CIA funds chatroom surveillance

c|Net / ZDnet ^ | 11/25/2004 | Declan McCullough

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Archival Echelon-related FR threads:

A really oldie, but goody:
ECHELON: the Global Surveillance System

ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network
CIA Patching ECHELON Shortcomings
Worldwide spying network is revealed - (Should we be complaining about Echelon?)
'ECHELON' WAS MY BABY
(NSA Echelon-Big Brother-All-Seeing Eye Is Watching) (Unprecedented) Privacy Warning Across Europe
What are those words that trigger Echelon?
EU Echelon Committee Calls for Increased Use of Encryption
U.S. to Close Eavesdropping Post [ECHELON]
Echelon Panel Calls It a Day
Japanese Newspaper Reports American Echelon Spy Activity
Echelon - Japanese diplomatic dispatches infiltrated by English-speaking spies
Bush facing EU condemnation over spy network (Echelon)
Echelon - When spies fall out
What is ECHELON?
How does ECHELON work?
Skeptics question scope of NSA’s information gathering with Echelon
Newspaper: Echelon Gave Authorities Warning Of Attacks
Did Echelon Overlook Terrorist Threat?
Echelon Gave Authorities Warning Of Attacks
Hunting Terrorists And Leaks(Echelon recorded terrorists -Nobody listened)

[tortoise]

Echelon dealt exclusively with semantic forests which rendered those messages irrelevant.

Precisely. Which is why those idiotic email "echelon spamming" things are so stupid. This is not some wanker-esque keyword matching scheme but sophisticated mathematics.

Incidentally, far slicker technology than semantic forests is under development in the US private sector. There have been some very interesting theoretical developments in the computational side of algorithmic information theory, which is the grand-daddy of all this stuff. People have no idea what kind of wicked ingenuity comes out of the US.

[Squealer]

Touché!

If I were a terrorist I'd feel confident knowing two things:

1. Electronic communications are being monitored.
2. Borders are wide open.

[injin]

#newsgarden

[tortoise]

Someone (Bamford?) said that NSA measures their computing power not in number of workstations, but in acres.

Fast supercomputing systems are small. Memory latency matters A LOT for supercomputing codes of these types, and you can't get good latency at the clock speeds of today when your system is scattered hither and yon. Speed of light and all that.

They may have acres of systems, but they'll probably be racks of conventional systems for the most part, just like any other big data center. For better or worse, consumer grade crap is pretty close to the cutting edge of performance for this type of thing. The AMD64 systems being a glorious example of this.

[moonpie57]

I've learned lots about Islam on Paltalk also. I just wish I could understand what is being said in some of those Arabic speaking rooms. I'm sure they are monitoring those, and they should from what I've heard.

[Squantos]

Whitfield Diffie is yer friend !

[Askel5]

bmp.

I think you're flacking for him, and it's not the first time it's crossed my mind.

49 Posted on 02/29/2000 04:24:08 PST by metalbird1

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Grampa Dave]

Bingo:

"NSA and CIA are indeed so prohibited. However, there is no prohibition at law against NSA/CIA/USwhomever listening in/monitoring citizens of the UK ... and similarly there is no prohibition at law against MI6 listening in/monitoring citizens of the US."

"This curious little legal quirk has matured over the years into Echelon and related systems."

Then, throw the Mossad and KGB into this mix, and the Islamofascist trolls who use the internet as a communication or PR tool, could be in for a knock, knock game.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

:-)

[HiTech RedNeck]

Perhaps NSA could design a 100% foolproof spam filter. Now that would be cool.

[Grampa Dave]

"Just as the robust law enforcement presence on the net caught Scott Ritter making a date with two minor girls, so it can intercept and prevent darker deeds.

"As long as they aren't after misspellers, FR has nothing to fear."

However, the Islamofascist Trolls who have used FR for communication, disinformation and PR tools, could have a whole lot to fear.

[devolve]

This is a no-issue.

Same critics with no logical solutions that will ever be implemented.

I suggest all the critics pursue a government career and keep us all posted on their incredible innovations without any surveillance that might possibly offend the tender sensibilities of the ACLU,LBs/libs, OBL.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Interesting Diffie-related article here:

Crypto-Politics: Decoding the New Encryption Standard

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Diffie/Landau book:

Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

I'm with ya 100% on that one!

[Squantos]

I figured you'd enjoy his work.........Stay safe !

[HiTech RedNeck]

I have yet to fail to identify a spam just by looking at its purported sender, the subject line, and the list of attachments if any. They are always clearly whimsical and/or come-onish. My ISP does a 99.8% good job of shutting this junk out, but it has also trashed some legitimate business email with people I have been corresponding with.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Maybe the reason the gummint backed off is that they invented a pretty good, dedicated purpose PGP cracking machine. The thorniest encryption can't prevent the correspondents themselves from getting sniffed out.