Echelon in the News

We've been deluged with Echelon stories today, although as far as I can tell, there was no real news about it whatsoever. The committee examining Echelon met today, and that was apparently enough of an excuse for news agencies to report stories based on the draft report that was leaked last week. (The final report isn't due to be presented until September - it doesn't appear that today's committee meeting actually released anything.) News stories from here and there: CNN, BBC, Computerworld... well, I'll skip the non-English ones. And if you're wondering what this "Echelon" thing is, there's a handy guide.

Comments

Non english articles: A French one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an article about that in French, from the AFP(Agence France Pess), available at yahoo.fr

I encourage others to post translated articles or non english articles about the same storie here...

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, large organizations (nation states, corporations, religions, professional lobbies, Star Trek fandom, etc.) act to promote their own interests.

Echelon is in effect because the U.S., the U. K. and their partners (Canada, ANZAC, etc) benefit from the intelligence gathering and use it not only for national security purposes (which is reasonable, necessary and defensive in a world of suitcase nukes and bottled anthrax), but also for commercial and industrial espionage (like Echelon target nation France's use of their intelligence agencies to assist French corporations in getting foreign contracts to benefit France).

What we forget at our peril is that countries such as France who deride and rail against Echelon-like tactics gleefully use the same tactics themselves when they've been able to get away with them.

I much prefer a world where most of the signal traffic is monitored under a Pax Americana/Brittania, under the Special Relationship (disclosure: I'm Canadian and I know damned well we help spy domestically and internationally), and where the bad guys get caught before they can build an illegal missle defense system... no, wait, I mean before they can take power using undemocratic Supreme Court decisions to overrule the popular vote...Well, I'd still like a world where there's at least the possibility of avoiding a sneak attack. Remember that Eisenhower tried to justify the U2 overflights by saying "No more Pearl Harbours" (and, after seeing the movie's inept love triangle, I certainly agree).

Echelon, like any powerful tool, can be dangerously misused. Guns are deadly, but I want my local police to be well armed.

My main concern is the U.S. government and how big money determines who even gets nominated.

But I'll take even a George W. Bush (a man who makes Reagan look well informed) to a Robert Mugabe or to a Li Peng any day of the week.

Echelon can and has saved a lot of lives. Let's just make sure it's not more expensive to our liberties than we are prepared to pay.

Link Love, Baby!

[webword]

Echelon Watch

Society > Issues > Human Rights and Liberties > Privacy

Definition of the word echelon

Security?

[Moonshadow]

The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as absolute security/privacy on the internet. If an entity is determined enough, they can, and will, gain access to information X. It's only a matter of time. Information cannot be exchanged without the possibility of it being intercepted or accessed by someone other than the intended recipient. The RIAA and MPAA are certainly examples of that: despite their best efforts, if one is determined to illegally obtain a copy of media product Y, they will, and there's very little they can do to prevent it. If information can be legally viewed/accessed, it can be illegally, as well.

That said, does that make it right for the government to monitor our communications? Sure, they do it in the name of national security, but honestly, how often do you think they're going to use it to prevent a terrorist attack, as opposed to, say, browsing through your email? Echelon is an invasion of privacy, clear and simple. It's just one the general public doesn't know about, and the government can pretty much get away with - for now. It's kinda the equivalent of the postal office opening all your mail, reading it, then repackaging it and sending it to you.

[sarcasm] Never mind that there was sensitive or personal information in that letter - by God, it's their right to know! And besides they're doing it for our own good! I mean, where would we be if we didn't have the government to protect us from ourselves?[/sarcasm]

The real terrorists on Vodafone.......

[reality-bytes]

While the more or less innocent computer users of the world (who can honestly say that they dont do little illegal things online? - your MP3s etc) get persecuted on a regular basis - probably with information gathered by Echelon, the real terrorists continue unscathed.

Because, you see, real terrorists tend to have brains - rather than use the internet where any transmission could be intercepted and traced, why not use your handy pay-as-you-go mobile phone? - Although it can still be intercepted, you can remain completely anonymous - just remember not to say your name over the air :)

Interesting thought - I wonder how many 'people's revolutions' have been thwarted by someone forgetting to buy a top-up voucher? :P

Your home is private. Internet boradcasts are not.

[SlushDot]

Echelon isn't like that. There are no warrants, we have no idea who approves an Echelon search, and there is no accountability to the people, because the people don't know which elected officials, if any, have oversight. If a governor appoints a judge who makes boneheaded decisions about warrants, the public can refuse to re-elect the governor. How does the public know who to NOT vote for if a mistake is made with Echelon? How does the public even know if a mistake has been made?

When you're in your home, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Your home is your your owned personal space. Your to control and keep others out of. If law enforcements wants to tap in and watch/listen, then yes, they need a warrant from a judge.

The internet is a distributed cooperative network. You do not own it. No one person owns the net. And on the net, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Hence no warrant is needed to look at email or sniff your packets as they pass by 3rd party sites. It's no different than a cop patrolling streets looking for crime. He's in a public area looking for trouble. The internet is the same.

Neither is e-mail private. People see the substring "mail" and instantly want to assign it all the rights and priveleges afforded to real mail. e-mail is not a gov't protected nor a paid private carrier protected point to point service. E-mail is the equivalent of writing a note on a postcard for a friend across the classroom and handing to the person in front of you saying "psssst. pass it on to "Joe@FrontOfCLass". It moves through many hands on its way any of which can read it as it goes by. Including that FBI agent seated 3 rows in front of you.

Now if you encrypt that message, you are making an effort to keep it private. You now do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. And IMO, echelon should not be allowed to try to crack encrypted net traffic. But plaintext data? I see nothing wrong there.

Damn Brits ...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

... "Based at Fort Meade in Maryland, and at Government Communications HQ (GCHQ) at Cheltenham in Britain, the network was set up in 1948 by the U.S., Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia." ...

Them Brits should never have been allowed to become a US state ...

If you don't like Echelon, use encryption

[cabalamat2]

Don't like Echelon/Carnivore/whatever? Then you should routinely encrypt your emails with GPG (or equivalent).

However, I don't like Echelon, and I don't do this. Why not? Because it's too much hassle, both for the sender and the receiver of the email.

To fix this problem, I'm designing a system called Herbivore which is intended to make the encryption transparent to the user; it does this by adding some extra fields to the email header, which broadcast a user's public key.

So if I'm using a Herbivore-compliant email client, and the person I send email to is too, then all messages (except the first one sent between us) will be automatically encoded and decoded using GPG.

(Before you rush out to download Herbivore -- it isn't implemented yet. I'm currently writing a very simple command-line email client that implements Herbivore; then I will add the functionality to one of the common open source email clients (probably kmail as that is what I use)).

I basically agree with what you're saying

[Sycraft-fu]

In that I don't believe that people should have expectations of privacy in public places, including the internet. However, I do agree with the orignal post that we need accountability. That is probably one of the most important things in our government. We can hold our officials accountable for what they do and replace them if they don't do as they are told. Things get dangerous when you start to allow the government to do too much they aren't help accountable for, espically when there is monitoring like this. While people shouldn't complain about the government monitoring internet traffic, they should have a right to know what they are looking for. Same kind of thing like with cameras in cities. We have cameras in Tucson for monitoring traffic conditions (and for controling some stoplights that don't have magnetic/pressure sensors). However the government is held accountable for what these cameras watch, and the public can check up to make sure they really are watching traffic like they are supposed to.

So long as there is a provision made to check up on a system like Eschlon, I would have any problems with it provided, as you said, a warrant was needed to break encryption.

Where is accountability to the public?

[ColGraff]

What disturbs me most about Echelon is that there is no public accountability whatsoever, or even an admission to the public that Echelon exists.

Consider: In the United States, a warrant is needed for a phone wiretap, video surveillance, seaches, etc. These warrants have to be approved by a judge - that's public accountability. The judge is a public official appointed by elected officials - wiretaps and searches are authorized by a person only one step away from elected officials who are directly responsible to the people.

Echelon isn't like that. There are no warrants, we have no idea who approves an Echelon search, and there is no accountability to the people, because the people don't know which elected officials, if any, have oversight. If a governor appoints a judge who makes boneheaded decisions about warrants, the public can refuse to re-elect the governor. How does the public know who to NOT vote for if a mistake is made with Echelon? How does the public even know if a mistake has been made?

The worst part of all is that the US government refuses to even admit the dang thing exists, and without such an admission, there's nothing even the ACLU can do. How do you force the government to disclose something that "doesn't exist"?