Re: <nettime> Jamming Echelon

[Andi Freeman <andi@deepdisc.com>]

Since Echelon is more about spotting patterns and trends than disecting
invidual emails everyone mailing the same piece of text around the net
will easily be filtered out and have no effect. Also since a major part of
what it does is about monitoring WHO says something to WHO and WHEN and
then monitoring connections between individuals, jammers are easily
filtered out if postimg from a know source. I have seen some software
originally designed for analysing corporate organistional structures based
on phone calls and emails between individuals and departments that is know
used by security organisations around the world. Believe me that there is
a lot of information to be gained by simply knowning who does all the
talking and to whom (encrytpted or not). By stimulating the network with
an info impulse (dis/information) and watching the response across the
network to that impulse a lot can be told about the level of threat
presented by a group, the structure of the group and how it operates. In
this sense echelon has its roots in the column-inch analysis of German and
Japanese newspapers used in WWII by the US (see John Naisbitt, Megatrends,
1991, Avon Books for an example of this kind of black box analysis). Also
similar statistical techniques can be employed by listening rooms (like
the BBC/GCHQ listening room). 

Also a lot of people don't realise how easy is ta have you PGP key
compromised see
http://www-users.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~senderek/certify/secret-key.protecti
on.html#use) for more info. I have also had it suggested to me although I
can't confirm this, that encrypting a piece of KNOWN PLAINTEXT (ie a
circular) with PGP makes it much easier to crack your keys using brute
force. 

What I can't understand is that if Ecehlon has been used by the US
government to undermine foreign trade deals (like Aerospatiale got done in
Argentina) why someone doesn't take them to the WTO ? Surely usage of
Ecehlon for industrial espionage contravines WTO regulations of which
Echelon countries are signatories ? Maybe the legal routes offered to
protect free trade can be used to protect individual privacy...any ideas
in this direction ? 



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