Yes I can see the top brass taking the recordings of those fetish phone conversations
home to work on them..... in secret you understand... security of the nation and all that...

Denny ever considered a career in journalism.

Great little piece with no research designed to give people a knee jerk reaction against something they dont know about. If you are interested enough go research it. If you arent worried enough to do something about it, then dont try to scare everyone with something you know nothing about

Prolific posting is one thing quality researched and informed articles are another. next time why dont you post a fetish pic of a semi naked girl alongside I know it works in similar schools of journalism.

I've never considered being a journalist seriously, as they have to do far too much work

For your information, I work in the computer industry, and I do voluntary work as a political campaigner for a special-interest group, so I have a fair amount of knowledge about the workings of the systems used to keep an eye on people who don't toe the line.

Mainly, I just thought it was funny that the word 'fetish' is listed along with all those other terms - I'm sure there's a good reason, but it amused me. However, the possibility of the system holding a copy of your call is quite real, I assure you - and I will be bearing that in mind when I'm on the phone in future... you can of course do as you please.

Regards,
Denny

`Stung into a rare burst of activity by the post above, I've hunted out some background reading about Echelon. The cynical among you will note the heavy use of qualifier words such as 'allegedly' and 'perhaps' and so on sprinkled throughout all these pages. You may therefore conclude it's all a bunch of shite. You are more than welcome to reach this conclusion.

Personally, I exercise my cynicism by believing that the UK government, unbound even by a constitution, will infringe upon the privacy of the UK public in any way that is technically feasible. Anyone working in the computer industry should be able to tell you that this system is feasible, given a government level budget to work with - particularly when you note that the system was originally designed and built by the American government before our government caught wind of it and thought "Ooh, that sounds useful".

Here are some URLs for you to read if you are interested in the Echelon system:

http://www.echelonwatch.org/
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
http://www.aclu.org/privacyrights/
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/echelon.htm

There are various articles linked from this ZDnet section about Echelon as well as related technologies:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/specials/1999/09/surveillance/

I particularly liked the one about the police wanting ISPs to store all emails for 5 years, just in case they might want them as evidence for something. Sleep well everyone...

Regards,
Denny

Glad that had a positive effect the links are interesting and your right Im not too sure it exists, although I am aware that it could do.

However I think it is more likely to be propaganda than it is to be real can you imagine the resources that would need to go into something like this? A governments job is to make sure that its society does as its told, you only pay attention if you have something to be afraid of. It used to be god now its computers.

hope the reference to carrots wasnt too obscure.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44721,00.html

---
Ilka Schroeder, a German Green Party member of the Echelon committee, says there can be no doubt about the overall value of the committee, which made headlines with testimony from a number of high-profile witnesses. She expects the committee's report -- which will be sent to the United States once it is finalized -- to be influential.

"I think it's very good that the report states clearly that Echelon exists, so the work we've done is not in vain," she said. "There were parts of the media that said this Echelon doesn't exist at all. So we are making a political point here.
---

Regards,
Denny

UKUSA was formed in '51 set up in order for UK and USA to share intelligence. they ended up later setting up the Echelon system, and have the cooperation of canada, new zealand and Australia. australia and new zealand have admitted to it recently. UK and USA still deny it, but they would. They're the ones with the highest investment.

Andrasazel

it doesn't record all fone calls necessarily. they focus on international calls, although some numbers will be observed more readily. either in the form of a "monologue" which basically just records tones emitted from the fone (more useful for detecting abuse of foreign fone lines than anything else) or a proper fone tap. proper fone taps require more effort as someone has to listen to hours of calls. echelon is also reported to check through e-mails in travel (this is easy enough if you put sniffers in strategic places, which they would have access to)

Andrasazel