> > "As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, ..."
> >
> > I refuse to believe that there is an actual person named John M.
> > Poindexter in the bowels of our government.
Poindexter has been around for a while. He is the type of fellow
whose name typically pops up around page 17 of the New York
Times. Since most people today think they are fully educated by
listening to CNN for 12 minutes/day, they are unlikely to recognize
names of this category. Poindexter tried to get Total Information
Awareness off the ground, but in a relatively public setting. Does
anyone here remember that? It was only a few years ago.
They'll probably have more luck keeping it quiet. Ideas such as
TIA rarely disappear, they are just reincarnated in some other manner.
> I still do not understand what all of the bruhaha is, Echellon was
even
> more instrusive along with the FBI's carnivor and no one made any
> real noise about it, I understand privacy but I also understand that
> the people we are trying to beat will use every method available to
> them to defeat us, and if you think that they will not try it you are
off
Echelon variants have been around for decades. Carnivore, since
renamed DCS1000 is somewhat newer. These things actually DO
all the things that the NSA "wiretaps" are accused of, and have
been doing it for some time now. The press won't even mention
Echelon. I can't understand why. (actually, I _do_)
Echelon is a joint enterprise between NSA, GCHQ in England
and the Aust/NZ agencies for info gathering and sharing. The
sites at Sugar Grove (WV) and Menwith Hill (UK) are supposed to
have dishes to download all sorts of signals intel relayed from
orbiting satellites. These sites have been around for a long time.
I think Pine Gap is the name of the site in Northern Territory, Aus.
which participates. I first heard of this site around 1970, from a
MIT student I knew who had access to all the FBIS radio logs.
and kept asking me what _I_ knew about it (which of course
was nil).
Get hold of the James Bamford books on NSA.
There was no brouhaha about these earlier projects because the
Clinton administration heavily promoted them* and of course in the
eyes of the press, Clinton could do little wrong. Today Bush can
do no right. *who knew?
If you think about it, the idea of massive wiretapping (listening to
call content in real-time) is ludicrous. There are not nearly
enough people, let alone those with TS clearance, to do this
type of work. Think of "grep" and "string search" (imagine a
typical newspaper reporter trying to understand those concepts)
on digitized content. The actual wiretapping is response to
previously uncovered intel, and is a minute proportion of all
pstn call content.
That's my take on it. Feel free to disagree. Perhaps Amy
Goodman has some different answers, as well.
> in the ozone. I at times find my self at odds with all of this but
then
> all I have to remember is the sight of those poor people jumping out
> of the towers and that most of them were fellow citizens of this
country
> and because we had got lax we got caught with our pants down,
> and they died for it.
We _will_ forget history, and are thus doomed to repeat it (or have
it repeated for us)
> I still do not think many people in this country understand the real
> concept of these people, indeed that is what the whole issue of
> Russia vs Chechnia is, they only understand one thing, kill or be
> killed that is the bottom line. Until you have had to look that
reality
> in the face (it ain't pretty I can tell you for sure) you will not
under-
> stand it.
Islam has two world views, dar al-Harb* (world of warfare) and dar
al-islam
(world of islam. the believers) and it is the duty of the believers to
either assimilate or overcome the unbeliever. Even today, few in the
west
understand the passion and conviction that drives this view, nor of the
concept of patience and of waiting for opportunities to bring this
about..
*(Harb is capitalized solely to differentiate the soft and emphatic "H"
form,
and not of any sign of respect or importance)
They have interesting concepts that are foreign to us as well, such
as "taqiyya" (religious deception) (it is okay to lie about a context in
order
to promote your own view) and this began with the Treaty of Hudaibiyah,
which was an awfully long time ago.
> Sadly to say we are remote to it, but they day the set of a nasty
device
> in one of our harbours or large cities, the buzzards will come home to
> roost and they will then be asking why we did not do more. Just
remember
> a small nuclear device in manhatten will make it inhospitable for
quite
> some time.
>
> --
> Chuck Hast -- KP4DJT --
We see that now. We can't now listen to inbound calls from suspected
cells overseas, yet we are accused of "not connecting the dots" a few
years ago.
Okay, back to linux.
- Bob
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