Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.
The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding.
Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition.
That was written in 1999….and its still true now….what’s new?
The NSA has been hoovering up all your data….and it’s just one big surprise…who knew? Obama has things under control though….
Mark Mardell’s love-in with the Pres. continues….
As ever, insiders say the president has mastered all the complex technical details in play and thought long and hard about which way to go.
As so often, his liberal instincts may be at war with his perceived duty as commander in chief – and he may be doomed to disappoint many on both sides of the debate.
Isn’t the Pres. just great? So intelligent, so Liberal…and forced against his better nature to keep Guantanamo open, to increase drone attacks…and to spy relentlessly on his political opponents in the election.
Ironically perhaps this is from the Guardian:
Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying
Those sneaky, dirty Liberals eh?
Oh hang on Mark…… here is another example of Obama’s Liberal ethics:
Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me
Well….just for the election run up anyway…..
The ACLU released a report this week that shows that under Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American’s electronic communications is “sharply on the rise.”
Obama Warrantless Wiretapping….Obama Signs Extension Of Controversial Bush-Era Program
The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger said on the Today programme:
This is a remarkable day. The president of the United States responding to information that’s been put into the public domain by newspaper, not by the oversight committees that are supposed to look after these things.
Well…..hardly ‘Breaking News’ is it….14 years out of date in fact….not so ‘remarkable’.
Asked about MI6 chief Sir John Sawers’s claim that terrorists were “rubbing their hands with glee” at the revelations, he said:
That was a very theatrical moment, but there was no evidence attached. The NSA is collecting 200m records a day on people who are not suspected of anything. This is warrant-less, suspicion-less collection of data on all of us, and that’s why it has become such a huge issue amongst people who think this is a bit disturbing.
I mean don’t listen to me, listen to Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the internet [in fact the world wide web]; he was horrified to learn about the weaknesses that had been put into the web, and how this is going to harm the web itself.
Listen to the tech companies – the American … tech companies see a revulsion from the end of the world at their businesses, and this is going to have severe financial implications.
Just a shame that every time you log onto his paper’s website you are being tracked often by those very tech companies…….and such tracking can be blocked by the paper…the BBC usually has no tracking for instance…..
Does the Guardian get paid to allow tracking of its customers?
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Pretty clear….your every move on the net is being analysed by commercial companies….and clear that a company must actively want to have ‘Google Analytics’ on its site to help it track its customers.
You can of course try to block the trackers….but most sites require you to allow their cookies which also track you whilst ‘helping you get a better service’.
Why no concern about these Trackers…or about the phone companies that have your every movement on their data bases, or the network of numberplate recognition cameras that track you around the country, or Tescos logging your every purchase, or smart meters logging everything you do at home…etc….
And is all this such a surprise? The BBC consistently fails to mention the exact same revelations from 1999.….the exact same complaints….and it was Republican congressman who began the ball rolling to investigate all that.
Not sure why the BBC lets the Guardian get away with this….Humphrys didn’t push Rusbridger very hard at all this morning…as said this is nothing new….massive trawls of data by the intelligence agencies, collection of intelligence on friendly countries and commercial interests, cries of outrage and appeals for investigations…..what’s new?
A couple of the BBC’s reports from 1999…..
Echelon: Big brother without a cause?
Critics accuse the United States’ intelligence community and its English-speaking partners of waging what is in effect a new Cold War.
At stake are international contracts worth billions of dollars, and at the disposal of the spymasters is an intelligence gathering system of immense power.
The Echelon spy system, whose existence has only recently been acknowledged by US officials, is capable of hoovering up millions of phone calls, faxes and emails a minute.
A report published by the European Parliament in February alleges that Echelon twice helped US companies gain a commercial advantage over European firms.
“There’s no safeguards, no remedies…….There’s nowhere you can go to say that they’ve been snooping on your international communications. It is a totally lawless world.”
The European Parliament has voted to form a committee to investigate allegation that the US spy network, Echelon, is being used as a tool for industrial espionage.
So shouldn’t the BBC be asking what happened to all that ‘investigation’ in 1999?
Rusbridger’s ‘theatrical’ claims are just that…nothing new…and according to the intelligence agencies putting lives at risk as Rusbridger and Co aid the terrorists.
As the Guardian’s revelations are not new their publication of the material is clearly unnecessary…and therefore unnecessary risks are being taken regardless of the dangers associated with publishing….all so that Rusbridger can pose as the saviour of a Liberal world….
Is that not what the BBC should concentrate on with this story…whether the Guardian is unnecessarily putting lives at risk for commercial gain?
I was listening to the above mentioned interview of Rushbridger by the Incredible Humph on R4 this morning.
I was waiting for them to ask Rushbridger why he thinks he hasn’t been arrested for sending the names of everyone in GCHQ, the entire staff directory, to the New York Times. Resulting in GCHQ not being able to deploy them covertly. Something he admitted to doing quite openly in front of a House of Commons committee. A criminal offence which carries a sentence of 10 years in prison, by the way.
Maybe the Beeb doesn’t think that sort of thing is important.
Wow that’s such a long piece that I doubt many will take the time to read it all!
Echelon does have a sinister side however, and true to form give the public sector powers and they will misuse them.
So it’s proved with Echelon which the US government has used to intercept commercially sensitive data from foreign companies and passed it to US companies to obtain competitive advantage. Although given all the recent furore it’s proving impossible to find the actual reports.
Of course this is not a new issue, it’s only that the Snowdon spying has brought it to attention.
Here’s a BBC article about it from 2001 13 years ago now, so it’s not as if people can say they weren’t aware and it’s come as surprise! There was an MEP warning about it way back then.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1357264.stm