your buddy in Bulgaria and saying a bunch of nonsense words (or "Amphigory"
Oh yeah -- back in the 70's a machine called "kremvax" (kremlin vax) came up on the USENet briefly. I understand that the Government actually took notice before it was exposed as a hoax.
I miss the bad old days. *sigh*
Limited to western nations? (Score:1)
In the meantime, wave KILL BOMB WACO GUN ECHELON hello to the NSA
The Good Reverend
Re:Bandwidth (Score:1)
Second of all, I don't feel like looking it up.
Assuming this is the next larger value than a terabyte, where, exactly, were they storing this information in 1989?
I think my father had a computer with an 80 megabyte HD that year. Assuming there was publicly available technology to store a gigabyte then, in a format they could get all the data off of in 30 seconds, is a stretch. Six orders of magnitude ABOVE that...?
I don't think it unlikely that they could store this much info, but to be able to get access to it in 30 seconds, no. I won't bother dealing with the bandwidth issues here. Its more probable that they invented teleport technology and just beamed the data across the US.
>>>>>>>>> Kvort
Well, duh. (Score:1)
They're doing it. No surprise. Y'all saw the story about warantless peeping-tom via thermal imaging, right? The faster these come, the more likely people will wake up and fight for privacy. Or at least download GPG.
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:2)
I certainly don't.
jsm
Re:Disinformation (Score:1)
You don't call attention to it until it's going to be revealed anyway. Then you make sure that unbelievable exagerations are revealed too, and anyone talking about the true version, will be assumed to be talking about the ridiculous version and thus ignored as a paranoid lunatic.
As for R.A.W., yeah he's a crackpot, but it's an odd sort of crackpot who spends half of his books telling you "This is what happened to me, but don't believe me, I might be lying or crazy, try it yourself."
thejeff
Re:Not only do I remember... (Score:3)
Now, I'm no intelligence analyst; let me state that up front. But if I was trying to get a coherent picture of various people's activities (whether terrorist, commercial or political) I'd have a system that analyzed traffic first and foremost; not what was sent, but who sent things to whom how often. It would look for particular words/names and count them, to see what's important in their communications (and thus to the person being monitored). It would flag the appearance of new names/objects, and watch to see when these things were mentioned in communications to different people (likely indicating when something was becoming more important). Et cetera. This is way more sophisticated than you need to take phrases crafted to pop up, and ignore them.
Someone using a phrase like "Eschelon is an invasion of privacy" is not news, and probably does nothing more than flag the user's ID in a file somewhere which tracks potential enemies of the NSA. It would probably be far more effective to use something like Racter to write a little screed in somewhat different words every day; it would require a much more sophisticated filter to dump it automagically than a canned line repeated on every post. Even so, people trying to grab attention usually aren't the ones who need to be watched, and I bet the NSA's techniques are way beyond what's necessary to deal with this stuff effectively.
--
Re:Not only do I remember... (Score:1)
Or maybe filtering the crap would make the whole exercise pointless?
Who the hell cares?? (Score:1)
Maybe it works?? (Score:1)
Re:Not only do I remember... (Score:1)
Then again, things like Echelon are basically an exercise in futility. You simply cant scan the content of that amount of data and catch anything you didnt already know, if youre dealing with people who know they're being watched. The amount of CPU power that would be needed to catch even the simplest evasions doesnt even come close to existing. Just look at the processing power needed to do even minor filtering on a corporate basis to attempt to block out some stuff from employees. And that _is_ pure text search. Add to that lexical analysis and associations and you realize it doesnt even begin to make sense.
Unless, of course, the NSA directors nephew owns the company selling the hardware, in which case I can see at least how someone is getting some benefit. And if thats the deal it doesnt really matter if it works or not.
Re:Hahaha... (Score:1)
By the way, which trailer park do you live in?
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:1)
It may very well not be up to the government what a woman (or man) does with his/her body. That's why suicide is illegal
"The Government" simply speaking, has nothing to do with it, they are simply to enforce the view of the general public in a democratic society. It seems that the general public, at this time (and just barely) sympathises on the side of "pro-choice" which is a term to indicate exactly what I said -- that the mother "owns" the baby inside her which is labelled a "fetus" because it is still attached to her womb.
If you believe that there is a difference in value between a human life inside a woman as yet unborn, and a baby one week old smothered by their teen mother, you need to rethink your system of beliefs. If you realize that their is no difference, you're stuck either saying that abortions are wrong or teens murdering infants that no-one else knew about is wrong. "She should have had an abortion instead of killing the child" is actually often stated in these cases.
Think about it.
PS, asking which communists I'm talking about it pretty numb -- communists are anti capitalism. And in the mid 1900's, the low moral values of North America in general were used as propaganda against capitalism.
PS #2, the technique I described is still in use in many circles today even though we tend toward others which are equally violent but considered less harmful
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage [linuxsupportline.com]>
Re:Just a thought.... (Score:1)
Ok. City and Columbine were internal acts (or so everyone believes). Echelon monitors international traffic. No reason any within the US should worry about this, eh? Only if you're calling/emailing/etc overseas. I seriously doubt most of my general email, posts, and Quake traffic flips overseas before arriving at it's US destination.
The one they SHOULD have caught was the World Trade Center bombing- that was international terrorism (or so everyone believes).
Perhaps those jerks relied on carrier pigeons.
Paranoia fixes (Score:1)
Also, the president of the USofA can't get a blowjob in the oval office without it making its way all over the front pages of every paper in the universe and yet people believe the same government can turn around and keep its stuff together long enough to pull off all this conspiracy crap? That is bull. Does the US and other intelligence agencies come together to monitor transmissions especially from foreign powers they don't like or organizations that scare them? Sure. Are they some all powerful force running the world behind the scenes? Nah. People are giving governments and their agencies far too much credit.
Misc. Thoughts on Echelon and such (Score:1)
Most terrorist who are serious about such nefarious activities are going to be quieter about such operations. Speaking in code. The stuff we see in movies. The NSA keywords would only stand out long enough from the noise for the spooks to install a noise filter. Just like we can filter out the AC first post freaks.
But what if the intent of the system was to watch for signs of that kind of activity? Transactions for the supplies and infrastructure for ugly activities. On demand tapping of a particular person's conversations. Searching email for people with dangerous questions or dangerous knowledge. Searching for people that warrant further watching.
Then other options can be brought to use. Tempest to check out whats really behind those PGP messages. A quick background check to determine idealogical motivations. Action would then be taken as necessary.
Imagine your personal profile. Maybe a risk scoring system with a few different variables based on what you've written, emailed and said. Maybe a few higher points on the 'personal independance' score cause you post the NSA keywords. A few less on the 'knowledge' score cause you barely passed Physics and Calculus in college. Hmm, a wife and kids? Knock the 'motivation' score down a little. So your Jam Echelon keywords never make it past the first stage, they aren't even interested in you. But now take your terrorists. Hmm, their motivations may be known by their religion, their public postings or published papers. They or someone they know has the necessary knowledge to cause major disruption. Echelon tracks everything they do and say.
Is Echelon tracking US Citizens? They didn't know Ted K. was hopping on the bus and mailing bombs. Of course, he was pretty low key, low tech. They didn't know those guys bought a bunch of fertilizer and diesel and packed it in a truck and parked it outside a Federal Building.
They didn't know about those guys that blew up the parking garage under the World Trade Center.
Of course, one could get very conspiritorial and say they did know about these things. There were other motivations that made the NSA allow them to happen...
scary huh?? (Score:1)
Re:Broadcast (Score:2)
Nobody said you have to monitor EVERYTHING. You don't need to build another Echelon, only a few select pieces. You might even be able to pick out which pieces to monitor because the transmittion will have to include where it came from.
Chill out, it's an idea - I'm not going to steal a billion dollars for you to build it. Who would have thought SETI@home could have processed all the data they had so quickly?
Re:Don't forget... (Score:1)
-FBI files: It hasn't been done in the past? This was the first time a prez got info from the FBI? Sure... This was just the first time the Prez (or his underlings) were busted. Just like the intern-sex. Clinton was the first unfaithful US prez...sure... And regardless, SO WHAT? It wasn't 'fair'?
-Individuals jailed: Point me to the evidence? This is the first I've heard of such a thing!
-Using FBI/IRS for persecution: Again, show me some evidence. What kind of persecution are you talking about?
-Waco: I'm pretty aware and up on the news, and I hadn't heard of Waco as a problem spot until the 'siege' began. "US military forces"- who? The ATF?
Before posting such silly arguements, you should have facts (or at least coherent reasoning) to back them up.
Trust, Echelon, etc. (Score:1)
Even (or perhaps especially?) in a democracy, I think such sentiment is a little simplistic. I don't trust the government. I don't fear it, but don't trust it, either.
The beauty of democratic government is that trust is only a minor part of the equation. Rather, checks, balances and oversights keep the government in line, and more important, keep it in touch with the wants and needs of the people.
Much of the U.S. government is under significant representative oversight. This is simply not true when it comes to the intelligence agencies, including the NSA.
The troubling part about ECHELON, specifically, is that it allegedly allows the U.S. to spy on its own citizens, thereby circumventing legal safeguards. Those safeguards exist because information is power, and too much power in one place has, historically, been bad for things.
If you're trying to argue against the rabid anti-government conspiracy theorists out there, I agree with you. The other extreme, however, is untenable. A middle ground must be struck, and ECHELON, if it lives up to its billing, goes quite a bit over the line.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
None have them have lived to tell about it. . .
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/397.html
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
What the Investigative Reporters Missed (Score:3)
Fact 1 -- Deja News is in the Echelon building: [citivu.com]
Deja News, Inc.
9430 Research Boulevard
Echelon II, Suite. 350
Austin, TX 78759
Fact 2 -- Cycorp [cyc.com] makes what are arguably the best tools for scanning the web for concepts.
Fact 3 -- Cycorp was a spinoff of MCC [mcc.com].
Fact 4 -- Deja News, Inc., Cycorp and MCC are within walking distance of each other.
Fact 5 -- Bobby Ray Inman [surnameweb.org] was the first director of the MCC.
Fact 6 -- Bobby Ray Inman is a spook's spook.
I may be a bit biased here since I was invited to go to work at the MCC when it was in its early formative stages (before Austin had been selected). My office was, at that time, at Arden Hills operations at Control Data Corporation, just two stories above about an acre of supercomputers that had signs hung on them that read "Fort Meade" [cmu.edu].
As Seymour [ucar.edu] used to say to the "insurance" agents located at the "Thorp Insurance offices" out in the middle of the corn fields near his farm where his tribe was building the Cray-1:
"Just don't let my people know you're here."
Re: (Score:1)
Re:NSA NOT Spying on you!!! - you're too naive. (Score:1)
> For starters, it is illegal for the NSA and the > NIC (National Intelligence Community) to spy on > American Persons
It's been illegal for our gov. to do many things they've done. Since WWII they've taken the approach that the end justifies the means. This would include things like CIA drug trafficking, arms-for-hostages deals to Iran, etc. If you were them and believed a person to be dangerous, you mean to tell me you wouldn't ask your Brit spook-buddy to send you their data? See, you didn't collect it, so it's OK now.
>Out of respect for the countries of NATO, we probably don't spy on them either
How about Israel? We spy on each other like crazy. Can you say "Jason Pollard"?
And why wouldn't geeks with guns count? Do you think they *know* you're just a mild-mannered geek with a ton of ammo?
Echelon may not be as useless as we think (Score:1)
Re:Some information among the noise (Score:1)
Absolutely. And, they have more bits to analyze. I'll bet I could write a program that would identify images very quickly that have been so modified. How? Just a simple statistical analysis against a baseline sample of such images. Gee, the low bits of this image are very unlikely for a JPEG. I'll just take a closer look....
Yeah, that kind of analysis is probably part of the NSA's automatic filtering already, and you can bet that they've got a full USENET feed watching the binary newsgroups for just this sort of thing. Funny that we would pay so much money in taxes for our government to collect and analyze porn
Re:my 1cent. (Score:1)
"lettersecret" - no idea how to translate "briefgeheim", so this is a litteral translation. If someone knows the correct term.. please say so
//rdj
Re:The real argument (Score:1)
Now, that argument of emotion aside, the logical argument on why Echelon is bad, bad, bad, is when you learn the basics of how the US Govt. is set up, with it's system of checks and balances (never mind the lobbyists and Political Action Committees), you see that it's carefully set up to prevent any small group from gaining total unilateral control of the whole shebang. The Executive branch is answerable to the Legislative branch, the Legislative branch is answerable to the Judicial branch, and the Judicial branch is answerable to the Executive branch. Unfortunately, the NSA branch is answerable to noone. Therefore, pure evil.
Oh, enough of attacking your arguments. I'll attack you now: You're ugly and your momma dresses you funny.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Re:FIRST POSTER BEWARE! (Score:1)
It's Impossible (Score:1)
THor
mozkill@yahoo.com
Re:If this is how you feel (Score:1)
"Bah!" I say (as I polish the ramp and throat of my vintage M1911)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Re:Remember the KAL shootdown - 1983? (Score:1)
One more thing...
Most of the stuff you hear about Echelon is here say. The NSA never opens their mouth, because thats their policy. People scream about privacy issues, but the truth is that the NSA is a passive organization. They just watch and gather information. I'm not saying the potential for abuse doesn't exist. What I am saying is that the NSA takes action on nothing. They have no field agents. They just provide informaton.
Now one thing about Greenpeace being spied on by the NSA, I believe that to be the oldest urban legend ever to exist about Echelon. Even if it were true, I wouldn't doubt it being because some zealous nut was planning to blow shit up. I have a lot of confdence in the NSA.
The only thing I have issues with are the rumors that they've been stealng corporate secrets from Eurpean nations. But I like to keep one thing in mind: If the French had this capabilty I have no doubt in my mind that they would not think twice about exploiting it. Hell the French steal from eachother, why the hell should they have any respect for evil America?
http://www.nsa.gov (Score:1)
Though any international corporation which doesn't encrypt all WAN traffic deserves everything they get.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
Re:Disinformation (Score:2)
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Re:Remember the KAL shootdown - 1983? (Score:1)
Its all those sub-space communications channels they're using.
A Peta-byte? I don't believe that for a second. Not by today's standards, let alone 10 years ago. That woman was talking out of her ass. When you talk about bandwidth lke that you're talking about wide-range conspiracy of the masses.
The military's technology has always trickled down to the private sector very quickly, because the private sector designs 90% of it. What you're talking about is an insult to the competence of the architects of the Internet2 and the entire academic world behind it.
Re:The real argument (Score:1)
I just feel that we have the right to be informed (as I posted above). Obviously, a lot of money is being pumped into this program... well, that is our money. I want to know where it is going, and I want to know if it is working (which we really have no idea). I am not demanding that I should have the choice of where my money goes, but only the knowledge (if I want it). This should be our rights as citizens... no matter what they think our best interests are. Especially something like this, that could greatly effect our lives (the potential is certainly there).
Do you see this point?
Re:Subject Withheld (Score:1)
Assumption??? (Score:1)
You accuse me of making an assumption I have not made. I'm not even sure that the individual I'm debating with has made this assumption.
My words: "Um, which communists are you talking about? And what does this have to do with what you're talking about?" and "Please, this time can you tell me what this has to do with abortion?"
I don't see any assumption, only questions.
In the future, before criticizing, jsm2, please read a little more carefully.
Start with the multinationals (Score:4)
Re:Trivalizing of terms (Score:1)
Re:Echelon Keywords in EMails (Score:1)
on the other hand, on that web site that was doing all the Jam Echelon Day advocacy, there was some kind of text generator, which actually generated a little block of text that made grammatical sense, and used the keywords, but was randomly generated. THAT is what I used on Jam Echelon Day, and that's what I told all my friends to use, because if Echelon is CONTENT sensitive, that's the sort of thing that would trigger it.
Folks who otherwise relied on dumb keyword lists, didn't read the whole Jam Echelon Site day, and get points off for not following directions. Go stand in the corner.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
Re:NSA atrocities (Score:1)
As for geeks not being good at killing people: It depends upon the method. Geeks have designed the world's worst weapons, and at the NSA, could conceivably enable those who do the killing directly.
That's not to say such things are not sometimes justified. I'm a liberal at heart, but I'm well aware of the need to defend the U.S. militarily. Hell, I've even considered applying at the NSA. We need agencies like the NSA. I'd prefer, however, that they were kept on a much-shorter democratic leash.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Re:Doesn't it strike you as strange.. - Not Really (Score:2)
I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with the idea of the NSA playing puppet with other world powers, especially those under the nuclear umbrella with us.
Remember the KAL shootdown - 1983? (Score:2)
Well, how do you suppose we got the audio tape of the pilot? The Soviets were denying the entire incident at the beginning. They certainly wouldn't have handed over the tapes.
The NSA has satellites which receive radio transmissions in thousands or millions of frequencies, like high tech scanners. All those conversations are recorded just in case they are needed later. I don't know if this specific incident relied on the purported voice-recognition technology of Echelon. The specific conversation could theoretically have been located manually, given the time and location of the shootdown.
Anyway, it's just another anecdote related to Echelon.
Re:Remember the KAL shootdown - 1983? (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:3)
I don't understand why so many people are upset about Echelon. I don't know about everybody else, but I don't write about assasinating the president in my e-mails, and thus they don't get read by Echelon. Furthermore, IMHO, not being bombed by terrorists is a bit more important than maintaining my personal privacy.
The entertainment industry is mostly to blame. Shows like the X-Files (don't get me wrong, I love that show) and similar movies have taught us that the CIA, FBI, and especially the NSA are all out to get us. However, as my .sig suggests, the NSA is in fact working for the good of the people of the United States. That is why they are called the National Security Agency. The idea that they are trying to harm us is downright silly. The concept of government conspiracies is pure myth, perhaps rooted in the fact that there are inevidably a few somewhat corrupt people in the government that have done a few inconsequential things, like having oral sex with interns.
Getting back to Echelon, so what? It is a computer that collects international electronic communications that include phrases like "bomb the Whitehouse." If you are talking about bombing the Whitehouse in your e-mails, frankly, I want the government to take a closer look at what you are doing. And if you don't want Echelon to look at your e-mail, don't talk about bombing the Whitehouse. Efforts like "Jam Echelon Day" have done nothing but help terrorists get a chance to get by our security. I think that we should instead all do our part to avoid writing e-mail that might get picked up by Echelon to lighten their work load and let them take care of the important stuff.
It's 10 o'clock. Several Russian suitcase-sized nuclear warheads are missing. Do you know where your priorities are?
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Re:Limited to western nations? (Score:2)
Used for private gain!? (Score:3)
I'm hoping the outing of this technology will feed the interest with congress to have a look atthis thing. The potential for abuses here is so strong, that the mere allegation of this sort of action needs to be carefully looked by an oversight committee.
Re:Some information among the noise (Score:2)
Hidding the existance of a message is called steganography. Its more common to high the message in a single image or MP3 as they have more bits to obscure the payload. See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fapp2/stegano graphy [cam.ac.uk] (among others) for more info.
-Henry
DGP(Disturbing Government Program)/. Drinking Game (Score:2)
Take a drink whenever :
-someone says the government hacks their computer and gives no proof
--twice if it's the nsa.
-every time reading all of the comments makes you forget exactly what the DGP is
-someone says the DGP won't work
-someone points out hacking/cracking discrepency
-someone suggests the gov. should generically follow the same rules the populace does
-someone bashes M$
--twice if they suggest billy should be imprisoned or killed
-anyone blames criminal behavior on laws prohibiting it
-everytime the word "encryption" is mentioned
--Twice if all security problems could be solved by relaxation of encryption laws.
-someone mentions a historical injustice as proof on gov. inadequacy
--twice if it is more than 30 yrs old
---three times if it deals with hoover-era fbi
-someone claims the government has backdoors on current computers/encryption
-someone claims the DGP will give the government absolute power
-all-seeing DGP mentioned without mentioning corresponding all-using DGP
btw -- it's an old spy trick to spout out incorrect information with the hopes that the people who know will correct it. Don't count on hearing anything from the NSA except what they absolutely must tell congress ;-)
Disinformation (Score:3)
However, it may also be useful to note that if the NSA is anywhere near as powerful as we have been led (or have led ourselves) to believe, we probably wouldn't know about it. Organizations (like the NSA) that operate on the perception of power have it in their best interest to spread disinformation about themselves, especially if they wish to remain obscure and secret.
This concept is explored at great length in Robert Anton Wilson's [rawilson.com] Illuminatus trilogy.
The essence of the idea is this: people tend to dismiss the rantings of crackpots and paranoid conspiracy theorists.
So, let's say (just for example of course) you have a worldwide listening network, and you want to keep it low key. You're pretty smart, so you know you can't keep something that big a secret forever. What do you do?
You go out and spread rumors about it being all-powerful, and that it can monitor everything. If you're good, you even plant a story or two in some underground zines about how it's running stolen technology from the planet Vulcan, and was really created by occultists (or Masons) who traveled through time from the 13th century.
The rumor takes on a life of its own. You only have to plant the seeds, and the imaginations of the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople will do the rest for you. In no time at all, anyone who believes it is obviously some kind of lunatic, and your mission is accomplished.
Just something to consider.
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Re:Some information among the noise (Score:2)
Trouble is, although the files would decompress to give the exact same input data, it would be obvious that people had used steganography on them, because the compressed data would be different to what gzip (or gzip -9) produces.
The Annoying Part (Score:2)
This must infuriate the FBI, as domestic surveillance is supposed to be their game. I wonder if we are not going to set off a serious inter-governmental turf war if/when solid proof of broad-based domestic surveillance is provided.
The EU commissioned a report in 97
http://www.accessone.com/~rivero/POLITICS/ECHEL
(link to the london telegraph article that references the eu report) complaining about echelon practices, but it has managed to stay out of mainstream American press to date. I'm curious how our citizens, assured at every step of their freedom and rights, will react to the idea of every phone call, fax, email, etc. being collected and monitored by the NSA and their flunkies. Congress, also, could have something interesting to say, if they were ever really informed.
I think it's time to start talking about this kind of surveillance in mainstream media, where it will reach the ears of those who don't want to hear.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3)
To be honest, my largest problem with this is not that they are monitoring for key words... but that we, as citizens, do not know about it.
Yes, if we knew about it, we probably would not be writing KILL PRESIDENT ALLAH NUCLEAR JIHAD ASSASINATION as much in our e-mails or phone conversations... but I would imagine that the majority of terrorists are a bit paranoid and would refain from those obvious word phrases as well.
It seems like a large waste of money to me... I wonder how many terrorist acts have been prevented through this technology. Perhaps it has been helpful... I tend to think not.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
How do you know Echelon has done one thing to help you? You assume it works and cleans out terrorists. That statement is about as silly as assuming they're watching you right now.
What we do know is that there are no protections against using this system to further other political and economic agendas and corruption, especially in the US, is always a real concern.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Yes, I'm one of those paranoid conspiracy theorist freaks. It sure helps melt away daily boredom.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Maybe they should start focusing on the important stuff in the World?
A revolution would do a lot of good in a lot of Western Countries right around now - they've mostly long stopped being democracies.
Doesn't it strike you as strange.. (Score:2)
I'm not suggesting that this isn't true, but it really makes little sense to me. This isn't the sort of thing that government officials just start blabbing about, especially to the BBC. These guys are trained to do three things... deny deny deny... so why fess up now ???
Re:Broadcast (Score:2)
You and what army? Unless you're sitting on a couple of billion dollars for equipments costs, it would never happen. On top of that, eavesdropping on private communications lines is ILLEGAL. And believe me, if you could get an operation like this moving, they'd see it happen.
Moreover, Distributed.net works on one piece of information, encrypted with one key, over a number of YEARS. If they used heavier encryption than RC5 (which they undoubtedly do) it would take you a couple of thousand (or million) years just to decrypt one of their messages.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Where'd they go? (Score:2)
So it's just been reveiled that the government can know any aspect of any communication you have. Where'd all the Privacy Phreaks go?
A month ago they were screaming from the rafters about the FBI's desire for network snooping abilities being a viloation of privacy, but from the lack of posts here apparently Echelon (or whatever it is) is OK.
Jeez. Guess its Ok for the NSA to know everything about us, but not the FBI. Good ole NSA. Obviously the rumors about them are unfounded. Just last week I was at the supermarket, and there was a whole bunch of NSA agents helping little old ladies carry their groceries to their cars. Not to mention last month when they worked the food line at a homeless shelter. And don't forget the Smoke Off they had in the NSA parking lot last year.
Or maybe all the privacy phreaks realize that there's nothing they can do about it, and maybe, just maybe, it is actually keeps their little lives all nice and cozy happy. Like a kitten sleeping in a sunbeam.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Re:Remember the KAL shootdown - 1983? (Score:3)
The pilot was asked/bribed to fly over Russia in a manner as to trigger their early-warning systems, so that the Americans could locate where everything was.
Interestingly, the US version of the recordings differ substantially from the Russian version, and the US presentation given to the UN was later retracted. This makes me wonder whether they had the real recordings at all. Sure, they could have doctored them, easily enough, but if they already knew the jet was going to be shot down (and Pres. Reagan had a pre-written speech to this effect), all they would have needed would be someone who could speak Russian and a fair guess as to what the routine transmission would have been.
Australia: land of contrast (Score:2)
"Name, address, credit card numbers please.."
Re:Disinformation (Score:3)
been led (or have led ourselves) to believe, we probably wouldn't know about it. Organizations
(like the NSA) that operate on the perception of power have it in their best interest to spread
disinformation about themselves, especially if they wish to remain obscure and secret.
This of course assumes a powerful organization can never do wrong, when really they spread disinfo to cover their mistakes. No matter how big and powerful your organization is it can never be perfect. Not to mention theres lot to be said about how the bigger you get the less secure you become.
Your disinformation example only verifies the existance of the listening network through untrustworthy sources, yet calls attention to it which leads to serious investigation of the rumor. Its like painting a sign that reads, "500 megaton ICBM silo" on a 10 megaton ICBM silo and expecting no one to see if its really a missile silo.
This concept is explored at great length in Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy.
Heh, this guy defines crackpot. You cite a guy who claims to have talked to a multi-dimensional alien named Mescalito and, according to his own disinformation theory, spreads disinformation himself. I always thought of him as an ignorant new-age version of RA Heilein.
"Proof" of Echelon != Vindication for paranoids (Score:2)
I, for one, believe there is a kernel of truth in the Echelon rumors; that there is the technology and the network to spy on unfriendly nations. Like Iraq for example, instead of depending on sattelites to notify of military mobilization, you listen to radio intercepts and the like. This is probably highly effective, and I have no problem with it.
I do not believe that Echelon is possible on the scale the conspiracy theorists believe. Even if you assume the NSA is "evil", you must factor economics into it. They may have a multi-billion dollar budget, but its simply not sufficient to do the kind of work that they describe. Even if you assume that the speach recognition hardware and the like came for free and is possible, think of the man hours and the sheer logistics of it. To monitor phone networks alone, you would need a basically parallel "secure" infrastructure (e.g.: data lines running your local phone calls to NSA intercept stations). You would need as many servicemen as all the phone networks combined (e.g.: AT&T, baby bells, sprint, etc). Not only that, but they would need to be kept reasonably secure......Man hours alone would cost hundreds of billions. Far more than any possible NSA budget (though we don't have the exact number, we do know gov't revenues and how much could be left in theory). There is just no way.....
Re:Not only do I remember... (Score:2)
--
Re:Just a thought.... (Score:2)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
How do you know that Oxygen has done one thing to help you? Sure, your 8th grade science teacher said you needed it to live. But perhaps she was just part of the Vast Oxygen Conspiricy.
Just because the poster's views don't jive with your own doesn't make him a troll. The guy was polite and presented a differing viewpoint in an agreeable fashion. What the hell more do you want, moron? Do you really think all posts should be divided into "Me, too!" and "F*ck you!" ? Open your eyes and increase the resolution of your brain. Or else everyone will end up ranting like me.
Re:What does this cost? (Score:2)
This also means that the intelligence budget gets the political support of the business community; in other words, it's damned smart politics. (And it has exactly the same fishlike smell, don't it?)
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Some information among the noise (Score:5)
The only semi-safe way to go is to meet in person with someone that you want to communicate with, transfer a phrasebook or list of one-time pads, and then use those later on. I've been thinking of writing something that uses postings to things like USENET, Slashdot, and so on to subtly encode things into. This would look just like ordinary traffic, but you could manipulate, say, the timestamp in the message header to get a small amount of data through. This would be very low bandwidth, but when combined with automation would allow short messages to be turned into several dozen "Hey, check out this article" type messages....