British Government Plans to Spy on All Internet, Text, Telephone Calls and e-mail Traffic

Looking at the Wiki entry, it seems that ECHELON isn't as capable as the UK would like...

"The committee [European Parliament] further concluded that "the technical capabilities of the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had assumed".

"The EP report concludes that it seems likely that ECHELON is a method of sorting captured signal traffic, rather than a comprehensive analysis tool".

reply to post by Merriman Weir

---

True, to an extent. I'm not banking on the Tories to scrap it, but big Government is something they do actively oppose, as displayed by Cameron's speech the other day.

And, granted, the Welfare state wasn't opposed by the Tories per se but that is because it received such overwhelming public support that to speak out against it would probably crush support for the Tories..

But they do advocate a major cutting back of "benefits" for free. People should earn benefits, not be "entitled" to them no matter what.

Labour on the other hand seems quite content to let whole generations of people become dependant and live their lives on benefits. It ensures they'll probably vote Labour next time, you see?

I'm not party affiliated myself, but I can see a dead horse when it's being flogged and that is the current Government.

As for the PFI question, I think we can all agree that Blarite "New" Labour was more centre Left, but there does appear to be a bit of a swing back to the old Labour values now Brown is in charge.

MSM plays it role to instill a sense of fear and dread into people; feral youths running wild, terrorists on the loose, perverts on the net.

It feeds people's fear's to such an extent that 'the people' then ask for, or allow, their rights to be freely taken away.

In the meantime we are drip fed a constant diet of inane X Factor, Big Brother and Jeremy Kyle in an attempt to dumb down and anaesethetize the whole country.

We are one step away from a cashless society where our every single purchase can be monitored.

The aim?
Can only be total control and compliancy.

Hi There,

What is the point of perceiving two party politics as being different from each other, surely they both seek the same continuance of the same status quo? Even having token 3rd or 4th parties does not make a concept of democracy, certainly not that which is held as the 'ideal' to accept.

Whatever happens in the US, will I believe be implemented here in the UK, afterall, the whole of Britain is about the size of one American state, compact and easier to monitor. I too should have thought that eavesdropping (no, spying) on internet traffic was already underway, but even so, it will not make me change my habits. I consider myself a free-thinker, and engage in political discussion only to present an alternative viewpoint. I am no terrorist, as I vehemently oppose violence as a bona-fide voice for change; principles and philosophy are the tools I use, because to make change a viable option one needs to rehabilitate mindsets out of the cultural shackles inculcated since birth. You can't 'force' the issue, but educate until it becomes a 'dawning' moment in the receiver...until it becomes a self-propagating idea of support for peaceful change. Totalitarian states always (without question) fail and fall, because they always provide evidence which brings about their downfall, no matter how big or powerful they may seem to be.

This so-called eavesdropping is not about safety and security for the people, but for that of the status quo of the power structure, of the elite's position. The people have always been fodder for their agendas, but the one auspicious failing of the people (in any country) is the refusal to co-operate with each other. Some call it apathy, others ignorance and indifference, but by whatever term one uses to describe it, it is that which provides the fertile breeding ground for totalitarianism to establish itself limpet-like upon the lives of the people. It has been establishing itself by varying degrees in western countries for many decades, and only now is it beginning to show a visage approaching that which aids recognition of it being totalitarian. Intrusion and interjection into people's private and personal lives is by all definitions...totalitarian, regardless of the reasons for them doing so.

reply to post by Insomniac

---

To be honest, although I'm not happy with this I'm also not surprised in the slightest. As people have said, I'm sure this is actually already going on and the government are already monitoring as many channels of communication they can.

Echelon is very real and the potential for it to be abused is enormous! Personal privacy is seemingly a thing of the past as we move further and further to a true 1984 Orwellian society.

If you ask me, by monitoring all forms of communication the government then have the ability to discover whats going on in their country and use this to their advantage i.e. to influence and control us

To be fair this is exactly what the commitee would "report", I highly doubt they would admit to the public the full extent of the Echelon's capabilities, on the other hand wouldn't it be more beneficial if they "dumbed down" the technological capabilities of the system?

So while they are not denying its existance, theyre making joe public think it isn't half as advanced as it actually is.

[edit on 5/10/08 by Death_Kron]

In the same way that telcos monitor it for billing purposes. 1800/sec is not a lot when you consider the hardware and AI behind the scenes for large scale data mining and analyzing.

To the poster who recommended TOR....be careful because the exit nodes are not encrypted. A very good product for pseudo-stealth is ultrareach/ultrasurf.

brill

reply to post by brill

---

Working for one, I can tell you that telco's don't "monitor" the texts. They just record the fact that your number sent a message and what date/time etc. It's all built in as part of the system anyway, the text couldn't be sent without registering on the network.

It's not the same thing as actively monitoring the content of the messages.

Perhaps but that doesn't negate the fact that content could still be parsed. I'm not saying its easy or cheap but it is doable.

brill

It sucks and makes me ashamed to live here sometimes.

So, just for the record, I am using a mobile broadband - so they might be monitoring this. Let's see what happens if I type.

bomb, london, muslim, terrorism, al quaeda, bin laden, suicide, backpack, tube, underground, subway, bus, nuclear, suitcase, dirty, fake id, passport.

I await the knock on my door.

Peace,

MGGG

lol, and you think the governments would let the EU tamper in what they have??? They've been monitoring us for decades I doubt any new media for telecommunications is allowed to be released before it can first be tapped. No EU investigation would come anywhere near the true heart of these projects, it's like saying and audit into the US projects would allow them access to the black projects.

The system listens, keywords are flagged and action is taken.

reply to post by machinegun_go_go

---

I'm sure they would use some advanced contextual search with cross referencing to other known sources on the topics and sites.

reply to post by stumason

---

It would be a low level tap, they can just intercept the signals and decrypt the information, also they could probably have taps within the infrastructure or the actual comm lines, I know for a fact that taps have been found on fiber optic lines, especially the under-sea lines, apparently the most covert way of doing it.

[edit]
Again I'd just like to point out that this has been going on for decades.

[edit on 5/10/2008 by spitefulgod]

Good post, however they've probably already have been engaged in the operations. Example when America found out, the government had been doing stuff like that years prior. Dating back to Clinton's stay at the white house.

reply to post by spitefulgod

---

I know - It was just a kinda get it outta my system rant.

You know how we all get sometimes.

Peace,

MGGG

reply to post by Thebudweiserstuntman

---

Yea it is in place. how many uk users of the net have had their user names changed recently in networks such as bebo, face book etc?...If you were called something like annon-guy, they changed them all to annon_guy a few weeks ago for security reasons. The word is the understroke is easier to track. It happened to me and the response from bebo admin was. It was for security reasons and for the same reason that is all we are prepared to tell you.

Everyone should take back as much of their anonimity now, before its too late. When buying anything from places like PCworld etc, dont give them your name, address when they ask.

reply to post by stumason

---

we have a secret totalitarian state which is the most effective method.if the people dont know there utterly powerless and oblivious.

instead of soldiers marching through the streets we have suvellience everywhere.in every bus,train and transport station there are listening devices(soon to be all cctv),on just about every street there are cctv,every traffic light a number plate recognition system.

instead of soldiers stomping on people publicly we have secret attacks on people,dr david kelly and princess diana for example.

instead of mr dictator telling everyone what to do now we have mass media propaganda campaigns to reshape the minds and beliefs of the people.whats more effective "dont rebel or wel kill you" or "vote for me and ile bring you change,a future we can all prosper in"

what we are seeing now is a totalitarian state disguised as a legitimate governmental system,a trojan horse so to speak.

its much more effective,only the smart,informed and observant or aware of its existence.

just look at the state of this country,1 in 3 children in born in poverty and deprivation,life expectancy is falling,crime is ever on the up despite what the cooked figures say(removing ALL internet fraud as a crime aswell as banker card fraud last year is one method they have used to cook the books)

unemployment?,apparently theres 5 million,well if you look into it theres double that on income support(an unemployment benifit that some how means your not unemployed!?!?) and about 15 million classified as "economicly inactive",which is apparently different to being unemployed,when in reality theres no difference.

its all about how they present and warp the statistics,spin and lies.

America already has a system that monitors "key words" .. Like when you say "Osama" it might be flagged and observed. Normal conversations are supposedly not listened to, but only if enough key words are used in the conversation to warrant observation.

Sounds very Orwellian to me.

There is nothing particularly hi-tec about how most benefit cheats are caught, believe me - most of them drop themselves in it by not being very bright. The folks processing their claims notice discrepancies in their statements etc and some bloke gets to sit in a car outside their house at five in the morning waiting for them to get up and go off to their cash-in-hand job. Yup, that's how it's done. A lot of people who get caught are known cos they've been caught before and either they just didn't learn or figured it was worth the risk.

Oh yes! Roll on that day!

It is true though, I think the biggest thing we have to worry about here is how much of our hard earned money they're gonna waste, because man they are way too incompetent to make this thing work..