Bush's fault!
And let's also not forget the satellite used to monitor events at Elohim City prior to the OKC bombing and COINTELPRO.
Truth is...the Government has been spying on citizens for decades. Only when it involves Bush are they outraged.
(Watch Pallywood for an example of their jounalistic integrity.)
ML/NJ
ECHELON is about 80 miles from me in Washington State (Yakima). I did a lot of reading on this several years ago..While it is illegal for US installations to evesdrop on citizens, it is NOT illegal for Australia to intercept every email/telephone call from it's sister installation....so the way this works from the info I read is that the US installation can follow everything happening in Europe/Australia and the Australian setup can listen in on everything happening in America - then they just trade data...avoids having to get warrants, etc. to eavesdrop since it is being done in both cases by a foreign entity...
These are the two words I've been mentioning in response whenever any idiot lefty brings up this FAKE news story designed to blow the Iraqi election success out of the headlines. "Carnivore...Echelon..." and I tell them to go look it up.
Strange thing though, not one mention of Clinton in the whole article. </sarcasm>
Seems it was all the NSA's fault back then.
There's a huge difference between the technical ability to collect data and the functional ability to search through it and utilize it.
I think they give the gvt too much credit.
This is unmitigated garbage.
Speaking as a former member of the intelligence community, I can debunk at least some of this:
1. Eavesdropping on citizens is regulated by Intelligence Oversight and the Patriot Act. The circumstances under which a citizen can be surveilled are extremely limited, and even then tightly controlled.
Think for a moment - The folks at the NSA and FBI are people just like you and me. They're patriots for the most part, and while many people would do this sort of thing under the caveat "I was just following orders," a lot simply would not stand for it, and would break this wide open even under threat of arrest - and become the celebrated child of the mainstream media, complete with candlelight vigils outside Fort Leavenworth.
Massive spying on the U.S. public is *not* happening.
2. The U.S. has always been pretty tight-lipped with its allies, trusting them only as much as it has to. In countries like Canada or the U.K. where if this sort of surveillance became public knowledge the backlash would bring the government down, the U.S. just wouldn't risk it.
Members of Parliament (and Congress) are notoriously leaky with information like this.
Bottom line - It's not happening, there is no Big Brother, and this person is living in an alternate universe populated by aliens, conspiracy theories, and ghosts.
Common sense says the capability to do this surveillance is there, but says even more loudly that we aren't sharing that capability with ANY allies, and that it's use is governed in the strictest manner.
On April 16, 1993, the White House announced the Clipper Chip. ...
The Clipper Chip is a cryptographic device purportedly intended to protect private communications while at the same time permitting government agents to obtain the "keys" upon presentation of what has been vaguely characterized as "legal authorization." The "keys" are held by two government "escrow agents" and would enable the government to access the encrypted private communication. While Clipper would be used to encrypt voice transmissions, a similar chip known as Capstone would be used to encrypt data.
The underlying cryptographic algorithm, known as Skipjack, was developed by the National Security Agency (NSA), a super-secret military intelligence agency responsible for intercepting foreign government communications and breaking the codes that protect such transmissions. In 1987, Congress passed the Computer Security Act, a law intended to limit NSA's role in developing standards for the civilian communications system. In spite of that legislation, the agency has played a leading role in the Clipper initiative and other civilian security proposals, such as the Digital Signature Standard. NSA has classified the Skipjack algorithm on national security grounds, thus precluding independent evaluation of the system's strength.
Echelon (a partly hysterical review/analysis)
Strong encryption of information may offer resistance to Echelon. Encryption alters the information so that only persons with the decryption code can actually understand the information. Even if Echelon can intercept the message, the contents of the message would not be understood. In 1993, concern over this prompted the US Government to introduce the clipper chip which would provide strong communications encryption for law abiding citizens while preserving "the ability of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to intercept lawfully the phone conversations of criminals"(16). The clipper chip didn't get off the ground - but there are regular attempts by the US to resist the development and exportation of strong encryption. One of the latest is the Federal Intrusion Detection Network which allows the FBI to "constantly track computer activities looking for indications of computer network intrusions and other illegal acts"(17). The use of strong encryption could be considered by law enforcement agencies as an indication of illegal acts.
Anyone besides me remember the whole PGP flap?