Posted on 12/19/2005 8:56:16 AM PST by DJ Taylor
Executive Summary
In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today.
The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the ECHELON “Dictionary”) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective “listening stations” maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.
But apart from directing their ears towards terrorists and rogue states, ECHELON is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of “unpopular” political affiliation or for no probable cause at all in violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution – are consistently impeded by very elaborate and complex legal arguments and privilege claims by the intelligence agencies and the US government.
(Excerpt) Read more at fly.hiwaay.net ...
BTTT
The NSA has been around for a while. One of my dad's pals in 1950s Japan was part of this outfit. He always said it stood for No Such Agency.
Democrats in High Dungeon. Pointing out that Clinton did this ain't gonna cut it. Bush ADMITTED he did it, Clinton did not.
They think they have their issue for the impeachment. First act of the next Congress if Bush wins a second term.
Ooops I meant "First act of the next Congress if the Donkeys win the majority". Duh.
The president sent a big STFU sandwich to democrats and NY Times this morning.
"Members of congress have been briefed at least a DOZEN times that the NSA was actively monitoring suspected terrorists."
Another non-story blows up in the faces of the idiots at the NY Slimes.
Triplicate.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543118/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543347/posts
I'm listening to Rush run cuts from the news conf.
This ain't the 60 minutes story.
I do not think they are eavesdropping on your obscene phone calls.
FISA was passed in 1978. Who was in the White House, who controlled Congress, the DOD?
I'm sure now that the president has informed the public on national tv that DEMOCRATS in congress were aware of this, the liberal media will quickly kill this story.
I know exactly what the NY Slimes was up too. They released this non-story the week the patriot act was being renewed and the iraqi election was taking place. One, to steal any thunder given the president for the successful election. Two, thinking they could paint the president into some Nixon style watergate.
Well, the rest of the liberal media took the bait. Now they all look like idiots as usual.
Is ECHELON and Carnivore legit?
I disagree. This invented and well-timed story successfully kept the success of the Iraqi elections off the front page. Bush had to get on national TV twice within 24 hours in an attempt to get at least some of the truth out. But the big story here is how the administration is letting these leaks go on uninvestigated and unpunished and how weak the Republicans in the House and Senate are on these issues. The only quote I heard this morning was spineless Lindsey Graham whining about the NSA "eavesdropping". Where's the RNC chair? Hiding under his desk?
Actually Canada is in on it too.
Red6
Rush just played President Bush saying in his news conference "We are at war and the Justice Dept. will proceed with a full investigation."
It's a US, Canadian, New Zealand, Aussie, UK system. There are more who "play along" but are not direct members by hosting certain activities.
But to the American hating left and foreigners it's all US of course.
Red6
When my company was located in Cambridge there was an interesting company across the street caled Thinking Machines Associates. I dropped in with my resume but they weren't hiring. I couldn't even leave it. Not interested. Go away. It shows up in a Tom Clancy. They were making supercomputers for code encryption. They were an NSA front. Then I was really pissed that they wouldn't take my resume.
That and scores of other operations are legit...I read about ECHELON over 20 years ago...
If you can think of it, our gov't has it or is working on it...Not to mention things you haven't thought of...
PING for later reference.
It's good to be a superpower. :)
Graz.
The thought that crossed my mind is how much info was garnered about the UN Oil for Food Fiasco?
It seems quite unreasonable to believe Clinton knew nothing about the intracies of Saddam paying off the world to stay in business.
Elohim City Satellite (OKC bombing related)
Decades worth of citizen surveillance...but now all of a sudden, the left is "outraged" and the far right fringe is screaming about about "jack booted thugs". {Sigh...}
I agree...The Dems can recite every Budweiser commercial for the last 20 years and know the names of every player on every Professional Sports Team but don't know a thing about the gov't, the Constitution or terrorists...</p>
The Dems' preference seems to be for hardcopy FBI files like the ones that the Clintons used, supposedly lost when they were under subpoena, and then magically recovered in Hillary's office. Why bother with sophisticated electronic eavesdropping when you can just muscle subordinate flunkies in the FBI?
I have met the founder of Thinking Machines. They were pioneers in hypercube architecture supercomputers. There is a cool book about their computers that the founder wrote. They may have indeed been used by NSA or CIA to crack codes. The were among the fastest machines available for a time. They had serious problems though as they didn't build fault tolerance in and the MTBF for machines with 1024 CPUS and associated support chips gets quite small. Some commerical companies did buy their machines, and I don't think they were just a CIA front company, but may have been tied in with them for years and had lots of funding from them, as many high tech startups do these days.
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