Echelon etc

Politics International Politics
1

Bollocks. The CIA couldn’t organise a doughnut and coffee outing, let alone hook up a computer to the internet.

I would be more worried about “Echelon,” an evesdropping system operated jointly between the United States and Great Britain.
This system routinely scans millions of domestic and international phone calls daily and uses voice/word recognition technology to identify suspect words and phrases in many different languages, including Scottish.

The internet is continuously monitored for key words, also in different languages, and if suspect words are found, the system automatically alerts an operator to the website or e-mail in question. Yep, that’s right folks. E-mail.

Here is a list of popular words the system will look out for:

Terror
bomb
nulear
nu’clr
Bush
Blair
Blast
Murder
Threat
G8
Device
Hostage
Missile
Al Queda
Security

and many more.

So guys, now I’ve got your attention, hows work today - like my list? Looked at many e-mails? Want my IP address?
Come on, I’m just playing with you. I know you’ve got important things to get on with like snooping at other peoples e-mail and listening to telephone conversations in Arabic down there in your little bunker. And how’s Menwith Hill looking these days? I know where you are, I know where you are he he he …

More on the subject:

[i][b]Computer users across Europe should encrypt all their e-mails, to avoid being spied on by a UK-US eavesdropping network, say Euro-MPs.

The Euro-MPs have been studying Echelon for almost a year, after allegations that it has been used by the US to commit industrial espionage against European firms.

They conclude that Echelon - whose existence is not officially acknowledged - is reading millions of e-mails and faxes sent every day by ordinary people.[/b][/i]

The Echelon operation is based at Fort Meade in Maryland, America, and at the UK’s spy centre, GCHQ in Cheltenham.

-BBC

2

I keep trying to dig this chip out of my brain, but it just keeps going further and further in.

3

[quote=“Toe Tag”]The PRC has the great firewall. I heard a rumor the ROC has one too.[/quote]Haven’t come across it yet if the ROC does have one - I haven’t had a single website die on me that wasn’t legitimately dead. And even those are incredibly few and far between. However I have been told that the GIO does block access to .cn sites in the premises of anything they operate. And in my experience that seems accurate.

4

[quote]Here is a list of popular words the system will look out for:

Terror
bomb
nulear
nu’clr
Bush
Blair
Blast
Murder
Threat
G8
Device
Hostage
Missile
Al Queda
Security
[/quote]

Well … I had a blast from the past when I went for a stroll in the bush, of course I was carrying Agath Christy novel “Murder on the Orient …”, saudennly a big bear sprung from the scrubs and I dropped my new Ipod device, jeez the animal came as a rocket toward me, it was a threat for my life … to bad I didn’t obey the security rules and now I’m the hostage of my own fear. The beast is terror for all hikers on the G8 hiking trail but what’s that, trash on the trail … oh no just a news paper, probably lost by other hikers … lets’ see what the front page brings … uhm Bush and Blair having a meeting to talk about the misslie threat … Al Qaeda … and they are going to trey to curb the nuclear threat of Iran and North Korea … that’s a bomb story … isn’t it :laughing:

5

Darn spell checkers … they are never around when you need them … :smiley:

6

I don’t know how many emails are posted on a daily basis globally, however monitoring all of them?

Sure, a filter looking for specific words is possible, but at one stage you need humans reading the emails - or the 10.000.000 of them which had the word “Al Queda” in them yesterday. One person can maybe scan 500-800 emails per day… Quite manpower heavy operation, actually.

One isue with Echelon is that it simply catches too much information.

According to what I have read, information gathered thru Echelon actually started to warn that a terrorist attack was imminent. Nice for the US to know, I would say, however it was impossible for the human operators to pinpoint time or location…

In other words, a system like Echelon is only good, when you know where to look - the human operators are unlikely to be interested in AC_Dropout’s rantings here.

I would say that the biggest posed by echelon is the fact that the US uses it for industrial espionage - especially directed toward European companies. Pretty depressing that the former paragon of free trade - United States - has to resort to crap like that in order to avoid their companies losing even more competitiveness.

7

You should see the mountimg evidence that Boeing used industrial sabbotage against Airbus - quite frightening the stories floating around in various corners of the globe - including sabotage against the Concord crash at Paris.
The Concord crash has a large conspiracy theory attached to it involving the doings of Boeing and NASA and the evidence backing up this theory is huge.

8

DM,

I am interested in the Boeing-Airbus case and the Concorde one.

Any recommended links either here or by PM? Cheers.

9

You should see the mountimg evidence that Boeing used industrial sabbotage against Airbus - quite frightening the stories floating around in various corners of the globe - including sabotage against the Concord crash at Paris.
The Concord crash has a large conspiracy theory attached to it involving the doings of Boeing and NASA and the evidence backing up this theory is huge.[/quote]
Yes, and the French also claim that the U.S. blew up the WTC and Pentagon with missiles to provoke the war against the Taliban and Iraq. :loco:

10

[quote=“Dangermouse”]
This system routinely scans millions of domestic and international phone calls daily and uses voice/word recognition technology to identify suspect words and phrases in many different languages, including Scottish.[/quote]

Haha. :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:

11

It wasn’t the French who accused Boeing. It was partly internal US government sources and independant international regulating bodies… :raspberry:

Truant, I’m doing a search right now but the information I have is from a hard copy of Flight International and another aviation magazine of which I can’t find at the moment. I’ll keep you posted.

12

Since Airbus started an aggressive stance in the Aerospace market, Boeing have been pretty worried and since 1999 it had attained nearly 50% of the commercial aviation market.

"[i][b]Apart from its new aggressive sales stance, Europe had another weapon in its arsenal that could not be matched by America under any circumstances, in the shape of the supersonic Concorde. If the Airbus sales team wished to close an important sale, they had this infuriating habit of turning up in one of these sleek and truly awesome aircraft, described countless times as

13

[quote=“MaPoSquid”]
Yes, and the French also claim that the U.S. blew up the WTC and Pentagon with missiles to provoke the war against the Taliban and Iraq. :loco:[/quote]

I think the WTC video footage proves that wrong. But there are documents out there that prove that a missle was used on the pentagon and on that plane that went down in Penn. I wouldn’t put it past the US governement to do something dirty for it’s own agenda…

14

Thanks DM.

Joesax, Oh moderator of temp things. Can you please split off the last few post back into one of the legit forums? We are waaaaay OT but it would be good to continue this discussion.

Nama,

The WTC footage proves planes hit the WTC, not who was behind it. It pains me to quote him, but Michael Moore made an excellent point in his 911 movie when he highlighted that the first flights out of the US were a bunch of people with family links to terror organizations.

15

[quote=“MaPoSquid”]
Yes, and the French also claim that the U.S. blew up the WTC and Pentagon with missiles to provoke the war against the Taliban and Iraq. :loco:[/quote]

French gov does a lot of stupid. BUT this trash could only be heard from some conspiracy nerds on the net, no?
So who is “the French”? One nerdy Frenchman?

BobDefendsFranceAgain-HeNeverLearns

16

Meanwhile in Europe…just something else to think about when flying Airbus.

[quote]
A Skeptic Under Pressure

A U.S. engineer faces bankruptcy and arrest in Austria as he questions the safety of a component in the huge Airbus A380 jetliner.

VIENNA

17

Terror, bomb, nulear, nu’clr, Bush, Blair, Blast, Murder, Threat, G8, Device, Hostage, Missile, Al Queda, Security[/quote]

Haha I bet they’re also monitoring Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters, those bastards.

Since the governments are monitoring very generic words that show up millions of times on blogs and news sites (instead of classified keywords and sensitive non-public information), why not expand and cover words like, “He, She, It, I, You, Them, We” and don’t forget all vowels, “A, E, I, O, U.”?

18

I think it’s ludicrous that folks in the spy vs spy industry underestimate the intelligence of today’s terrorist organizations. Only a group of rampant amateurs would speak about their operations out of code. And their codes do not even have to be complex, given the supreme dearth of Arabic-(or other non-cold war language) speaking operatives in the US intelligence services.

Programs like this are all a make-work project for the intelligence agencies, a way to rack up more fundraising (which they surely need) by convincing a host of vacuous politicians and greedy media that they are actually performing some visible, useful task. When in fact most useful intelligence is brought about by means we in the public will never hear about.

19

Ahem…

MD80/DC9…Total in service = 2065. Total lost =68. Total % lost = 3.29

Boeing 727…Total in service = 2515. Total lost = 62. Total % lost = 3.39

Boeing 747…Total in service = 998. Total lost = 22, Total % lost = 2.23

DC10. …Total in service = 446. Total lost = 21. Total % lost = 4.71

A300/310 …Total in service = 636. Total lost = 7. Total % lost 1.10

A320 …Total in service = 411. Total lost = 4. Total % lost = 0.97

:whistle:

(However, to be fair to Boeing the table does not take into account bombings, for example Lockerbie).

And how about all the teething problems Boeing has with its new jets upon release, including the instructions to all airlines operating the 747 to re structure the fuel wiring system becase it EXPLODES; this is what probably caused the Peng Hu crash, albeit China Airways were informed by Boeing and China Airlines were therefore negligent.

However, one should not be discussing the virtues of Boeing or Airbus.
Instead, you should never fly on an MD aircraft and you should always run for cover when when one flys overhead.

Bag of nails if ever there was one.

Absolutely. It’s all a PR thing and it provides something for Hollywood to get its teeth into.

20

I believe that there is an Echelon monitoring station in New Zealand.

jya.com/echelon.htm