"Big Brother really is watching you"

Ed Stone

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Jun 7, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/7/99

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Excerpt:

"THE AGE, an Melbourne-based national newspaper in Australia, reports
that government officials there have officially acknowledged the
existence of an Orwellian global electronic spying system called Echelon.
Maintained jointly by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand, Echelon automatically monitors millions of private international
phone, fax, and email communications sent via satellite and transoceanic
cable.

Echelon is the latest incarnation of a secret spying alliance agreed to
by the five participating nations shortly after the end of WWII. A high-
tech, fully automated monitoring system, Echelon stations in Australia,
New Zealand, the U.S. and Britain intercept millions of satellite
messages per hour. The captured communiques are funnelled through a
computer called "the Dictionary." Those which contain content which meets
certain "collection criteria" are saved and filed in a massive database
maintained by national intelligence bureaus such as the CIA.

Up to now, the participating governments have denied the existence of
"signal intelligence" gathering and the multinational pact. According to
THE AGE, Australia decided to break the code of silence in order to
reassure its citizens that the intelligence gathering system is "strictly
limited and tightly supervised." "

see http://www.mojones.com/mustreads/053199.html#spies
--
--
-----------------------
Ed Stone
est...@synernet-robin.com
delete "-birdname" spam avoider
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Roger Schlafly

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Jun 7, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/7/99

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Efforts made to prevent privacy abuses against U.S. citizens

June 7, 1999
Web posted at: 11:53 a.m. EDT (1553 GMT)

(IDG) -- Congress has squared off with the National Security Agency over a
top-secret U.S. global electronic surveillance program, requesting top
intelligence officials to report on the legal standards used to prevent
privacy abuses against U.S. citizens.

According to an amendment to the fiscal 2000 Intelligence Authorization Act
proposed last month by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), the director of Central
Intelligence, the director of NSA and the attorney general must submit a
report within 60 days of the bill becoming law that outlines the legal
standards being employed to safeguard the privacy of American citizens
against Project Echelon.

(more)
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9906/07/privacy.idg/

Ky Luong

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Jun 8, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/8/99

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This is good stuff. CNN is reporting this. Make it more acceptable to the
public.
Good Job.

-Ky Luong
www.dqn.org
KeyID 0x4EDD34B7 DH/DSS
ma...@infi.net

Roger Schlafly wrote in message <7jibe2$c1p$1...@nntp6.atl.mindspring.net>...

John Savard

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Jun 10, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/10/99

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rhz...@mangobelly.org (Doug Winstaff) wrote, in part:

>I have heard we have a classification called NOFORN.

>Because NOFORN
>in reality means 'Don't Show This Info To Our Allies', because it may
>be put us at a commercial disadvantage , or it means we were actually
>spying on them.

Yes, there is a NOFORN classification. But there is plenty of secret
information that, for entirely legitimate reasons, should be kept even
from a country's closest allies. Current encryption keys, to take an
extreme example.

John Savard ( teneerf<- )
http://members.xoom.com/quadibloc/crypto.htm

David Sternlight

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Jun 12, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/12/99

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Ed Stone wrote:
>
> Excerpt:

>
> "Australia decided to break the code of silence in order to
> reassure its citizens that the intelligence gathering system is "strictly
> limited and tightly supervised."

As I was saying.

David