Posted on 08/03/2015 6:04:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I stepped from the warmth of our source's London flat. That February night in 1977, the air was damp and cool; the buzz of traffic muted in this leafy north London suburb, in the shadow of the iconic Alexandra Palace.
A fellow journalist and I had just spent three hours inside, drinking Chianti and talking about secret surveillance with our source, and now we stood on the doorstep discussing how to get back to the south coast town where I lived.
Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad was running, hard, toward the porch of the house we had left. Suited men surrounded us. A burly middle-aged cop held up his police ID. We had broken "Section 2" of Britain's secrecy law, he claimed.
These were Special Branch, the then-elite security division of the British police.
For a split second, I thought this was a hustle. I knew that a parliamentary commission had released a report five years earlier that concluded that the secrecy law, first enacted a century ago, should be changed. I pulled out my journalist identification card, ready to ask them to respect the press. But they already knew that my companion that evening, Time Out reporter Crispin Aubrey, and I were journalists. And they had been outside, watching our entire meeting with former British Army Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) operator John Berry, who at the time was a social worker....
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Yea us tinfoilers sure are wrong a lot...
Not.
This is news? Anyone who been paying attention has known this since Billy Jeff was getting BJs in the oval orafice.
I first learned about Echelon with I was in the Army Security Agency. The brains for this operation was then at Ft Huachuca, Az. I think that was very early 1978. The guys in the Ops platoons who worked with the Spooks knew all about it. Not much of a secret. Funny, though, I never talked about until now. I guess I can keep a secret. But its a’’ out of the bag now
Even when I was still in canadastan, a bud of mine at the RCMP told me about it, and this right after 9/11.
It has been another way to marginalize anyone complaining about domestic spying or any govt secrecy. Everyone knew about it but talking about it got the powers that be, media included, labeling you a fruitcake.
Just another form of social conditioning for that which was yet to come/now here.
But we’ve known about it since the Clinton Presidency.
USAICS August - October 1978.
I didn’t learn about it until the early or mid 1990s.
One world gov’t seems easy now.
It’s been around since the Truman presidency. You are late to the party.
Everyone just sort of got bored with it, after a while.
Bump for later.
Page 5 of your article shows the NSA illegally eavesdropping on Republican Senator Strom Thurmond’s private phone call made FROM INSIDE THE CAPITOL Building.
Illegal. Treasonous.
bttt
It’s not the first time I’ve gotten to the party late.
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