[bert]

I’m drawing a blank too. The closest I can come is Enslaw or maybe Onslaw, but that is not the correct term. The government had tha capability to listen in on phone conversations of national security risks.

That capability was used to monitor the calls of Newt and others but was blamed on a Florida couple using equipment ginned up from stuff bought at Raadio Shack.

[UCANSEE2]

I’m drawing a blank too. The closest I can come is Enslaw or maybe Onslaw, but that is not the correct term. The government had tha capability to listen in on phone conversations of national security risks.

ECHELON

[TStro]

My brother was an electronics engineer. He said they were vacuuming up all electronic communications going back to the late 70’s - early 80’s. He told me then that he couldn’t tell what he worked on (government contracts). He told me years later when it became evident the gubmint had that capability. Now they’ve built a gigantic facility to hold everything.

[zeugma]

In addition to Echelon, mentioned above, you might also be thinking about Inslaw. I hadn't thought about that one in years. Reading through the above link brought back some old memories of some of the stuff I was looking into way back when when BBSes were king and the internet was far, far off into the future for most of us.

I'd be interested if anyone here recalls a BBS board called "AEN_News". Linda Thompson and her husband, who's name I forget (Al?), ran that forum. She had a crapload of info about Inslaw, among other things. One of the really interesting things to me is the number of things that I used to think were just far out "conspiracy theories" that have been proven to be absolutely true, at the core.