Fun_People Archive
2 Jun
Paranoids Rejoice! Big Brother _Is_ Reading Your Email

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed,  2 Jun 99 12:25:56 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Paranoids Rejoice!  Big Brother _Is_ Reading Your Email
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The Sunday 5/23 issue of the Melbourne daily newspaper, The Age, reveals a
disclosure by the director of the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra
of a world-wide signals interception program that routinely scans content
of email and other communications for keywords of interest  to the US and
Australian intelligence services.

While privacy advocates have long suspected the existence of such a program,
this is the first official confirmation of the multi-national initiative,
known as "Echelon", which apparently has been operated without interruption
since the late '40s.

As of today (Thurs, 5/27) I am not yet aware that this story has broken on
any US national media, including NPR.

Full text of the article may be found at:

http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990523/news/news3.html

Commentary may be found at  http://www.macosrumors.com as well.
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