Slashdot Mirror
The Hardware Behind Echelon Revealed
Whispering Bob writes "Techworld has got an interesting article on the technology behind the Echelon spying networks run by the US, UK, Cananda and Australia. Apparently the super storage and analysing technology used in the US is sold by privately owned Texas Memory Systems. It can deal with one trillion floating point operations per second. Now that's some technology."
Do you editors even READ this stuff?
You bastards. You've slashdotted echelon.
Echelon
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
where is the mirror ?
one comment and slashdotted - is this page hosted on someone's grandmothers 10 yearold machine on a dialup dynip?
Posting as annoyomous coward due to evil echelon listening post in the hills behind me. Will get my revenge.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:4mzhQXtHaVoJ: www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm%3FNewsID% 3D2430+&hl=en
Brought to you by Google. Google: For when the NSA supercomputer network just isn't enough.
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You've probably heard about Echelon, the vast listening system run by the US, UK, Canada and Australia that scans the world's voice traffic looking for key words and phrases.
Aside from using the system for industrial espionage and bypassing international and national laws to listen in on people, it is also used to listen out for people like Osama bin Laden and assorted terrorists in the hope of preventing attacks.
All this is out in the relative open thanks to investigative journalists and a European Commission report into the system, concerned and annoyed that the Brits and Yanks has got there first.
It works like this: The calls are recorded by geo-stationary spy satellites and listening stations, such as the UK's Menworth Hill, which combine satellite-intercepted calls and trunk landline intercepts and forward them on to centres, such as the US' Fort Meade, where supercomputers work on the recordings in real time.
But what, you ask, can deal with that overwhelming mass of data that helps our government spy on the world? And how does it work?
Well, a Texas Memory Systems SAM product - a combined solid-state disk (SSD) and DSP (digital signal processor). Woody Hutsell, an executive VP at TMS, said: "Fifty percent of our revenue this year will come from DSP systems, more than last year. The systems are a combination of SSD with DSP ASICs." ASICs are application-specific integrated circuits - chips dedicated to a specific purpose.
TMS has a TM-44 DSP chip which has 8 GFLOPS of processing power - that's eight billion floating point operations per second. The processing uses floating point arithmatic operations to supply the accuracy needed for the analysis. A DSP chip turns analogue signals from a sensor or recorder into digital information usable by a computer. Digital cameras will use a DSP to turn the light signals coming through the lens into digital picture element, or pixel, information.
A SAM-650 product is called a 192 GFLOPS DSP supercomputer by TMS. It is just 3U high and has 24 DSP chips and is positioned as a back-end number cruncher controlled by any standard server - a similar architecture to that used by Cray supercomputers. There are vast streams of information coming from recorded telephone conversations. The ability to have the DSPs work in parallel speeds up analysis enormously. Spinning hard drives can't feed the DSPs fast enough, nor are they quick enough for subsequent software analysis of the data. Consequently TMS uses its solid state technology to provide a buffer up to 32GB that keeps the DSPs operating at full speed.
A cluster of five SAM-650's provides a terra flop of processing power; one trillion floating point operations per second.
Echelon is a global surveillance network set up in Cold War days to provide the US goverment with intelligence data about Russia. One of the main contractors is Raytheon. Lockheed Martin has been involved in writing software for it. Since then it has expanded into a general listening facility, an electronic vacuum cleaner, sucking up the world's telephone conversations. Information about it's existence has been reluctantly revealed, prompted by scandals such as the recordings of Princess Diana's telephone calls by the NSA.
Recorded signals are fed into the TMS SAM systems where the DSPs filter out the noise to produce much clearer signals that software can work on to detect individual voices, perform voice recognition, and listen out for keywords, such as, for example, "Semtex". Decryption of encrypted calls is also a likely activity.
Hutsell says the SAM systems, "are supplied to intelligence agencies and the military though system integrators like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Zeta. It's an intelligence community application involving data from various sources. This is loaded into RAM and then real-time analysis is carried out on it. Step one is to filter out the noise and our DSP chips are used for that. Then they look into patterns using other tools - images or voice. It's
of cananda. :)
That damn intelligence war must be really working.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
By Chris Mellor, Techworld
You've probably heard about Echelon, the vast listening system run by the US, UK, Canada and Australia that scans the world's voice traffic looking for key words and phrases.
Aside from using the system for industrial espionage and bypassing international and national laws to listen in on people, it is also used to listen out for people like Osama bin Laden and assorted terrorists in the hope of preventing attacks.
All this is out in the relative open thanks to investigative journalists and a European Commission report into the system, concerned and annoyed that the Brits and Yanks has got there first.
It works like this: The calls are recorded by geo-stationary spy satellites and listening stations, such as the UK's Menworth Hill, which combine satellite-intercepted calls and trunk landline intercepts and forward them on to centres, such as the US' Fort Meade, where supercomputers work on the recordings in real time.
But what, you ask, can deal with that overwhelming mass of data that helps our government spy on the world? And how does it work?
Well, a Texas Memory Systems SAM product - a combined solid-state disk (SSD) and DSP (digital signal processor). Woody Hutsell, an executive VP at TMS, said: "Fifty percent of our revenue this year will come from DSP systems, more than last year. The systems are a combination of SSD with DSP ASICs." ASICs are application-specific integrated circuits - chips dedicated to a specific purpose.
TMS has a TM-44 DSP chip which has 8 GFLOPS of processing power - that's eight billion floating point operations per second. The processing uses floating point arithmatic operations to supply the accuracy needed for the analysis. A DSP chip turns analogue signals from a sensor or recorder into digital information usable by a computer. Digital cameras will use a DSP to turn the light signals coming through the lens into digital picture element, or pixel, information.
A SAM-650 product is called a 192 GFLOPS DSP supercomputer by TMS. It is just 3U high and has 24 DSP chips and is positioned as a back-end number cruncher controlled by any standard server - a similar architecture to that used by Cray supercomputers. There are vast streams of information coming from recorded telephone conversations. The ability to have the DSPs work in parallel speeds up analysis enormously. Spinning hard drives can't feed the DSPs fast enough, nor are they quick enough for subsequent software analysis of the data. Consequently TMS uses its solid state technology to provide a buffer up to 32GB that keeps the DSPs operating at full speed.
A cluster of five SAM-650's provides a terra flop of processing power; one trillion floating point operations per second.
Echelon is a global surveillance network set up in Cold War days to provide the US goverment with intelligence data about Russia. One of the main contractors is Raytheon. Lockheed Martin has been involved in writing software for it. Since then it has expanded into a general listening facility, an electronic vacuum cleaner, sucking up the world's telephone conversations. Information about it's existence has been reluctantly revealed, prompted by scandals such as the recordings of Princess Diana's telephone calls by the NSA.
Recorded signals are fed into the TMS SAM systems where the DSPs filter out the noise to produce much clearer signals that software can work on to detect individual voices, perform voice recognition, and listen out for keywords, such as, for example, "Semtex". Decryption of encrypted calls is also a likely activity.
Hutsell says the SAM systems, "are supplied to intelligence agencies and the military though system integrators like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Zeta. It's an intelligence community application involving data from various sources. This is loaded into RAM and then real-time analysis is carried out on
Hm.
9 9940.nsa_2_.xml.pdf
1 Tflops would place it anywhere between place 240 (if it were sustained) or 500+ (if it were peak) on the current top500.
Not THAT amazing.
Also, i dont quite realize how important floating point ops are in a data-warehousing application. They just pile up tons of (faxes/emails/phone recording).
Btw: Remember the story about the 5MW wind-generator a few weeks ago?
The company cant sell in the us because echelon was used to sniff fax messages that were later given to a us company (kenetech windpower) which made a patent. Complete with the original tying errors. (who was it again who said "whats good for boeing is good for america"?)
(story from ZEIT, titles "treason between friends", here http://hermes.zeit.de/pdf/archiv/archiv/1999/40/1
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Not all the governments involved in this had confirmed its' existance. I think Canada, Australia and New Zealand did, but not the US or UK, or something like that anyway. If it's not confirmed, and is certainly still quite secretive, how can Techworld even know about this stuff? Also, why are they allowed to print such possibly-damaging text?
When i wrote this, the link was slashdotted and no mirrors present.
A dsp cluster... That makes the performance even less impressive...
The grape guys in japan created that much flops per asic...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Just use some Vi@gra and Septic T@nks in your email!
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:4mzhQXtHaVoJ:ww w.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm%3FNewsID%3D 2430+The+Hardware+Behind+Echelon+Revealed&hl=en&cl ient=firefox-a
hopefully my link works
The Echelon system is basically a beowulf cluster of Symbian sex machines.
What ? The US spy department still relies on ASICs ?
Don't they heard of FPGAs ?!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Spy in the sky satellites listen in to what we say and look at what we do. Then solid state disk keeps the real time analysis of these calls and images operating at full speed. The world's fastest storage system is used in the world's most sophisticated spying operation.
Here's to hoping it never becomes sentient.
If enough people made phonecalls that were dilliberately saturated with keywords (say a few million at once)
Would it be possible to effectively slashdot their supercomputer? >:P
Now that we know how it works, lets all , I mean all call some one on our cell phone and say:
"John has a long moustache"
lol
* Carthago Delenda Est *
What do china, north/south korea and other protective countries do about this?
And does this listen on to the internet communications (modem beep beep blonk sounds) also?
And finaly, what do they use this information for? Would the use it against a politician if it posed a threat for them (aka blackmailing them) or someone else?
The world is more and more terrifying every day.
Hopefully SD-6 doesnt find out about this article.... oh wait Marshall already has the source code in his head and he'll probably GPL it.
* = Accident as in... Remote controlled, no pilot, full speed against military installation.
** = On paper, at least. There might be a small error on the flight manifest... Or 400 small errors.
*** = Play the terrorist card; not only does it draw away suspiscion, it also garners support.
Besides, what's this who deal about spy satelite? Don't they know it's so very dangerous up there, with all the space debris? Especially this 3-stage 'space debris' which is remarkably shaped like a missile, with an explosive warhead... I wonder how that got up there?
Hate me!
Download from www.pacifica.org the MP3 the interview with the former translator, who worked for the US state agencies. She says that the translation practice is bad. Just download and listen to what real people, who work the system, say. Indeed if the system is so nice, why 9/11 could happen? I guess it is similar to Regan's Star War technology; - to mislead people in believing that they can control everything, to reduce the usage of telephony and e mail.
So, I'm afraid they didn't get the lowest bid. :(
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wondering just what Echelon is looking for?
The word lists used by Echelon are highly classified (which of course makes sense if the goal is to keep people such as terrorists from knowing what words to avoid using). However, this also means that public oversight is impossible. Some information does get leaked to us outsiders from time to time, but always as unconfirmable rumors.
Here's a few of those that seem likelyest to have at least a grain of truth.
1. Echelon lists include lots of specific words that are used by people with training, and few general words widely used by the public. Words such as "Explosive" or phrases such as "Blow Up" won't get a hit, but more specific terms, i.e. "PETN", or "Semtex", may be on the list.
2. The list is updated, both by a general review board every few months, and immediately if a particular concern warrents it. (This rummor is apperently the only thing about the system that has been officially confirmed by testimony before congress in an open session).
3. The list is largely focused on detecting Nuclear weapons tech. It looks for correct technical names of bomb components, among other things. Lately, this has been expanded to focus more on bio-weapons.
4. The list includes names of some public officials. Rumor has it that Attourny Generals and FBI and CIA directors have had their names placed on the list to help protect them. Janet Reno was supposedly kept on the list for a year after she left office because of concerns right-wing U.S. domestic terrorists were especially likely to target her. People running the system are reluctant to put public figures on the list, because they get too many false positives to wade through.
5. The system looks for multiple hits and grades them algorythmicly. Several entries in the same phone call, particularly entries that are logically related, will add up to a conversation that crosses a critical threshold and is brought to the attention of a human supervisor.
It's easy to see some ways this could be abused. For example, it could be used to help protect all the presidential candidates in an election year, but just looking for the candidate's last names would generate billions of fales positives. So, in order to 'protect' all the candidates, it would be necessary to monitor for less well known information, like the names of various campaign advisors, private addresses, or other such info, which would give the people running the system a lot of leeway in listening to calls made by the opposition during their run for the office.
Who is John Cabal?
"Star Treck"
Is this a video you buy on a street corner? Like those cheap Rollex watches I keep being offered?
I know that this has been talked about before on Slashdot but I think the most disturbing thing about Echelon isn't the hardware (although I'd bet there is a great deal more to it than the current article talks about) but the fact that it is used to spy on whoever it happens to pickup. A certain keyword in a communication is all that it takes to get Echelon's attention and then you are in it's grasp.
If you happen to be a U.S. citizen or resident, it is unlawful for the U.S. government to monitor your communications without a warrant. This is no problem for Echelon, the Canadians or the Brits will do it for the U.S. It is one giant loophole for the governments involved to spy on their own people as well as anyone else.
I don't really have that much to hide but I do value my rights and my privacy so that bothers me. I know that the powers-that-be justify this as being part of the defense of the free world, that this is a necessary component on the war on terrorisiom and that such draconian measures are justified to keep us safe. But, if I have to give up my rights, my privlidges as a resident of a free country, I can't accept that explaination. Simply because the tool has become a tool of a different kind of terror. It is a took used by a represive government, used against it's own people.
I fear a repressive regime in my own country far more than I fear Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen.
So many of the changes made since 9/11 have played into the hands of terrorists. The changes have made the way we live, the way we travel, and the way we do business much more restrictive and expensive. Airport security is probably the most glaring example of this. We aren't anonymous travelers just getting from place to place anymore. We are electronically monitored, our travels documented. Those TSA agents and airport police aren't free - every traveler and every citizen pays for them.
Echelon is worse than that in some ways. We don't know if or when our conversations and other communications are monitored. It is hidden from our view, shielded behind a digital curtain of secrecy. If it is used against us, we will probably never know.
Some people probably say: "What's the big deal if it is also used to catch drug dealers anyway? They are just criminals." I can understand that position but have to say that it is a pretty narrow view. The truth is that you can't make two wrongs make a right. A regime that turns it's military against it's own people isn't very far from being the enemy. This is the kind of thing that the Gestapo did in Germany. It is just wrong.
I'm glad to think that I live in a free country. I'm just not sure that we are as free as we think we are. I'm afraid that we already have our own version of "secret police."
It looks like they just used custom designed hardware to take care of all the processing. That also makes the calculating speed look pretty good (not top500 good though), but it can only do one thing, analyzing speech and text.
Echelon is doing pretty good, they are *a lot* of stories about how echelon was used to give us-based companies an edge over their competitors in countries not involved with echelon. Makes you wonder why the EU is still on speaking terms with the USA.
" A DSP chip turns analogue signals from a sensor or recorder into digital information usable by a computer. "
Um, no that would be a ADC. A DSP is a Digital Signal Processor, which is basically like any other processor just built to do certain types of calculations very fast.
The ACLU has a fairly comprehensive, albeit slightly out of date, site dedicated to ECHELON.
Because it's analysing VOICE not TEXT. PhD heh!
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:4mzhQXtHaVoJ: www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm%3FNewsID% 3D2430+&hl=en
My sig is wonderful. I love my sig.
I read the FA.
It doesnt say so exactly, but it looks like those dsp systems could do large-scale speech to text conversion.
And there (with all those FFTs, ect), FPops in general and DSPs could be useful.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
They have technology in Texas??
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Cool, you copy the same text posted five minutes earlier and get Karma!
)9TSS
Others are here, here, here and here . The journalistic quality varies. You might have to search for "Kenetech".
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Since it's slashdotted, I have a question: could someone please tell me what is that "echelon" thing we are talking about? It seems interesting with those trillion floating point operations and all that but I don't have much time to search for more info right now because I am very busy building a nuclear bomb for Robert Malda, pseudonym CmdrTaco, Commander in Chief of the Slashdot terrorist organisation, and if I don't give it to him before the narcotic transport arrives and he won't be able to assassinate the president on time, then my arse is going to expericence some serious jihad with his weapons of mass destruction, because how else will he be able to overthrow the federal government and start the violent uprising to destroy democracy and bring Islamic fundamentalism to the US? So, could anyone tell me what's that? Thanks.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Not for text matching, but for numbercrunching.
Numbercrunching as in RC5-72. I think you get the idea...
OK, we all agree a common time, dial a friend and utter the phrase:
"George Bush, the President of the United States, would never assasinate an infidel World Leader with Semtex or a radioactive nuclear dirty bomb"
and see what happens!
Chew on that Echey baby!
AT&ROFLMAO
According to Wikipædia: "ECHELON is the largest electronic spy network in history, run by the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, capturing telephone calls, faxes and e-mails around the world. ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day." It raises a very serious question: How on Earth do they manage to get 3 billion warrants every day?!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
What I'd like to see is the list of numbers blocked from processing. White House? Kremlin? Saudi royal family? Raytheon executives and mistresses? Don't tell me everyone's equal under this scheme.
I'm curious about why they mention floating point performance at all since it would seem that integer performance would be far more useful for just about anything Echelon needs to do.
Anyone know if there is a reason for the floating point reference other than just as a 'gee whiz' number?
just paste them in a couple of random emails every week....
Rewson, SAFE, Waihopai, INFOSEC, ASPIC, MI6, Information Security, SAI, Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism Defensive Information, Defense Information Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive Information Warfare, The Artful Dodger, NAIA, SAPM, ASU, ASTS, National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, SAO, Reno, Compsec, JICS, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, RSP, ISS, JDF, Ermes, Passwords, NAAP, DefCon V, RSO, Hackers, Encryption, ASWS, CUN, CISU, CUSI, M.A.R.E., MARE, UFO, IFO, Pacini, Angela, Espionage, USDOJ, NSA, CIA, S/Key, SSL, FBI, Secert Service, USSS, Defcon, Military, White House, Undercover, NCCS, Mayfly, PGP, SALDV, PEM, resta, RSA, Perl-RSA, MSNBC, bet, AOL, AOL TOS, CIS, CBOT, AIMSX, STARLAN, 3B2, BITNET, SAMU, COSMOS, DATTA, Furbys, E911, FCIC, HTCIA, IACIS, UT/RUS, JANET, ram, JICC, ReMOB, LEETAC, UTU, VNET, BRLO, SADCC, NSLEP, Daffy Duck, SACLANTCEN, FALN, 877, NAVELEXSYSSECENGCEN, BZ, CANSLO, CBNRC, CIDA, JAVA, rsta, Active X, Compsec 97, RENS, LLC, DERA, JIC, rip, rb, Wu, RDI, Mavricks, BIOL, Meta-hackers, ^?, SADT, Steve Case, Tools, RECCEX, Telex, Aldergrove, OTAN, monarchist, NMIC, NIOG, IDB, MID/KL, NADIS, NMI, SEIDM, BNC, CNCIS, STEEPLEBUSH, RG, BSS, DDIS, mixmaster, BCCI, BRGE, Europol, SARL, Military Intelligence, JICA, Scully, recondo, Flame, Infowar, FRU, Bubba, Freeh, Archives, ISADC, CISSP, Sundevil, jack, Investigation, JOTS, ISACA, NCSA, ASVC, spook words, RRF, 1071, Bugs Bunny, Verisign, Secure, ASIO, Lebed, ICE, NRO, Lexis-Nexis, NSCT, SCIF, FLiR, JIC, bce, Lacrosse, Flashbangs, HRT, IRA, EODG, DIA, USCOI, CID, BOP, FINCEN, FLETC, NIJ, ACC, AFSPC, BMDO, site, SASSTIXS, NAVWAN, NRL, RL, NAVWCWPNS, NSWC, USAFA, AHPCRC, ARPA, SARD, LABLINK, USACIL, SAPT, USCG, NRC, ~, O, NSA/CSS, CDC, DOE, SAAM, FMS, HPCC, NTIS, SEL, USCODE, CISE, SIRC, CIM, ISN, DJC, LLNL, bemd, SGC, UNCPCJ, CFC, SABENA, DREO, CDA, SADRS, DRA, SHAPE, bird dog, SACLANT, BECCA, DCJFTF, HALO, SC, TA SAS, Lander, GSM, T Branch, AST, SAMCOMM, HAHO, FKS, 868, GCHQ, DITSA, SORT, AMEMB, NSG, HIC, EDI, benelux, SAS, SBS, SAW, UDT, EODC, GOE, DOE, SAMF, GEO, JRB, 3P-HV, Masuda, Forte, AT, GIGN, Exon Shell, radint, MB, CQB, TECS, CONUS, CTU, RCMP, GRU, SASR, GSG-9, 22nd SAS, GEOS, EADA, SART, BBE, STEP, Echelon, Dictionary, MD2, MD4, MDA, diwn, 747, ASIC, 777, RDI, 767, MI5, 737, MI6, 757, Kh-11, EODN, SHS, ^X, Shayet-13, SADMS, Spetznaz, Recce, 707, CIO, NOCS, Halcon, NSS, Duress, RAID, Uziel, wojo, Psyops, SASCOM, grom, NSIRL, D-11, DF, ZARK, SERT, VIP, ARC, S.E.T. Team, NSWG, MP5k, SATKA, DREC, DEVGRP, DSD, FDM, GRU, LRTS, SIGDEV, NACSI, MEU/SOC,PSAC, PTT, RFI, ZL31, SIGDASYS, TDM. SUKLO, Schengen, SUSLO, TELINT, fake, TEXTA. ELF, LF, MF, Mafia, JASSM, CALCM, TLAM, Wipeout, GII, SIW, MEII, C2W, Burns, Tomlinson, Ufologico Nazionale, Centro, CICAP, MIR, Belknap, Tac, rebels, BLU-97 A/B, 007, nowhere.ch, bronze, Rubin, Arnett, BLU, SIGS, VHF, Recon, peapod, PA598D28, Spall, dort, 50MZ, 11Emc Choe, SATCOMA, UHF, The Hague, SHF, ASIO, SASP, WANK, Colonel, domestic disruption, 5ESS, smuggle, Z-200, 15kg, DUVDEVAN, RFX, nitrate, OIR, Pretoria, M-14, enigma, Bletchley Park, Clandestine, NSO, nkvd, argus, afsatcom, CQB, NVD, Counter Terrorism Security, Enemy of the State, SARA, Rapid Reaction, JSOFC3IP, Corporate Security, OSAll, 192.47.242.7, Baldwin, Wilma, ie.org, cospo.osis.gov, Police, Dateline, Tyrell, KMI, 1ee, Pod, 9705 Samford Road, 20755-6000, sniper, PPS, ASIS, ASLET, TSCM, Security Consulting, M-x spook, Z-150T, Steak Knife, High Security, Security Evaluation, Electronic Surveillance, MI-17, ISR, NSAS, Counterterrorism, real, spies, IWO, eavesdropping, debugging, CCSS, interception, COCOT, NACSI, rhost, rhosts, ASO, SETA, Amherst, Broadside, Capricorn, NAVCM, Gamma, Gorizont, Guppy, NSS, rita, ISSO, submiss, ASDIC,
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Pffff. Can't be right. Everyone knows Daedalus runs as a small piece of code on every device on the planet.
I'm curious, what Echelon can do with Freenet? Or SSH traffic? Or IPSex? Or SSL? Or GPG email? Does it work only on clear-text communication? I suppose not because that would be utterly foolish. With VoIP it's now trivial to have encrypted voice communication all over the world. What can Echelon do about such traffic?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I'd imagine this system would only catch / bring attention to small timers and reckless teenagers who probably don't pose much threat to the government. Any group that is serious about inflicting harm would probably meet in person and work out a simple code system to make their conversations slip through the cracks of this system (ie: "Monkey" for "President", "Birthday cake" for 'bomb', etc).
Ooh ooh I know this one, pick me pick me!!!
Super computers live on the second floor. Xbranch use them probably more than anyone else, so they can kiss my fluffy backside because they wouldn't let me install a flight sim. So can DSD for that matter.
They look like... Boxes. Big boxes. The modern ones must have had some wind tunnel mods 'cause the pipework looks real cool.
I'm guessing - Building M-2-rightside if you are walking toward building N. If you know, you know right! Yes, I know about the basement as well.
If it ever does become sentient, it'll probably classify it's own creators as a terrorist organization and end up working with the good guys.
how long it would take to compile gentoo on it!
According to that scenerio, sentience would take additional resources provided by virus infected PCs, mobile phones, fax machines and .... oh no, it's Wince, Skynet is Wince, Ahhhh!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"to mislead people in believing that they can control everything"
Probably not the purpose of Star Wars - it was more to force the Soviets into spending money they didn't have so that they would implode under the weight of their socialist economy. For 911, it was the fact that government employees ignored intellegence about the activities of the terrorists, rather then the technology not discovering the activities of the terrorists.
google web cache http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2F www.techworld.com%2Fstorage%2Fnews%2Findex.cfm%3FN ewsID%3D2430
Why 9/11 could happen ? Maybe because someone inside US wanted this to happen in order to justify that war against terrorism, Irak and Afganistan. It was know by CIA and Echelon may have helped somehow but someone indeed, did not want to act against it to happen.
Léa Gris
wow...let's use our brains and think about this for 3 seconds. ok got it. it wouldn't be used for text matching, but signal processing? like maybe voice recognition?
Not for text matching, but for numbercrunching. Numbercrunching as in RC5-72. I think you get the idea...
Excuse me? floating point operations to run RC5? I don't think you get the idea..
How is it we can get exact specs for Echelon, but not for Google?
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If they're telling us (the public) it's 1 TF, just imagine how fast it really is.
"We don't know if or when our conversations and other communications are monitored."
You're best to assume that they are (and invent your own clear code,) and that your cel phone is also a GPS and can give your location away to a resolution less than the flying shrapnel of a missile.
That's why you don't hear dick from Osama any more.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
You left out one major item. Economic espionage, which is why the EU investigated the program in the first place.
A lot of european contractors kept finding themselves underbid or business stolen from them- when everything was secret and there was no explanation except eavesdropping. Further, it was only US businesses that seemed to benefit from this mysterious information-providing god.
Please help metamoderate.
This begs the question though ...
If a "terrorist" uses genreic words in their e-mail to decribe weapons or tactics then to cover all possibilities do they just monitor all e-mails and conversations of certain persons? Sure an Osama Bin Laden is on the list but what about some person they only "suspect" of terrorism.
Does it mean that I have less than 30 microseconds to appeal?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
good point. I wonder if there will ever be chips made with hundreds of integer only cores. For specialty situations like this it could speed it up quite a bit.
The chair is against the wall.
The chair is against the wall.
They're trying to spendour money as fast as possible, not save it. That's one reason that Echelon is secret. Until it becaue ludicrously futile to deny it, Echelon officially didn't exist. That makes it easier for huge corporate welfare projects to spend money on political bribers^Wcontributors' projects, without any oversight or criticism. Running up a $5T debt isn't easy with Congress and the public butting in all the time.
--
make install -not war
This system would be better spent simulating the protein folding directed by the human genome, and releasing all the produced science to American citizens. Then the technology from both the infosystem and the biology could be harnessed by Americans to protect the US economically and biochemically, and extending that protection to the rest of our species through trade. Instead the fear of terrorism has been stoked so high that the Federal corporate welfare job security system is not only diverting our R&D money and brains away from productive work, it's spying on us in violation of the law and our open democracy.
--
make install -not war
With all that tech... why not make a server that can withstand a /.ing ?
Roswell! Roswell!
1984 could happen!
Server Error
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.
Could not connect to JRun Server.
property.
... right after 9/11:
"The terrorists win only if they change us, only if they make us change who we are and how we live."
By that standard, I'd say "Game Over".
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
Echelon, among other stuff, is supposed to snoop on telecommunication networks.
For example, matching voice patterns, it will alert the CIA every time someone utters 'Ana raicha al quaeda' in arabic.
This has been known to cause too many alerts at a time when an earthquake caused a colera epidemic, which caused many arabs to go to the 'sit' (quaeda) frequently.
Echelon has been critizised in the far dull past to lack overlook and control of who enters keywords, so the public wouldn't know whether it has been used to do some really cool insider trading on the stock markets.
Usually, however, the keyword 'echelon' just evokes paranoia on the minds of european business top executives and serves to cover up human intelligence gathered or made up by the president himself at the dinner table. Or so I heard.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Does it play Ogg?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Violating my fourth amendment rights and eroding my civil liberties is a much greater threat to my national security than any WMD is.
I read something everyday that makes me want to quit being an American.
*Automated*
You will be contacted by the FBI. Our websearch as detected dubious information which has been called into question. Please remain where you are and we will contact you shortly.
--end of line.
Life is not for the lazy.
Project: RC5-72 The project to crack a message encrypted with the 72-bit RC5 cipher.
I hope this clarifies my point.
Not very much. Because
- In this (unsophisticated) case, cracking == running (as they're brute forcing the key)
- Linked from the very page you linked to, the FAQ entry:
Which was my original remark to back up someone you followed up to with this:
I hope it's clear now..I'm going to sell you this elephant charm. It will protect you from wild elephants, and you can be sure it works! Do you see any elephants around here?
Not because the world is changing. Because you're learning about it.
Tell me again, who knew Mary was a virgin, and how did they know?
Some simple math shows that it IS impresive
The 1 Tflops statistic is for a set of 5 rack-mount units, each 3U high. Essentially half a rack of equipment. Presumably, they would buy more than one set. In fact, one person suggeted that ASICs only make sense when purchased in quantities of 100k. With 24 ASICs per box, and 120 per 5-units, that's 1200 ASICs per full rack.
If they order 100 racks, you get 100k ASICs, and 100 TFlops of processing power.
THAT is impressive.
actually, you've pretty much hit the nail right on the head.
There's one program out there that turns a normal message into a spam message based on the textual content, and can be decoded by running it through the same program. However, this doesn't go far enough to a degree -- if you create such a message, there's only one way to distribute it effectively and subversively, as to not be detected and your agent compromised:
spam.
Simple steps:
From this, the message is completely lost in noise, and is theoretically disregarded...with all the spammers out there, the noise volume is enormous.
The only problem with this scenario is that your recipients have no measures to contact you again, but you can set up a web log or forum where you talk about kittens or someshit and they'll be able to place padded messages back, or whatever you want to do.
Now -- hopefully, if the national governments hadn't thought about this before, we'll see a "war on spam" where they'll drop a few bunker busters on a few spammers out there :D
In the late 1970's I worked for a defense contractor that built specialized signal processing computers. The NSA was a major customer. We tried to find other applications, like oil and gas exploration, but nobody else was buying.
My job was to write microcode assemblers and then write the microcode that handled I/O. My description of the hardware is here.
Up to 24 voice grade channels (8K samples per second each) arrived time and/or frequency multiplexed onto a single data channel. The system detected the presence of the subchannels, determined the type of modulation being used, and ran them through the appropriate demodulator algorithm. I don't know what happened to the data after that.
We didn't use custom chips. A cabinet full of Schottky MSI chips was enough for a three processor system. The system's speed was due to parallelism, not high clock rate.
By the way, one of our computer rooms was built inside a big metal box that was suspended from the roof on cables. When it mattered, all external connections except for power were unplugged. We were too cheap to pay for a shielded air-conditioning system, so tests lasted a maximum of 20 minutes.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Overflow...System Halted
rpiquepa
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Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
So, the system has put us out of work. By us I mean legions of programmers. How long before we organize & strike back at the system? How long before we exact revenge on the system that used us & then tossed us out with the garbage? I see some of the best minds in Amerika pumping gas & waiting tables, while Hapu Nahasapidapedalam & friends laugh all the way to the bank. How long?
Is it running Linux?
"Server Error
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.
Could not connect to JRun Server."
I was supposed to test JRun to run our high-volume server. Not anymore.
It can't do anything, since Echelon is about simple pattern matching to spoken voice and written text.
The big idea is to control the "subversive" elements of your own government and people, to keep the status quo and avoid surprises such as uprisings.
Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security.
--- Ben Franklin
A former inteligence officer was my mentor in highschool. Although details are skechy about his involvment in Echelon, much of the facts presented in this /. thread thus far, are basically correct.
The area most people overlook is that the NSA/CIA/DoD wherever possible buy normal, everyday PC hardware. e.g Mac xServe G5s
The other detail is that since the original Echelon was created, hardware has improved exponentially. A Dual Xeon with 16 GB of RAM is available today, far cheaper than these RAMSAN unit.
Also, It is also believed that NSA programmers have contributed to the linux kernel. They probably have as many Linux servers as google does, if not more. The 'smoking gun' came during an informal chat with a friend who said kernel patches that originated at the NSA, which were contributed to the kernel under GPL ended up in SCO Unix.
Can't you just use the Usenet? No detection, but less collateral damage...
A classic example of Steganography. The more noise, the easier to encode a useful signal. Usenet, radio signals, newspapers, and ebay are all great candidates for hidden messages. Cable television isn't such a great candidate only because it's highly regulated by either media conglomerates or governments.
I like this idea - miniaturization of morons. Only we would have to follow through and step on them.
USENET would be great, but on local servers, they can track IPs viewing each item (yeah, yeah, I know...proxies). The problem involved is that with USENET, there has to be a pre-specified set of newsgroups, and they have to go to a remote server and fetch them, as opposed to just opening your mailbox and getting all sorts of junk sent right to your door inconspicuously.
Besides -- with all the normal stuff that goes on on USENET, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't watched very closely already for any suspicious patterns. Email volume allows you to hide something in the midst of more junk in one week than all the USENET connections can dump in a year.
That's how an early version of netscape's ssl was broken.
Please mod the AC up a little bit.
GPG 0x1B479C78
In fact, the TMS systems are not used for cracking encryption at all. They are used on the front end of the data processing, to generate coherent messages for further processing. The TMS chips are not overly useful for number crunching (although they can run integers although slower). The most important thing for number crunching on goverment systems is to compute the number of '1's in a given data vector. The chips in the systems here do not do that very effeciently.
Instead, the SAM systems are used to perform FFTs on data aquired via various input sources (sat, ground stations, microwave intercepts, etc.). FFTs use floating point ops. The output of the FFTs allows signals to have background noise and other data stripped out, and more easily align individual signals (including frequency variable) to be isolated for further processing.
I love next door to one of the Echelon site located in the Waihopai Valley in Marlborough, New Zealand.
:)
A while after the 911 thing the base had an open day for neighbours to come and have a look through the place. That is the places they allowed us to look at which wasn't too much. They served up nice tea and cakes too
The idea I think was to get all the people on neighbouring properties to be on the look out for any unusual activity and let them know if anything happens.
Here is a link to a picture of our very own Echelon spy base.
http://kai.iks-jena.de/bilder/waihopai.jpg
I got to go inside the Big golf ball on the left in the picture.
Floating point is really practical in reading emails. Are you sure the guys at CIA didn't missed something?
There you are, staring at me again.
But can it run Linux?
Those countries don't bother about this because echelon can only understand communication in US/UK protocol. Since North korea don't use the same telephony protocol an neither XML, echelon don't get theirs message. And since it was from the begining a tool for spying on industries, no one cares.
or do you think that the fact they're using your tax money to pay a texan company and that echelon's biggest know act was to ruin the business of a european company that developed a wind power system by passing private faxes to an american company so they could patent it first and never develop the damn thing and hence keep oil prices high (Oil wich is extratec in texas by the same guy in power) is normal?
The article was published in "Techworld" which is an affiliate (one of many) of InfoWorld Media Group, which in turn is a limb of IDG. .
IDG is one of those earth-flattening corporations which dominates everything. Look at their track record. Interestingly, they're not just interested in owning all the computer publications in the world. They also have their fingers in Brain Research. --Which looks on the surface to be a bit of PR angling, but 350 million worth? Whatever. Creepy.
.
Huge publishing conglomerates have mandates and agendas, (whether they realize it or not), so IDG publishing articles about Echelon is interesting to say the least.
By contrast. .
Slashdot is owned by OSDG. (Open Source Data Group)
From the OSDG website
OSDG is in turn owned by VA Software
VA Software appears to have its morals lined up nicely. That is, their goal appears to be data sharing and the facilitation of collaborative creative efforts. As the much maligned, (and biblically misrepresented), Christ advised, "Judge the Tree by the Fruit it Bears." This is one of the most outstanding bits of advice I have ever heard. Flowing all the way down this particular chain, Slashdot allows peculiar guys like me to speak my mind in forum on taboo subject matter. I have an enormous amount of respect for that.
Here's an article written by Carl Redfield, a guy way up at the top of th
there's no such thing as "Oh Canada". It's "O Canada", thanks.
check out http://sourceforge.net/projects/securekey
Its a one time pad with randomised dictionary entries. I really really can't see how this can be broken, no matter how many ASICs you use.
Learn how to spell CANADA.
Yeesh.
Seen a lot of these on comp.lang.java among others.
I thought there was a canadian citizen that we intercepted at our borders and then sent to Syria where he said he was tortured.
Whatever, people this this place is so great, but it's all smoke and mirrors.
Lisa: "By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away."
Homer: "Oh, how does it work?"
Lisa: "It doesn't work! It's just a stupid rock!"
Homer: "Uh-huh."
Lisa: "But I don't see any tigers around, do you?"
Homer: "I would like to buy your rock!"
If we have stuff like :
=> Encrypted communications using GPG.
=> Encrypted VoIP using GPG
wouldn't that make it a LOT more difficult for echelon to crack? They'll have to first crack the encryption.
We need some kind of open-source organization that concentrates on safe-guarding privacy and that helps in the development of such tools and their widesperead adoption.
See, the thing with OSS is that it can be used to overcome tyrannical elements - MS is one...maybe invasion of privacy is another? What do you think?
I mean, if this could be done on a large scale with network communication secured by default, with VOIP secured by default, with email encrypted by default, wouldn't that significantly reduce the effectiveness of Echelon? Wouldn't it also result in more fairplay all around?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Echelon, even the very concept of it, is a living example of why government agencies need to be sceptical about accepting black box technologies which may or may not work as advertised. Going back to 2000/2001, the resolution ,"European Parliament resolution on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications" (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI)) brings up F/OSS explicitly:
29.Urges the Commission and Member States to devise appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and above all to support projects aimed at developing user-friendly open-source encryption software30.Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes;
31.Calls on the Commission to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the "least reliable" category;
32.Calls on the European institutions and the public administrations of the Member States systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm; F/OSS is mentioned elsewhere in the respolution well.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
There are five countries in the Echelon Network, not four. Lazy journalist.
It is either a typo or an insult. Whichever the case, after 24 hours of being posted, it becomes obvious that it is no longer an overlooked typo.
Please fix such blatent misspellings. Canada is not spelled 'Cananda'. I'm sure that a significant number of readers, moderators and editors know this. Which leads me to wonder why it wasn't fixed.
I wonder how much of Echelon was outsourced to companies tapping its info riches for profit and patriotism for enemies of the American people, apart from the usual US government suspects.
--
make install -not war
I thought there was a canadian citizen that we intercepted at our borders and then sent to Syria where he said he was tortured.
There was. Maher Arar was picked up by the US, detained, questioned, and then deported to Syria where Arar claims US officials new he would be tortured. So far, CSIS has been cleared of any wrongdoing, however the RCMP is looking pretty bad. Arar is now back in Canada and is filing suit against the US government.
Dude. How do you think Al Qaeda is communicating with all its sleeper cells here in the US? Ever wonder why SPAM has escalated significantly since the United States attacked Afghanistan? Most of the new spam are coded messages.
Just throwing some paranoid schizo stuff into your discussion. It was otherwise a very complete posting. Let's continue to post "this story is a dupe" messages on slashdot to let our Al Qaeda leaders know we're still receiving their orders loud and clear.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I didn't see anything that said Echelon didn't use Linux... In fact they suggeted that the thing might be controled by a central CRAY system -- and Cray supports Linux on their hardware.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The problem, however, is filtering that kind of traffic in any timely matter
Did you READ TFA? They have multiterabyte 'buffers' to keep the thing fed.
I'm sure after some very simple initial analysis they can safely toss 99.99% of the initial data. They might run a few hours behind during peak hours, but they can catch up later by storing compressed voice in the aforementioned buffers.
can't tell what the data is in any reliable manner without a massive, memory based system
Again, this is what the article is about. There's PLENTY of storage. And for the record, decoding VoIP would be infinitely easier than tapping raw voice, it's already compressed and the vendors are standardized on a few protocols that are not (usually) encrypted.
but it's highly unlikely they've got a bunch of genuses sitting locked up in a bunker somewhere breaking encryption algorithms for them 24/7
Dude! I _KNOW_ people who have done this sort of thing, and people who build ASICs that automate it. Most of the time a fair amount of detective work yeilds better results than attempts at decryption, but Uncle Sam definitely has a bunch of high-end math-heads working on finding vulnerabilities in today's encryption.
I don't particularily see them being able effectivly spy on a whole lot of jack shit
I do. Considering how FEW people use encryption in a non-corporate sense, it would be trivial to at least keep tabs on the folks who have the wherewithall to build secured systems. I have no doubt that if I set-up a secure-comm system for some shady arabs, the feds would be knocking at my door, or worse.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
It would be easier for the government just to install spyware on everyone's computer.
First, if you use a F/OSS you can be reasonably sure there are no back doors in your mail server or client if you choose to investigate. Second, if you take a similar approach to encryption algorithms and software and use ecncyption in all e-mail communication then you are much less likely to be of use to Echelon.
Yes, your network / infrastructure could probably still be cracked manually, but thats a hell of a lot different from letting everyone between here and your customer (can be 30 hops at times) read your messages.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Canada criminalized "hate speech" including the Holy Bible.
Go Canada! If you want to see some real hate speech, try reading the Old Testament.
So, you're a New Zealander. And your photo is hosted in Germany.
Interesting... does that tell me something?