WHY NOBODY CARES ABOUT ACHELON????? does anybody know it?

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ACHELON IS THE BIGGEST CONTROL OF THE eletronic and human WORLD EVER REALIZED BETWEEN UK/USA/AUSTRALIA/CANADA BIG BROTHER IS HERE!!!!!!!!

SEE THIS posting:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002RQ6

-- (ec.nowhere but no achelon @i am here not.net), January 29, 2000

Answers

LOL, scaredy-cat!

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.

You wanna see something REALLY scarey?

Go here:

http://www.biometrics.org/

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.


sample of the snowflake that landed on the tip of what will be an iceberg:

ABSTRACT

This talk is an update on the Biometric Consortium's activities since the previous CardTech/SecurTech conference. The Biometric Consortium held its first meeting in October 1992 under the chairmanship of Dr. Benincasa. Since then, the Consortium has been meeting one to two times per year to provide a forum for information exchange on biometric-based personal identification/authentication technology among the Government, industry, and academia. In 1994, Dr. Campbell and Ms. Alyea took over as chair and vice chair, respectively. In the past year, Dr. Campbell and Ms. Alyea have obtained formal approval of the Biometric Consortium's charter. The establishment of a national biometric test and evaluation laboratory is imminent.

....blah blah blah....want some chips with that dip?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.


Now that explains the reason for the Pentium III shortage!

-- solarhermit (solarhermit@hotmail.com), January 29, 2000.

Look here for scans of the official Air Intellegence Agency TOP SECRET.



-- hzlz (mph@netbox.org), January 29, 2000.



Uh, every page is stamped "UNCLASSIFIED".

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), January 29, 2000.

Look, I don't know who you are or what your intentions are.

Lets look at this situation. For decades, intelligence agencies world wide have been using lists of key words to find "interesting" telgrams, cables, etc.

Recent technology has turned this harvesting technique to faxes, phone calls, e-mails, web-sites, etc. etc.

We are supposed to be very alarmed that if you have a phone call in which you say "I want to buy $230,000 worth of heroin" or "I know who will assassinate the big boss next week" it will trigger some sort of alert.

This leads to a big investigation.

I will tell you a bigger "secret". Supposedly, the CIA only spys on people overseas. Well, the British spy agency MI6 has the same deal. So, the CIA keeps a group of MI6 officials in the US, and MI6 has a group of CIA in Britain. When the CIA wants to spy on some Americans, they give a list to their captive MI6 staff, who in turn give the list to some other CIA officials. Now the CIA can claim the request for spying came from the Brits. It is now a foreign operation. The charmer is that there is a US squad in England to pull the same scam mirror image.

Remember this whenever anyone tells you the CIA only is involved in foreign operations.

So .. what do we do with this? We can make it socially unacceptable go to work for CIA/NSA/.mil etc. You can try a frontal assault on the system.

I think the best plan is to be very aware of what is happening. Educate others about how our system really works. Do not mince any words.

Now, to the punch line. The usual advice to mess up "project echelon" is to include 50 keywords with every e-mail. I think that just alerts the .mil/.gov/.spy that the sender is very dangerous. It does not stop anything. It will be very hard to be elected president of your PTA if they find the 500 e-mails about assassination, oil plots, heroin deals, etc. etc. As a matter of fact, this e-mail may get me in trouble. Rats.

Don't get paranoid. The one thing the system counts on is that no one reads. Read books. Read web sites. Learn the history of the NSA/CIA. Learn what the .mil/.gov/.spy is up to.

Have some fun. Get a life.

-- Bart Simpson (bart@foxsundaynight.com), January 29, 2000.


I frequently discuss Bills Of Material on the phone, shortened to BOM, pronounced 'bomb'. I guess my name comes up a lot at HQ.

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 29, 2000.


Perhaps you should refer to your bills of materials as Neccessary Unobtained Kit Entities, then you could refer to them as NUKE's...you might get a more thorough scrutiny then.

-- Jay Urban (Jayho99@aol.com), January 29, 2000.

Suspect all here will fall through any ACHELON type sift. Still, the concept bothers. Guess it's the price I pay meet and engage so many new friends here and elsewhere. Oh well, when they bust through the door they'll find a fat old bald guy with a can of Coors.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), January 29, 2000.


"Gattica" + "The Matrix (i.e. misinformation)" = Reality.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), January 29, 2000.

Bart,

Try to ignor Sluggo (I will "post" on his activities on TB2000 shortly) he is a disruptor; he spontaneosly attacks ANYONE who is intelligent or cares about anything. He read an article on a computer program which was written to do just that: randomly disrupt. He thought the article was "cute" and he is now 'mimiking it' what the article is about. Here it is, this is where he got his "ideas" from, and here is what he is doing on TB2000. I cannot believe the SySop has not blocked his ISP yet. We are going to request this be done very soon; as soon as we compile his "Trail of Turds". He is here to "yank your chain" and for NO other reason than to disrupt.

Here is the article on: its a quick read

http://www.jaedworks.com/shoebox/zumabot.html

" The Zumabot's Tale

Oh lordie, what's zumabot? This is what eventually came out.

Three years ago, Usenet's culture and history discussions suffered under a flood of huge waves of repetitive propaganda concerning the supposed Armenian murders of Turks in 1918 coming from a poster named "Serdar Argic".

Serdar responded to, seemingly, every and any Usenet post he could find that mentioned Turkey or Armenia, even in newsgroups that had nothing to do with either country.

(Indivduals carrying on a discussion on bulletin boards) were generally harangued with such phrases as "your criminal Armenian grandparents" and with off-topic replies such as "The Self-Admitted Crook and Liar", "The Criminal Fandparents of The Gum Brain", or "A mouthpiece for the fascist x-Soviet Armenian Government". This was usually followed by a lengthy essay concerning the alleged Armenian mass murders. (note: Sluggo's replies lack any such "lengthy essay". He just emulates the first part: mindless replies meant to disrupt.)

Some participants tried to argue with Argic, but that only made matters worse as he replied to each post with more harangues, along with successively more hysterical accusations concerning secret Armenian conspiracies.

Some watched in amusement, but the amusement quickly turned to annoyance when it became apparent that the sheer volume of Serdar Argic posts was overwhelming the discussions on the hardest-hit newsgroups.

It quickly became apparent, however, that his responses didn't have much intelligence behind them. (did you get that Sluggo?)

For one thing, they followed a distinct repeating pattern. For another, Argic did not appear to distinguish between the nation and the bird: posts containing references to Thanksgiving turkey were as likely to become targets as posts discussing Turkey's foreign policy.

Over time, a consensus built: Serdar Argic was not a person, but a computer program which scanned the news articles and responded to any article that contained certain words, plugging in the name of the article's writer ("John Sugaharo's criminal Armenian grandparents") and other random phrases. Because of the robotic nature of the responses, this program was promptly dubbed "the zumabot".

One of the net's traditional methods of dealing with problem users is to ask their system administrators for help.

Meanwhile, participants in various newsgroups attempted to take defensive action.

So participants formed a new newsgroup which was set up so that each post had to be approved by a moderator who could filter out the zumabot and the futile responses to it.

Usenet as a whole learned about a new method of destroying conversations; the use of this tactic to disrupt newsgroups continues to this day, with attempts by parties unknown (but widely thought to be affiliated with the Church of Scientology) to drown out criticism by posting reams of repetitive drek to the newsgroup.

Newsgroups acted to make themselves less vulnerable to the zumabot and to other floods of off-topic messages; some of those actions also served to blunt the worst of the commercial spamming that was to begin in later years.

In the spring of 1994, the zuma site went off the air and was never heard from again. Rumors abounded - but the exact fate of the zumabot remains a mystery.

Sluggo read the above, and thought it would be "cute" to re-vive the practice. See what empty computer geeks that have no life, no girl friend, no nothing are left with? The hide behind a computer screen, like some deviant peeping tom under the football stadium bleachers...peeking up women's dresses and tipping over people's drinks with a stick..

They have nothing better to do. Try to ignore Sluggo...he is trying to find himself.

Don't waste your energy; however...never fail to tell Sluggo exactly what you think and feel about what he is doing...maybe someday, hopefully,...it will sink in.

=============================================================

If you would like to see what Sluggo has done most recently on Frank's and my thread, see:

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002PYl

This way you will not let him drain you of your energy. He is hopeless...believe me.

===============================================================

Now, what I started to post concerning the issue at hand:

Echelon Revealed

Those Australians just can't keep a secret-- they've spilled the beans on a global electronic surveillance system. By Kevin Poulsen June 9, 1999 Is the National Security Agency intercepting three billion electronic communications every day? You better believe it.

Last month, the Australia became the first country to publicly admit its participation in the global electronic surveillance network known as Echelon.

Martin Brady, director of the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra, confessed in a letter to an Australian television network that was made public May 23. In his letter, Brady acknowledged that the country "does cooperate with counterpart signals intelligence organisations overseas under the UKUSA relationship."

The dysfunctional UKUSA "relationship" is dominated by the US National Security Agency, which uses the 50-year-old intelligence pact to erect massive eavesdropping stations within member nations New Zealand, Canada, Britain, and Australia.

Meanwhile, on May 13, United States Representative Bob Barr (R-GA) succeeded in attaching a requirement to the Intelligence Authorization Act that would force the NSA, CIA, and Justice Department to prepare a report on Echelon. Congress is concerned that the constitutional privacy rights of citizens are being violated by the surveillance network.

Ironically, Congress's last efforts to pry open the doors of Echelon were thwarted by the NSA's general counsel, who took refuge in silence, citing attorney-client privilege. Can a fifth amendment claim be far behind?

The following originally appeared July 16, 1998. -KP

Echelon's mission is global political and economic espionage. Let me mention Amnesty International and Greenpeace, before moving on to the totally unrelated topic of global electronic surveillance.

The code name is Echelon, and it's America's greatest technological achievement. Until recently, it was its most secret one. Echelon has it all: electronic listening posts in four countries, spy satellites in geosynchronous orbit, and supercomputers capable of analyzing massive amounts of Internet traffic and voice phone calls.

The system reportedly vacuums electronic data from satellite communications and cellular telephones all over the world, then sifts through it looking for certain keywords.

It's all the work of the usual suspect in such dealings-- the US National Security Agency.

Continued...

The NSA's Big Ear Makes Small Waves Last year Echelon was exposed in an article by researcher Nicky Hager in the specialty mag Covert Action Quarterly. Since then, it has received precious little coverage in the states. The NSA's big ear made Project Censored's top 10 list of underreported stories for 1997.

The surveillance net was built on an alliance among five Cold War allies: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain.

England maintains a listening post that monitors the rest of Europe. It then pipes the intercepted communications back to the NSA. It's a strangely duplicitous role for a stalwart member of the European Union, which may explain why the European Parliament decided to investigate.

It issued the results early this year: "The Echelon system is directed primarily against civilian objectives, governments, organizations, and companies from practically every country in the world." The system reportedly intercepts three billion communications every day.

Echelon's mission is global political and economic espionage.

This explains a lot. Why did US spooks fail to predict India's nuclear tests? They were too busy helping American industry compete with France. Why is the government so preoccupied with the notion that foreign hackers might steal US trade secrets over the Internet? Obviously it's guilty paranoia: a thief's certain knowledge that he'll be victimized by another thief.

The European Parliament's report also leaked some of the keywords that Echelon is programmed to sniff out. Words like-- I kid you not-- "Greenpeace" and "Amnesty International." Yes, while you're reading this column, the NSA may be reading you.

With all this surveillance going on, I feel a bit left out. I find myself withering under the government's disinterest. You can help. Send your cards and letters to:

Project Echelon c/o National Security Agency Fort Meade, Maryland

Demand that "CHAOS Theory" be added to the watchlist.

Um, just kidding. Please don't do that. Thank you."

=============================================================== WATCHOUT for Sluggo...he is draining you energy, and like a vampire, lives off other people's energy & work. He is nothing more than a "Distruptor".

===========================================================

For anyone interested reader on this subject of survelliance, read:

"The Puzzel Palace" search Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.co

-- steve (WhoCares@nywayRight?.com), January 29, 2000.


Gee, I guess this means if I get in a phone conversation with my sister telling her I nuked my dinner in the microwave, the movie I saw at the theatre this weekend was a "bomb," someone we know got off heroin, and put in a few other key words in the conversation, somebody, somewhere is listening to that? I hope they get what they deserve: boredom! Burning my dinner, going to a movie and gossiping about someone in rehab makes me so very, very dangerous...

-- Marie W. (pray4peace@compuserve.com), January 29, 2000.

Yes Marie, true.

But understanding something here about all this.

1) Yes, the system is in place as described. The reason it was put in place, and "had" to be done (get ready for the laughs folks) is because of the ET situation. The ramifications of something on the order of another "Roswell" happening elsewhere...and that not being immediately contained, would be catastrophic. That situation DEMANDED that 100% world-wide "assessment" and "intercept" be funded and implemented. If you think this is a 'crazy' explaination, then do a little reading first, before you knee-jerk react to this perspective.

http://www.bashar.com/GSP (Click on "ET Situation"

2) While voice recognition technology is used to recognize key words, or sets of words, and trigger the "recorders"...the reality of this massive "vacuuming of information and sorting" effort nets tons of "noise - garbage". In very short order, it can be determined that 98% of it is "trash" and is quickly dumped. Higher "hit rate" conversations are then forwarded for closer analysis. The idea being, the overwhelming amount of what is intercepted and recorded is NOT determined to be a threat. That is their business; they know this.

3) Another factor to keep in mind is that if you do not have a hidden agenda, if you do not have "ill intention"...there is very little to worry about, i.e. "You are not the kind of person they are worried about." Their hands are just full or very real threats, people who DO have ill intention, plans 'to do bad things', etc. They are worried about immediate, real and substantial threats...not the ravings of a lunatic on philosophical matters (little if any threat). So, other than the violation of people's privacy issue; you have little to worry about if you do not have evil plans.

4) Realize also what happens psychologically to the people who actually synthsize this information...to see and know what people do, and what is going on in the world has a tremendous psychological impact on them as a human being...it can destroy them, or send them to their psychiatrist, or family breakup, or alienation from friends and "just being normal". It is not a happy job at all, and in the long run, I believe these people are at much higher risk of committing suicide. Just remember that too about all this.

5) I am not justifying what they are doing; I feel very strongly about privacy issues (4th Amendment Right to Privacy) and respecting people's individual lives. People are a very crazy kind of chimpanzee; they deserve their privacy to express their individuality without going postal. I am only saying that the above are factors which are involved in all this.

6) Yes, there is room for tremendous abuse, drifting into a police state, abuse of information gathered for other purposes...yes, this is a very complex matter with far reaching implications for our basic freedoms.

7) Right or wrong, or naieve...I do believe that *some* of these people have families, that *some* of them have much perspective and they may be aware of things which we may never know. I have to believe that not all of them are stupid and that they genuinely are attempting to deal with matters in a balanced way...almost an oxymoron to say that, but...still *some* of the higher ups understand 'the human condition' to some degree, and they do have 'priorities' to attend to: real problems, real threats.

So I believe that if you are truly a "good person", that you intention is to bring balance rather than overtly disrupt, polarize or destabilize 'the situation'...you have little to worry about as far as "someone" thinking "you are the Enemy"

8) Yes, the idea is quite scary and it should be. For most of my life I was "afraid" of the government. As I got older, I realized that not all, maybe too many, but not all them were "evil"(?) and that there were some fairly balanced individuals there too.

Bottom line? If you do not have an agenda to hurt or harm, even if you were being "surveyed"...it would not take too long to see that you really were not a "problem that needed following up on in a personal way" (scary...huh?)

No hidden agenda or true evil intent...you are VERY low on the "priority list" (smile...don't feel too bad that you/me/we are not on the 'significant' list.

And no, no geek should have their nose up your Life or abuse you privacy. They are faced with a very tough, almost paradoxical situation to have a need for information on one level, and the need to respect Privacy on the other; it's a paradox without an easy answer.

Personally, in some ways, I feel sorry for those who are facing and having to deal with those issues...for it must take a tremendous personal psychological toll on those that "see". It is not a pretty thing to understand, "there ARE lions, and tigers and bears in the woods".

There are not answers, condoning anything, or even justifying what they are doing. It is just a few 'perspectives' (not the only for sure) to understand about some of the factors that are involved.

To read more on the "vacuuming, sweeping & analyzing" raw information (SIGNET/INTERCEPT see the book "The Puzzle Palace"...and it explains very well the operation of "Global Information Vacuuming", which is what Eschelon is about.

Hope all this helps some to relieve "some" of the fear.

Best,

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore.Right?.com), January 30, 2000.


Opps...i meant "true" about the first part of your statement; NOT "true" it makes you dangerous. I guess that's a clue for me to get some sleep; up very late here.

best wishes,

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore?Right?.con), January 30, 2000.



Folks...folks...folks!

Get a life! Our phone calls are alledged to be sampled, as well.

So what?

If you truly have something to hide, don't talk about it using an electronic medium and be careful of the environment in which you discuss it, as well as with whom.

I think it was Clare Wolfe who said this (a paraphrase): "It's easy to find a needle in a haystack -- use a gavatrometer. You want to be just another piece of hay."

So, quit worrying and just get on with your lives. The *real* spies have better things to do than monitor most of you.

-- (stillasleep@myhouse.com), January 30, 2000.


From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

For a completely different point of view about Echelon please visit My Privacy Page. Specifically, it contains this advice:

Only when encrypting becomes an expected procedure will those who choose to use it be able to do so without it appearing they have "something to hide." PGP must become a widespread standard to avert another Administration push for something like the ominous Skip Jack (formerly known as Clipper Chip), or worse. Download a copy of PGP now, before the political winds shift and privacy again becomes unavailable to the American public.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 30, 2000.


Dancr, good home page and your point is well-supported, but here's how I see it: until nearly everyone is using PGP, encripted messages stick out like a teenager at an AARP Convention. Why call attention to myself? Where I work, traffic is sampled, has been sampled, and will always be sampled, no matter what laws are passed. In a case like that, I can either refrain from sending questionable messages from the company account or devise a "plain language" code. Since I am a professional (99.5% of the time), I don't play those games, but I know people who do.

-- (nowawake@myhouse.com), January 30, 2000.

FYI Here is a press release by Bob Barr (9 November 99). This is posted on his home page.

I am posting this since it is relevant to the topic. I DO NOT endorse any opinion about this topic, but obviously...some folks do.

[Fair Use: For Education and Research Pupose only] source: http://www.house.gov/barr/p_110999.html

November 9, 1999 BARR MOVES TO EXPOSE "PROJECT ECHELON" HOUSE ACTS TO REQUIRE SURVEILLANCE REPORT WASHINGTON, DC -- According to reports to the European Parliament and others, a multi-national system known as Project Echelon intercepts phone calls, faxes, e-mails, and radio transmissions from around the world. Some two million such communications per hour are reportedly intercepted. This information is then reportedly routed to intelligence agencies, which search it for particular information of interest.

Under language Barr added to the Foreign Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2000, adopted today by the full House, the National Security Agency (NSA) which manages Project Echelon, the CIA and the Department of Justice, will have 60 days to report to Congress on the legal standards they use on communications intercepts involving American citizens.

"If American intelligence agencies are intercepting, receiving or distributing communications involving our citizens without court orders, or legal authority, they are doing so outside the bounds of the Constitution. If Project Echelon exists as reported, all Americans who care about the integrity of our Constitution should be concerned," declared Barr.

"Everyone who places a high value on our right to privacy should be encouraged the House of Representatives has today taken the first step toward requiring the Intelligence Community to prove adequate procedures are in place to protect that right," said Barr.

"I strongly encourage the Intelligence Community to prepare this report using unclassified material whenever possible. As more and more Americans become concerned about threats to their privacy, the reassurances only a public report can provide are essential. Our intelligence agencies need public support to do their jobs effectively, and this amendment provides an important opportunity for them to boost that support by answering our questions honestly," Barr concluded.

Barr, a former CIA official and United States Attorney, serves on the House Judiciary and Government Reform Committees. Government Reform Chairman Dan Burton has also committed to hold hearings on this matter. **********************************************************************

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), January 30, 2000.


OK Guys,

Dumb and Stupid question time!

Since when does anyone have the right to intercept/bug/follow me, ect.....if I am a law abidding citizen? I thought we were free to do as we please without the government playing big brother? I'm confused. When did I sign away my right to privacy so the goverment could catch crooks?

Do I have something backwards? Do they now consider us all crooks or what?

me

-- me (me@me.com), January 30, 2000.


As I mentioned above, an *incredible opportunity* for abuse of power, industrial espionage, or "how to" destroy any person or company deemed "enemy of the State".

That side of all of this...spooky huh? Remember George Orwell's "Thought Police"

(or waz zat Frank Zappa? - "The Brain Police" / We're only in it for the Money album.

steve

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore.Right?.com), January 30, 2000.


From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Steve said: As I mentioned above, an *incredible opportunity* for abuse of power, industrial espionage, or "how to" destroy any person or company deemed "enemy of the State".

Uh, no... actually... what you said above was that it was nothing for us to worry about if we weren't doing anything wrong.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 30, 2000.


Oh, yes... and pitying the poor people who had to listen to us.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 30, 2000.

BOTH understandings fillin in "The Whole Picture".

It is not a matter of "either/or"....it is a matter of:

"Both/And"

That should solve it. Any more insights on the subject itself?

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore.Right?com), February 02, 2000.


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