Big US Brother

[Tabby]

Can the US Government really automatically monitor the content of all telephone calls made in the USA or is this just hipe?

[goldenboy]

isnt it some thing to do with the echelon system? try googling it, i'm not sure if thats the phone tap thing.

[woofgang]

wow they must trawl through loads of really boring stuff!!

[metagirl]

Yes, they do.

[woofgang]

metagirl, a better answer would have been "yes we do"  ;-)

[Tabby]

+WOW+

This thing is bigger than I thought. It's world wide!

Try http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html for more info (found fromgoldenboy's suggestion)

So there are 'listening' stations in the UK.

Thanks Guys

Tabby.

[Peter Pedant]

Golden boy has given a golden answer in my opinion. yes i think it is part of the echelong system - the big ear in the sky.

But of course if you are going to hear a million voices simulatneously then you need some pretty advanced software to get to the interesting stuff.

bin laden's traffic was identified but then they couldnt follow through with the air strike.

Oh and if you think your emails are private, Bill Gates agreed with the CIA that all the emails passing through his portals would be made available. Thnak God most of my emails are Cr+p like this

[goldenboy]

tabby, try googling HARRP if you want more amazing stuff the govt of the US may be up to.

[spithray]

I've heard a bit about these systems and have therefore taken to dropping phrases like 'weapons grade plutonium' into ordinary phone conversations just for the crack.

[goldenboy]

spithray, if special branch come a visiting me at 3 am, then i'm taking you down with me ;-P

[Insurgent]

I remember there being an attempt to few years back to crash the Echelon system by overloading, how? by simple adding flagged words like bomb to your emails. There was a list of words going around too, not sure if it worked, but the men in black are not likely to tell us that