Buzz 42

ECHELON - They read your email and you can proove it.

Posted by: buzz42 31/12.

Luke (website) submitted:

The USA's National Security Agency (NSA) has a global spy system, codename ECHELON. 

ECHELON captures and analyses 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." 
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html 

ECHELON uses

• Voice recognition
• Optical character recognition
• Text analysis

ECHELON is fairly simple:

"...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." 
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html 

If only this information was limited to this kind of use you would be OK but it is not. It is widely believed that the US and the UK use ECHELON to monitor all minority political groups, those profiled as likely to be a danger and a cross section of people (mostly within the US) that carry out actions that conform to patterns that are considered the soul domain of terrorists.

"An international surveillance network established by the National Security Agency and British intelligence services has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, as lawmakers in the United States question whether the network, known as Echelon, could be used to monitor American citizens. ...a former CIA analyst, is part of a growing contingent in the United States, Europe and Australia alarmed by the existence of Echelon, a computer system that monitors millions of e-mail, fax, telex and phone messages sent over satellite-based communications systems as well as terrestrial-based data communications. The system was established under what is known as the "UKUSA Agreement" after World War II and includes the security agencies of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand." 
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/cyber/articles/27network.html 

The regularity of such internal spying is roughly comparable to Google producing regular irrelevant results on every page. Is is rumoured that the recent US legal demands against the search giant may be to allow ECHELON more powerful analytics.

"...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." 
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html 

• Agios Nikolaos (Cyprus - UK) 
• Bremerhaven (Germany - UK) 
• RAF Chicksands (Bedfordshire, UK) 
• RAF Digby (Lincolnshire, UK) 
• Feltwell (Norfolk, UK) 
• Gibraltar (UK)
• Malta (Malta - UK)
• Masset (British Columbia, Canada)
• Mount Olympus, Troodos range, Cyprus (UK)
• Menwith Hill (Yorkshire, UK)
• Morwenstow (Cornwall, UK)

Please note many news sources for this story have "gone 404" from leading websites.

I can only surmise that posting this information will result in take down notices from the US. 

Please copy this post and put it on your blog.

Working Links:

• DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND RISK OF ABUSE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION
• The National Security Agency: The Secret Unveiled
• THE NSA'S GLOBAL SPYING NETWORK

Extra fields:Approx Word Count 500?

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