ECHELON The Real Threat To Our Privacy!

"The first evidence of the existence of Echelon came from a freelance journalist named Duncan Campbell in 1988 who wrote the article "Somebody's Listening" in the New Statesman. In this article he talks about something called "Project 415" in it he states that..."

This may have been the first time it was articulated in any press but I was tol about it in 1969 while in the Army. It may not have been COMMON knowledge but the knowledge was out there.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by ImagineAlldaPeople
You should be happy & grateful for Prism. If not for it's leak, "Your Bigger Point", Echelon, would not be able to get the Attention it probably Deserves like you say.

This is true because some of us here have been mentioning Echelon for months now with little to no response, but now people are actually more inclined to believe it sadly, now that the MSM is dishing on PRISM.

Has anyone asked if they WANT us to know about PRISM?

I mean, they seem to be doing their best to anger Americans...

Yes actually the OP and myself were making comments questioning WHY is this in the MSM right now earlier.

I honestly feel that these pertinent questions about what motivations the MSM may have for this, are a major catalyst in compelling the OP to post this very thread topic today in this manner.

I agree and find that people are too fickle, and have huge memory gaps (amnesia?) when it comes to current news.

reply to post by yourmaker


Here is my full post from another thread that relates to your questions of WHY:

"I think they are just fear mongering the folks who buy into the MSM news because there is no way to go through this amount of data by hand. And fear mongering and manipulating the body politic is their forte.

A computer will scan our telecoms and look for red flags, not just keywords but pictograph detection is even possible. You can take a photo of you holding a sign with handwriting on it, and it can detect what you wrote even though it's masked so cleverly from traditional computer scanning.

Human operators will then go over all the red flags closely to determine the false alarms (of which I presume over 90% of the cases are), and then pursue the more legitimate cases in detail.

This way we can have say: 15,000 employees handling the information of hundreds of millions of citizens efficiently and in a timely fashion while still intercepting anything they might consider of interest.

The reason this unnerves people because it causes them to feel they are being watched, which isn't even possible under 99.9% of circumstances. Only special targets are watched and even then it's occasionally, very rarely is it 100% full time surveillance and in that case it's on really high profile types. This is mostly common sense deduction I would say.

How long do they keep the data stored? Unknown.
Are they using people's cameras in their phones/pc's/etc without their knowing? Probably occasionally but they wouldn't waste time unless they had a reason whether real or imagined.

I want to bring up the possibility this news story about the NSA leak may be intentionally crafted by the psyops departments themselves in order to create some sort of reaction or belief in the common public's mind. The fact that this has been going on for decades (just not through PRISM which is supposedly more recent) is enough to cause me suspicion when people are only suddenly this week caring about it specifically. And this is all the result of the MSM creating stories on it to begin with after all.

I just cannot help but imagine the goal must be to compel the US citizens to lose faith in their government and demand some sort of UN intervention or something of similar nature. This is an ongoing thing, with all the constant barrage of "revelations of govt corruption", whereas much of it is petty. The issue causing me to be very suspicious of what smells very fishy to me, is that all of the actual heinous crimes are going unnoticed or downplayed as a result.

Drug trafficking, assassination, slavery rings, extortion rackets, etc. Where are the leaks?
Oh there are tons of leaks, but the MSM doesn't really get into all that. Wonder why this is allowed in the press and hyped up than?

I study the Art of War and military strategy, and if you want my honest assessment I am convinced this is a smoke screen tactic. It's designed to obscure our view and distract us temporarily. The use of decoys and sleight of hand is effective and the MSM has been shown in 20/20 hindsight to have been utilizing these concepts to our disadvantage.

Why are we being hit with this "flavor" of smoke screen right now though? That's quite a question and I can't quite put my finger on it. But they are up to something and are conducting maneuvers right now as we speak. What's the objective to this? I will think about it and if I come to any good ideas I'll share them if it ever happens."

When the US and UK governments voluntarily give up these eavesdropping programs in a single day then you know it is all over for all of us. This would mean that the manufacture of nanobots have been completed. These microscopic robots will be put in our food. Once digested they go straight to the brain where they transmit everything we see and hear to the intelligence agencies.

This is one of the type of threads that keeps me interested with ATS and keeps me returning to the site. Although It is all to often we see interesting topics worthy of consideration that lacks coherent presentation, you're approach in this thread is refreshing in that you tie correlating sources in a logical fashion that ultimately begs for interesting discourse from others.
To cut to the chase however, I, tend to see modern technology is being utilized by powerful forces to enslave mankind. These secret programs, In my opinion, are only recent examples of profound attempts to control the masses, and to do so with our consent. Govt. sources insist these programs are benign in nature to the average person and necessary to protect us from the universal bogey man. However, there is always evidence to suggest nefarious motives.
Although many may claim this view is indicative of a paranoid individual, and under certain circumstances I'd agree, however i believe it follows closely with the work of L.A. Marzulli and the "Watchers" research to explain much of what we see in the present. I'm aware it's a lot to throw into the topic, and it's one of many theories out there, but perhaps there is ample evidence to contemplate it's value. To those who may not be aware of Mr. Marzulli and his work, i apologize for this brief segue without supportive material for it's not my thread. To those who share the same interest, please toss your dog in the fight.

Originally posted by Aliensun

I'm going to assume that most of you have not heard of the earlier program, "carnivore?"

Carnivore was NOT earlier than Echelon. It wasn't much like Echelon. It was an FBI program for copying traffic at ISPs. If they wanted to see your emails, they carried a filter box to your ISP and snooped your packets directly. Pretty crude, really.

That's all by the wayside now, CALEA lets them do it without the pesky visit.

Originally posted by flexy123
Why should ECHELON, that decade old system, be the "real" threat to privacy?

Because it actually looks at the data instead of just the metadata...

Anyone knows that the NSA is monitoring international phone calls/data etc...and it's not only the US but likely most countries who "listen in" in foreign communication. This is old, old, old...

PRISM, as far as I understand it, is far, far more advanced, it's the logical successor and advanced version of ECHELON where monitoring and analysis now is going on with a focus on the internet, social networking..TODAY'S way of communicating and socializing.

It's a different attack. PRISM is looking at digital information, like emails. Echelon listens to your voice communications, primarily, although it also looks at faxes and a bunch of digital communication. If you use a cell phone, it's Echelon that'll be listening to what you say. Or a sat phone. Or a land line. If you send an email, it'll be PRISM.

I might add, they had a program that collected email contents before, it's just that it wasn't quite so wide ranging. I've been shown copies of emails I wrote back in the early '90s.

PRISM also collects metadata. That's real important, it's what they want from Verizon, and it's a lot of what they're gleaning from the online data they mine. They want to know WHO you know. And when you talk to them. You would not believe how much intel you can extract from that alone. DIA and SOCOM jointly have a number of installations that do that and nothing else.

If ECHELON would be so advanced in doing all those things they never would have established PRISM in the first place.

Echelon can listen to the phone call and about 95% of the time figure out who you are by your voice. It's a nice additional feature, as they then know you're on the phone at that end.

ECHELON in all likelihood will not be able to produce a "history" if it flags calls or emails...

One reason why they're building that big data center is to store intercepted voice data for months. The system knows who was on the calls the majority of the time. And they will be able to search it if you attract their attention. Echelon consumes the majority of DSP blades in the US. It's got a gargantuan processing power in aggregate. I don't think you understand how much bit bashing you have to do to do on the fly voice recognition and speech transcription with that sort of accuracy.

Originally posted by TheBlackHat
I only started using a cell phone 5 years ago and its a cheap pre paid one, which I haven't updated..I knew full well the so called "smart phones" were full of tracking devices...and I dint need one anyhow, all I use a phone for is to make phone calls...not look like a poser on Facebook or twitter.
But the bottom line is if I want to get out of this surveillance society, then the only real way to go is to go off grid and quit using electronic devices altogether..I have heard of some old guys who still live by candle light and coal fires..and water from the well..it might not be for everyone but I reckon it might well be for me.

edit on 11-6-2013 by TheBlackHat because: (no reason given)

I'm inclined to agree with the latter statement, but the ideal solution is a balance, and for people to exercise their power of choice. Where most people fall down is their ignorance - they want all the latest shiny crap without making the effort to learn even the basic principles of how it works. Internet users were generally more informed back in the 90s, especially in regards to things like ECHELON. They had to be, since mistakes could prove costly on a dial-up connection - anyone could dial in and back out of your network interface, and you could listen to every call being made on whatever line your modem was using. If you ever experienced that, it was bleeding obvious that intelligence agencies, sitting near the top of the telecomms network, could also hear everything.
The old-school hackers and the three/four-letter agencies have evolved with the technology, and we could argue the real difference now is they're now dealing with an uninformed/ignorant population. Get some creeps to build a few 'social networks', and you now have all the background info and the means to profile everyone.

These days? Google+ demands your real name and cellphone number: you could just say 'Screw you, mate.' and refuse. That's Google's loss.
You could walk into a phone store, make an informed decision on which smartphone to buy (anything that lets you remove the battery, install yur own software and doesn't force you to upload all your #), and give the checkout guy a false name and address. Again, it's Google's loss if people started making an active choice.
We could make the choice of returning to old-style forums like this, instead of resigning ourselves to being sold out by a handful of Silicon Valley creeps.

Technology can be used to our benefit.

One issue with these sophisticated sureveillance systems is that some "Terrorist" activities do get through and cause havoc in our streets, so it begs the question that some of them are let go even though there is enough information to quickly stamp it out, so that the threat is kept and so the funding and excuses to keep a sureveilance society is accepted by the general public.

Thats the scary bit

There are further implications I find even more disturbing in regards to the mainstream outing of pervasive monitoring of everyday communications (which most of us in the conspiracy crowd already suspected had been happening all along anyway whilst being labelled paranoid) is that it indicates these monitoring agencies have been aware of - before the fact - any and all plans to bomb, attack, disrupt or otherwise cause disturbances to any interests of the US.

Even if the initial or even main planning takes place in a cave somewhere free of cameras, satellites, etc, communication has to take place in the later stages of organizing and executing whatever the Event is. And only relying on trigger words is antiquated and primitive. If algorithms exist that can differentiate true languages from random word groupings all from unknown characters, identify how many individuals contributed to writings in unknown languages, etc - then you can be reasonably assured tech exists to detect talking in code.

The saying goes something like "military tech is 25 to 50 years ahead of what the general public is aware exists or even possible". The actual difference would vary depending on focus, budget, and breakthroughs in the specific areas - and something like surveillance and monitoring communications that has research dedicated to advancing it, not to mention all the public sector developers contributing their ideas and unique creative approaches - all this ensures the methodology and technology are going to be unbelievably advanced. And you want the public to think such tech is sci fi, so they are less likely to avoid using the methods of communication being monitored.

So my main concern and outrage about this monitoring is that the very real deaths of innocent people - whether the event was a false flag, intricate terrorist plot, or hastily planned rage against the overlords style mini attack - were known about in advance of being carried out and still happened with no advance warnings given. That - to me - is an even greater issue than the privacy and constitutional transgressions. It's bad enough to break the law and spy on the citizens supposedly for our safety to prevent terrorist attacks but when these attacks were allowed to be carried out without so much as a warning, then how can this possibly be justified??

Originally posted by multichild
One issue with these sophisticated sureveillance systems is that some "Terrorist" activities do get through and cause havoc in our streets, so it begs the question that some of them are let go even though there is enough information to quickly stamp it out, so that the threat is kept and so the funding and excuses to keep a sureveilance society is accepted by the general public.

Thats the scary bit

That is completely true but also for the reason that allowing some to go ahead will not compromise agents placed to deal with potentially more fatal attacks. This is something the British government used to allow in regards to the IRA also, so the historical precedent is already set, particularly baring in mind that the 2 countries share so much in the way of intelligence and methods.

on a strange but related incedent, have you ever seen the video of mark thomas (from the mark thomas comedy product) when he flew over menwith hill in a hot air balloon, there were no fly over restrictions but boy oh boy did the dod get pissed at him

I appreciate this thread and I agree it needs a lot more discussion, I'll definitely be coming back to this later

But, I also wanted to point out that the difference between Echelon and Prism is that there has been a leak of information about the latter to the press, and there has been no denials about its existence. The US Gov has basically admitted that this is all real, and those elected officials who have been demanding answers have been pretty shocked about what they never knew about.

That's the difference here. Prism has been proven, Echelon is still a theory. The press, and even the average person, can't really have a whole lot of conversation about a system that we cannot prove exists. Yes, it most likely does, and I think we'll possibly find out a lot more about this in coming leaks too, but it's different from Prism because Prism is now out there for all to see, no denying it.

I am patiently waiting to see what further stories the Guardian comes out with (as they have promised) with the information that Snowden gave them.

It would not surprise me to find out that there are a network of surveillance cameras in public that we were not previously aware of... and that the government is tied into the myriad of surveillance cameras that we are aware of, like security cameras in stores, television station's traffic cams and the like. Oh, and the cameras in your Xboxes, TV cable boxes and smart appliances!

They forced google, facebook, phone companies, etc to provide info.... Why not Walmart and Channel 6 Action News?

I do not know if this is linked or not..

..But are you familiar with the Finnish Sonera ECHELON -story? Well its not just a story.

in 2004, then government owned Sonera (nowadays Telia-Sonera) had one of their mailboxes quota full.

The mailbox was [email protected]. LOTS of mail, sent by random people, were returned to their mailbox because of that quota thing.

There are some information left in the web about this. Also i should note, there are lots of information missing about this. There was an invidual in Finland who made an request to police for opening an investigation but the investigation was never started. He made all his work about this sonera echelon -thing public, but the information is not available anymore i'm afraid. The page does not exist anymore.

Some of the data about this is still available in usenet / sfnet

EDIT:

Also i find it "funny" that the smart meter in my house is made by Echelon and the product is mesh of smart meters, sending data about my electricity to my energy provider and WHO ELSE. Me like it not.

I was promised that i will have a weblogin for watching the live data and reports from the meter but there is not such thing yet for consumers. Prior to installation, i rejected it and asked for more information about the device. They took my phone number but never i have not received any additional data about the smart meters.

The meter installations were forced upon clients.

on a sidenote, i think there is some room for thought about hacking the meter .)

Originally posted by NewtonDKC
There are further implications I find even more disturbing in regards to the mainstream outing of pervasive monitoring of everyday communications (which most of us in the conspiracy crowd already suspected had been happening all along anyway whilst being labelled paranoid) is that it indicates these monitoring agencies have been aware of - before the fact - any and all plans to bomb, attack, disrupt or otherwise cause disturbances to any interests of the US.

Even if the initial or even main planning takes place in a cave somewhere free of cameras, satellites, etc, communication has to take place in the later stages of organizing and executing whatever the Event is. And only relying on trigger words is antiquated and primitive. If algorithms exist that can differentiate true languages from random word groupings all from unknown characters, identify how many individuals contributed to writings in unknown languages, etc - then you can be reasonably assured tech exists to detect talking in code.

The saying goes something like "military tech is 25 to 50 years ahead of what the general public is aware exists or even possible". The actual difference would vary depending on focus, budget, and breakthroughs in the specific areas - and something like surveillance and monitoring communications that has research dedicated to advancing it, not to mention all the public sector developers contributing their ideas and unique creative approaches - all this ensures the methodology and technology are going to be unbelievably advanced. And you want the public to think such tech is sci fi, so they are less likely to avoid using the methods of communication being monitored.

So my main concern and outrage about this monitoring is that the very real deaths of innocent people - whether the event was a false flag, intricate terrorist plot, or hastily planned rage against the overlords style mini attack - were known about in advance of being carried out and still happened with no advance warnings given. That - to me - is an even greater issue than the privacy and constitutional transgressions. It's bad enough to break the law and spy on the citizens supposedly for our safety to prevent terrorist attacks but when these attacks were allowed to be carried out without so much as a warning, then how can this possibly be justified??

edit on 12-6-2013 by NewtonDKC because:

So you are saying they cannot be relied on to use the invasion of privacy for the stated purpose. I agree they cannot be relied to do anything but use it for more control. What is really really wrong here is the lack of regard for the next guy. I don't know if these intelligence guys are inately flawed or what, but the basic human is broken.

Dont forget the FBI's Carnivore program (implemented in 1997) which also took a "bite" (pun intended) out of our privacy rights.

Originally posted by menneni
I do not know if this is linked or not..

..But are you familiar with the Finnish Sonera ECHELON -story? Well its not just a story.

in 2004, then government owned Sonera (nowadays Telia-Sonera) had one of their mailboxes quota full.

The mailbox was [email protected]. LOTS of mail, sent by random people, were returned to their mailbox because of that quota thing.

There are some information left in the web about this. Also i should note, there are lots of information missing about this. There was an invidual in Finland who made an request to police for opening an investigation but the investigation was never started. He made all his work about this sonera echelon -thing public, but the information is not available anymore i'm afraid. The page does not exist anymore.

Some of the data about this is still available in usenet / sfnet

EDIT:

Also i find it "funny" that the smart meter in my house is made by Echelon and the product is mesh of smart meters, sending data about my electricity to my energy provider and WHO ELSE. Me like it not.

I was promised that i will have a weblogin for watching the live data and reports from the meter but there is not such thing yet for consumers. Prior to installation, i rejected it and asked for more information about the device. They took my phone number but never i have not received any additional data about the smart meters.

The meter installations were forced upon clients.

on a sidenote, i think there is some room for thought about hacking the meter .)

edit on 12-6-2013 by menneni because: 421EDITION

seems interesting guessing there is no link with more info on this story.

Never heard of this actually thanks for the information OP. Sometimes it is maddening with all of the ways our own government has the ability to spy on the very people that pays it's bill.

And to think we have people actually financially starving to death the USA.

reply to post by HerbalJunkie


well then i am glad to have enlightened you,

There is much more to ECHELON than i have outlined in my OP if you are interested there are loads of books on the subject that are quite informative.