Read below:
On Jan 10, 2006, at 4:44 PM, E.R.N. Reed wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Uh, there's no spy camera in my house. Checked just this morning.
And the only time I ever caught my neighbor spying on me was when I
went skinny dipping in the pool.
Paul
Same here, except for the pool part, since I don't have one.
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Bob Shell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Jan 10, 2006, at 12:37 PM, Tom C wrote:
In that case why not put spy cameras in everyone's homes so the
government can watch? Prevent the uncommitted crime from
occurring.
Encourage public schools to pry into personal matters. Encourage
school children to tell when their parents' personal views differ
from those popularly accepted. Encourage neighbor to spy upon
neighbor.
I don't know about you, but that's not where I want to live.
We're already living there, I'm afraid.
Bob
Source: Raiders News Service
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story299.htm
January 08, 2006
The NSA Spy Engine: Echelon
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t - Investigative Report
A clandestine National Security Agency spy program code-named
Echelon was likely responsible for tapping into the emails,
telephone calls and facsimiles of thousands of average American
citizens over the past four years in its effort to identify
people suspected of communicating with al-Qaeda terrorists,
according to half-a-dozen current and former intelligence
officials from the NSA and FBI.
The existence of the program has been known for some time.
Echelon was developed in the 1970s primarily as an American-
British intelligence sharing system to monitor foreigners -
specifically, during the Cold War, to catch Soviet spies. But
sources said the spyware, operated by satellite, is the means by
which the NSA eavesdropped on Americans when President Bush
secretly authorized the agency to do so in 2002.
Another top-secret program code-named Tempest, also operated by
satellite, is capable of reading computer monitors, cash
registers and automatic teller machines from as far away as a
half-mile and is being used to keep a close eye on an untold
number of American citizens, the sources said, pointing to a
little known declassified document that sheds light on the
program.
Echelon has been shrouded in secrecy for years. A special report
prepared by the European Parliament in the late 1990s disclosed
explosive details about the covert program when it alleged that
Echelon was being used to spy on two foreign defense contractors
- the European companies Airbus Industrie and Thomson-CSF - as
well as sifting through private emails, industrial files and
cell phones of foreigners.
The program is part of a multinational spy effort that includes
intelligence agencies in Canada, Britain, New Zealand and
Australia, also known as the Echelon Alliance, which is
responsible for monitoring different parts of the world.
The NSA has never publicly admitted that Echelon exists, but the
program has been identified in declassified government
documents. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have long
criticized the program and have, in the past, engaged in fierce
debate with the intelligence community over Echelon because of
the ease with which it can spy on Americans without any
oversight from the federal government.
Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the CSE, the
Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told the
news program 60 Minutes in February 2000 how Echelon routinely
eavesdrops on many average people at any given moment and how,
depending on what you say either in an email or over the
telephone, you could end up on an NSA watch list.
"While I was at CSE, a classic example: A lady had been to a
school play the night before, and her son was in the school play
and she thought he did a -- a lousy job. Next morning, she was
talking on the telephone to her friend, and she said to her
friend something like this, 'Oh, Danny really bombed last
night,' just like that," Frost said. "The computer spit that
conversation out. The analyst that was looking at it was not too
sure about what the conversation was referring to, so erring on
the side of caution, he listed that lady and her phone number in
the database as a possible terrorist."
Ironically, during the first Bush administration, a woman named
Margaret Newsham, who worked for Lockheed Martin and was
stationed at the NSA's Menwith Hill listening post in Yorkshire,
England, told Congressional investigators that she had firsthand
knowledge that the NSA was illegally spying on American
citizens.
While a Congressional committee did look into Newsham's
allegations, it never published a report. However, a British
investigative reporter named Duncan Campbell got hold of some
committee documents and discovered that Newsham was telling the
truth. One of the documents described a program called "Echelon"
that would monitor and analyze "civilian communications into the
21st century."
As of 2000, sources said, the NSA had Echelon listening posts
located in: Menwith Hill, Britain; Morwenstow, Britain; Bad
Aibling, Germany; Geraldton Station, Australia; Shoal Bay,
Australia; Waihopai, New Zealand; Leitrim, Canada; Misawa,
Japan; Yakima Firing Center, Seattle; Sugar Grove, Virginia.
A January 1, 2001, story in the magazine Popular Mechanics
disclosed details of how Echelon works.
"The electronic signals that Echelon satellites and listening
posts capture are separated into two streams, depending upon
whether the communications are sent with or without encryption,"
the magazine reported. "Scrambled signals are converted into
their original language, and then, along with selected "clear"
messages, are checked by a piece of software called Dictionary.
There are actually several localized "dictionaries." The UK
version, for example, is packed with names and slang used by the
Irish Republican Army. Messages with trigger words are
dispatched to their respective agencies."
Electronic signals are captured and analyzed through a series of
supercomputers known as dictionaries, which are programmed to
search through each communication for targeted addresses, words,
phrases, and sometimes individual voices. The communication is
then sent to the National Security Agency for review. Some of
the more common sample key words that the NSA flags are:
terrorism, plutonium, bomb, militia, gun, explosives, Iran,
Iraq, sources said.
Because Echelon can easily spy on Americans without any
oversight or detection, and because Echelon covers such a wide
spectrum of communication, many current and former NSA officials
said that it's likely the agency used its satellites to target
Americans, Mark Levin, a former chief of staff to Edwin Meese
during the Reagan administration, wrote last month in a blog
post on the National Review Online.
"Under the ECHELON program, the NSA and certain foreign
intelligence agencies throw an extremely wide net over virtually
all electronic communications world-wide. There are no warrants.
No probable cause requirements. No FISA court. And information
is intercepted that is communicated solely between US citizens
within the US, which may not be the purpose of the program but,
nonetheless, is a consequence of the program."
---
Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity
crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason
has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA
leak investigation, and is a regular contributer to truthout
