[107516] in Cypherpunks
RE: Suggestion for Public Echelon counter-measures
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim May)
Fri Jan 15 12:33:25 1999
In-Reply-To: <896C7C3540C3D111AB9F00805FA78CE20313FB87@MSX11002>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 09:18:13 -0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Reply-To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
At 3:29 AM -0800 1/15/99, Brown, R Ken wrote:
>> Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote:
>>
>> (By the way, the huge number of posts in recent months about
>> "Echelon" is surprising to me. Didn't we already know this was
>> happening? Didn't Bamford do a pretty fair job of spelling out
>> the general features back in 1982? The recent Echelon
>> revelations just seem like a minor updating.)
>
>In UK I guess because the combination of a new-ish government (who made the
>right noises when in opposition) and the new importance of the Euro
>parliament might have been thought to provide a possibilty of change. So
>the folk who knew about this stuff & didn't like it have been trying to stir
>up public opinion against Echelon et.c. Also the new Wassenaar agreement
>shows pretty clearly what's going on.
Perhaps so. Never understimate the power of liberal idealism, I guess. To
think that Tony Blair and Labor would be any different from the Evil
Tories....
Everything in Echelon was implicit in Minaret, UKUSA, joint listening
posts, U.S. operatives at Menwith Hill, interception of the pound
devaluation, etc.
(It's been several years since I mentioned this, but one of the main things
that got me interested in the implications of crypto was reading Bamford in
1982, when the book first came out. I was especially taken by the notion
that NSA and Affiliated Agencies were vacuuming up large amounts of
traffic. In fact, from 1988-90 I worked for many hours every day on a large
novel with this as the core idea. The novel ultimately wasn't gelling, and
I moved on to other things.)
Anyway, folks should place no faith in Tony Blair or Bill Clinton as the
Savior of Democracy. (Clinton was hardly a savior, was he? Clipper was
introduced by him. Ditto for Digital Telephony and hundreds of other
statist schemes.)
>Also, presumably for the same reasons, mainstream press have started talking
>about it.
>
>Of course if you were the sort of anarchist who believes that electoral
>politics is a game not worth playing, or the sort of capitalist who believes
>that the markets will decide in the end anyway so politics in general is not
>really relevant to the issue, then you won't wouldn't want to be involved.
>
>I agree that this stuff has been known about for a long while - although I
>only remember the word "Echelon" from comparitively recently, the idea that
"Echelon" may not even be the True Name. They often tag programs with
names, like barium, to watch the spread of leaks.
In any case, not what we didn't know about before.
--Tim May
Y2K -- Where were you when the lights went out?
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.
