October 21 is 'Jam Echelon' Day

samsonite writes "For those familiar with Echelon, 21 October 1999, has been set as the day for everyone to put harmless, yet "subversive" words in emails and postings to overload the Echelon machine. Echelon was once considered a mythical machine that watched all email, internet traffice, phone calls, etc. for "key" words - maintained by the US, among others. " For more information on Echelon, click here. Now, it's time to run my script with verboten words - check out the article for a list.

Comments

Reality check

[konstant]

Let me first say this is a very funny joke to play on the NSA if they indeed are still running the Echelon program. I can imagine them drawing straws to find out who'll be the poor schmoe hitting the reboot button all day long on Jam Echelon day...

But in response to some of the alarmist posts I saw in the old, archived Echelon discussion, may I just remark "The Man does not care about you! You are not interesting to the Man! The Man consider the lint on his Armani suit to be more important than your entire existence, the existence of your parents, and those of your future children, spouses, and pets! You are a nobody! Wake up and get a life!"

While in college I hung out with a pretty leftist crowd. Lots of megaphone demagoguery on the quad about starving babies in Iraq, etc, etc. Well, okay, let's just be frank and say quite a few of my acquaintances were just polishing their manifestos for the day when the socialist revolution happened and they would be called upon to lead their brave comrades into a People's Utopia. Not that I didn't largely agree with them, but they were definitely nuts.

Anyway, these people were obsessed with the notion that the FBI/CIA/NSA/Shadowy NWO/paranoid three-letter-acronym(TLA) du-jour was spying on them. They had read more biographies of Dr. Spock and Mumia Abu Jamal than was quite good for them, and since those activists were their heros, they were convinced that the Powers That Be would treat them as shady characters worthy of a File in the Black Room. Frequently I would overhear these people in their little cells talking in hushed but excited voices about a "friend-of-a-friend" who had gone to CIA headquarters and demanded his file, "and it was verrrry interesting..."

(Aside: when they set up the FOIA over the web, I actually sent in a request to the CIA to pull references to my name. After several pieces of correspondence taped shut with duct tape, they formally declared they did not know who the hell I was and would I please stop sending them letters?)

Now you see, the CIA/FBI/NSA simply has better things to do than track every punk college student who thinks Castro's Cuba would probably be a sea of golden grain/ring of frolicking workers/god's daisy chain if only the nasty US government would stop trying to sanction it out of existence. Lots of college kids have these ideas. Lots of college kids talk about these ideas. They are discussed so often and openly that they have almost become part of the establishment - a rite of passage for white yuppie larva passing through on their way to productive careers as Cogs in the Machine. Why would the CIA give a fuck if yet one more kerchief-bedecked hashhead had stumbled upon the notion that, whoah, we're like only ciphers in this like vast capitalist machine!

Similarly, why on earth would the NSA give a rat's ass about anything you have to think or say? The simple, undeniable fact is that you and I are totally irrelevant. As they go around chanting in Fight Club "I am not special. I am not a beautiful unique snowflake." Damn right we aren't. We couldn't destabilize this country if you tried. What would we do? Put pr0n up on all the major homepages of the information infrastructure?

No doubt there are some people that the government is watching, even today. These are people who are coordinating real revolutions, underground sects, militarized religious organizations that dream of dropping acid into the water supply someday. Political enemies of the Republicrats, Black Panthers, whatever. Not slashdot readers.

Let's repeat that. Not slashdot readers. We are irrelevant in the grand powergames of nations. Sorry for the depressing news. I can already hear some of you squawking "Speak for yourself! You have no idea of the dark byways I travel! I am unique! I am dangerous! I am special! I am unlike the common man!"

Ok, sure. Maybe you are. Just remember the quote: "The common man believes he isn't."

Moderation bombs away!
-konstant