Machine

I believe that the U.S. owns a machine. That listens to everyones phone converstations, and e-mails (and other stuff on the internet such as forums). When certian words come up, about stuff they don't want average people to find out about, they 'tag' that person.

Danica

Well yes I think they call it echelon, but I would go one better then that I would say they have a machine that can read your mind.


Sorry, im sure echelon fits your description or maybe u mean something else?

[edit on 22-12-2006 by kode]

Yes, that is what I mean. I do believe they also have a brain reading machine, though I would you have to be hooked up to a machine for it to work. I could see them building something that could read your brain through your cell phone or something.

Danica

Yup, it is believed the ECHELON system can record and analyse radio and sat coms, distance telephone calls, emails, and a fair amount of other types of data, although it's capabilities are played down a lot, of course.

Apparently, the system started a few decades ago to watch the Soviet Unions' in-house and local communication, but today it surely looks for all sorts of things, such as criminal plots and the like, which probably means that a lot of general traffic is intercepted as well. But in all honestly, I don't really think the government is spying on us. Most likely they just delete all irrelevant data after a certain amount of time, because there is just so much of it. For example, if you took all the instant messaging services like MSN and AOL and added the traffic up, it is estimated that more than 750 GB of text is sent daily. And that's just one communication medium. Audio files take up a lot more space than text, as do pictures, ie faxes.

I think a lot of the time the Echelon system is believed to be some sort of omnipresent monitoring system, which it probably is not.

A funny site, though, is the Echelon's Trigger Words Generator. Compose fake emails to set off the system!

btw, if you ever want to work with the Echelon system, go for a job with the monitoring station in New Zealand. They've got a pool; check it out on GE